An Item in ba-bamail edited by Natalia J.
Bronwyn Hickmott took a beautiful garden paver from her late parents’ home and installed it at her own home in Devon, England. In an interview with BBC, Bronwyn said she had been fascinated with the beautiful detailing and the curious shapes of the stone ever since she was a child, which is exactly why she decided to keep it. Little did she know, the curious stone was one of the only seven existing Sri Lankan Sandakada Pahana, which are temple moonstones that date all the way back to the late Anuradhapura Period (10-11th century).
The Moon-stone found at the entrance of Uda Viharaya of Ridhi Vihara Sri Lanka Image Source: Reddit
The rare stone once stood at the entrance of the temple in Anuradhapura, the former capital of Sri Lanka and a sacred Buddhist city. But how did this rare sacred artifact end up in England? Sam Tuke, the Bonhams appraiser who discovered the rare relic in Hickmott’s home, did some research and found that her late parents’ home in East Sussex once belonged to a tea planter who had lived in Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, in the 1920s. Although there is no record of him possessing the stone, Tuke believes he must have sneaked the Anuradhapura moonstone into England on one of his travels.
The Sandakada Pahana was purchased for a whopping USD 767,000 by an unknown buyer in 2013…..
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A MINOR ADDITION
