2ND LEAD

Colombo schemes Sinhala colony at Saiva Shrine of Kanniyaa Hot Wells

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 12 August 2014, 13:36 GMT]
After illegally occupying the Hot Wells, a Saiva sacred site in the traditional Tamil village of Kanniyaa in the Uppu-ve’li division of the Trincomalee district, and after constructing a Buddhist Shrine at the locality, the genocidal State of Sri Lanka is now ‘developing’ a new road to connect the traditional Hindu shrine with a remote Sinhala settlement, abandoning the already existing road that links the village wtih Jaffna – Anuradhapura Road. The Colombo government is also scheming a large Sinhala colonization project along the new road in thousands of acres of public lands in the occupied country of Eezham Tamils, informed Tamil civil sources in Trincomalee told TamilNet.

The new road will also make the traveling difficult for the Tamil residents as they will have to travel 4 kilo meters to access their facilities at Oottu, compared to the old 1 km route to reach the same locality, the sources further said.

The new road is being named as Santhapura Road, carrying the name of the Sinhala village situated at 5th Mile Post on Colombo - Trincomalee Road. The Tamil residents of Kanniyaa will have to travel through the Sinhala village to reach Oottu in future, the sources added.

Seven springs, each with varying temperature, are situated close to each other at Kanniya. The local people believe that the hot wells have healing powers.

The local Saiva myths associate the place with pre-Buddhist times of the King Ravana of the Ramayana epic.

For centuries, the Hindu population of the region used to come to this site to perform rituals to the deceased and ancestors like the Hindus in India go to Gaya and Varanasi.

A Saiva temple for Pi’l’laiyaar situated at the site and the associated mutt (resting place for pilgrims) were destroyed during anti-Tamil pogroms.

The Buddhist shrine, which has been recently built at the precincts of Kanniya Hot Wells in a a fifteen-acre land has been has a signboard giving the name of the place of worship as ‘Unuthiya Lin Rajamaha Viharaya’, meaning the ‘Royal Great Temple of the Hotwater Wells’.

The term ‘Viharaya’ used in the board implies that a Buddhist Sangha (monastery) has been established there.

Chronology: