The monks' toilets

Toilets created out of cheeky spite, and by monks at that, are pretty rare. That’s why I just had to visit the carved squats at Anuradhapura’s Archaeological Museum.

The museum itself is a dusty, dimly-lit and, at least the day we were there, pretty-well forgotten place – forgotten even, it seemed, by the half-dozen dozing and chatting attendants hanging around as if by happenstance, only perking up to check our tickets and offer to “guide” us through the museum for “a small contribution.”

I finally found the toilets behind the museum, beyond dimly-lit cases of jewellery, gems, coins and pottery, beyond the shapely statue of Parvati, beyond the King of Dancers Shiva Nataraja, and out amidst a weed patch. There are ten or so toilets in all, each a plate carved from stone by monks from Anuradhapura’s western monasteries. The carver-monks had apparently forsaken their luxurious monasteries, but hadn’t forgotten their luxury-loving brothers.

There is surprisingly little information about the toilets at the museum or anywhere else. Our Lonely Planet guidebook includes this entry: “To show their contempt for the effete, luxury-loving monks, the monks of the western monasteries carved beautiful stone squat-style toilets, with their brother monks’ monasteries represented on the bottom! Their urinals illustrated the god of wealth showering handfuls of coins down the hole.”

Cheeky monks, these – although they still seemed to have been understanding, practical fellows.

At least this is what I make of the fact that some plates appear to have conveniently-placed footholds, especially appreciated by anyone who, balanced unsteadily on the astonishingly slick ceramic finish of one of those new-fangled modern squats, becomes obsessed with what feels like the certainty of slipping upended into the swill below. There also appear to be thoughtfully-positioned hollows into which a man can rest his scrotum.

All in all these ancient monks’ squats – forgotten in their weed patch by all things shiny, plain and modern – surely deserve the attention of some modern-day Thomas Crapper or William Ballcock.