By Kelum Bandara   

A stone taken from the stream flowing near Seetha Amman Kovil in Nuwara-Eliya where Seetha was kept in captive by Ravana according to epic Ramayana, is also enshrined in the Ram Mandir at Ayodhya, India to be inaugurated on January 22. 

The stone, taken as a sacred symbol from Sri Lanka, was handed over to the Ram Mandhir by then Sri Lankan High Commissioner to India Milinda Moragoda earlier .   

Ram Mandir is a Hindu temple built in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, India, at the site of Ram Janmabhoomi, the hypothesized birthplace of Rama, a principal deity of Hinduism. On request of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi from the Sri Lankan government , this symbolic sacred monument was collected by MP V.

Radhakrishnan,Trustee of the Seetha Amman Temple, Nuwara Eliya, S .Sundaralingam,Trustee of the Mayurapathi Amman Temple, Mayura Place, Colombo 6 and E. Muthukrishnan, a leading businessman in Colombo, in the presence of then Indian High Commissioner in Sri Lanka Gopal Baglay in 2021.   

With three days to go before the inauguration of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, the formal procedures for the ‘Pran Pratishtha’ sacraments continued for the fourth consecutive day yesterday. The rituals for the day started early around 9 am, with the lighting of the fire as part of “Aranimanthan”. Apart from the main “Yagya Shala”, 9 kundas of different shapes have been prepared, which would also be lit today in a “Kunda puja”. Further, remaining rituals were to be performed on the idol including the “Aushadhadhivas, Kesaradhivas, Ghritadhivas”.