Salavata

Salavata, or Chilaw, lies beside a lagoon on Sri Lanka’s northwestern coast. Fishing communities and traders used its sheltered waters, while the nearby Munneswaram temple drew worshippers to a shrine of Shiva, known there as Munneswaram and accompanied by a shrine to the goddess. The temple belongs to a region where Sinhala and Tamil communities met along the coast.

Portuguese attacks damaged the shrine in the sixteenth century. Worship continued despite destruction and political change, and in 1753 the Kandyan king Kirti Sri Rajasinha supported its reconstruction and granted land for its upkeep. The temple’s later history shows the endurance of a Hindu sacred place of worship in a coastal country contested by European powers and the inland kingdom of Kandy.