Little bit about Elephant Pond

This pond known as the ‘Ath Pokuna’ in Sinhala is a gigantic size pool. This is 159 meters in length 52.7 meters across and 9.5 meters in-depth with the holding capacity of 75,000 cubic meters of water and is known to be the largest pond in Sri Lanka. This was built many hundreds of years ago to store water for a whole community of monks who lived in the Abhayagiri temple. Special conduit pipes carrying water is used to fill the pond and channels to let the unwanted water go. It is amazing that the underground canals still work after many hundreds years. After a very heavy rainy season, you could see water pouring through these inlets from the Periyamkulama tank.