The temple is famous for its large, but unfinished, standing Buddha image, which is carved into a rock face just behind the temple buildings.
The overall height of the image is almost 12m. There are various stories about why it was never finished, some more fanciful than others. A prosaic explanation might be that the rock was found to be too brittle in places.
The age of the carving is also not known with certainty. The commonly held belief is that it was created around the same time as the temple itself. An information board on the site gives that date confidently as the year 103 BC and attributes the temple’s construction to King Walagamba.
The complex contains several buildings and shrines.
The temple’s statue hall extends into a natural cave. Below is a photo of the entrance:
Inside are several rooms containing artefacts and murals from different periods. The richly-decorated ceiling above this reclining Buddha statue is part of the cave roof:
The photos below show some other parts of the statue hall.
At the very back of the building is a small stupa. It sits at the entrance to a tunnel, supposedly 11km long, which is said to connect the Dhowa temple to other nearby places of worship. The tunnel was sealed off in 1971 during a period of political unrest.
To get to the Dhowa Rock Temple from Ella follow the Bandarawela-Badulla road south (towards Bandarawela). There is no entrance fee, but a small donation is expected.
