Dimbulagala also known as Gunner's Quoin or Gunner's Rock during the

British colonial The British Overseas Territories (BOTs) or alternatively referred to as the United Kingdom Overseas Territories (UKOTs) are the fourteen territories with a constitutional and historical link with the United Kingdom that, while not forming p ...

period, is a rock formation in the

Polonnaruwa District Polonnaruwa District (; ) is one of the 25 districts of Sri Lanka, the second level administrative division of the country. It is also one of the two districts of North Central Province and has an area of 3,293 km2. The district is adminis ...

of Sri Lanka. By the time anthropologist

Charles Gabriel Seligman Charles Gabriel Seligman FRS FRAI ( Seligmann; 24 December 1873 – 19 September 1940) was a British physician and ethnologist. His main ethnographic work described the culture of the Vedda people of Sri Lanka and the Shilluk people of the S ...

visited the location in 1911, a cave within the rock had become a refuge of the indigenous

Vedda people The Vedda ( ; (''Vēḍar'')), or Wanniyalaeto, are a minority Indigenous peoples, indigenous group of people in Sri Lanka who, among other sub-communities such as Coast Veddas, Anuradhapura Veddas and Bintenne Veddas, are accorded indigenou ...

. During the 12th century AD, The Sinhalese people had constructed a Buddhist monastery within the rock formation. The Dimbulagala Raja Maha Vihara monastery was restored in the 1950s. The villagers around the rock are of mixed Vedda and Sinhalese ancestry.

References

* *{{cite book, last=Samarasinghe, first=S. W. R. de A., title= The Vanishing aborigines : Sri Lanka's Veddas in transition, publisher=International Centre for Ethnic Studies in association with NORAD and Vikas Pub. House, date=1990, isbn=978-0-7069-5298-8 Landforms of Polonnaruwa District Vedda

See also

References