Rumassala

Rumassala Mountain

Rumassala, known to colonialists as Buona Vista, is the subject of many legends. It features in the Ramayana, as the home of the beautiful queen Sita, hidden in the jungle nearby. Hanuman, who was sent to fetch a medicinal plant for a wounded soldier, was unable to find it and brought the Himalayan Mountains on which it was said to grow. He dropped a chunk at Unawatuna ('here it fell') to form the present mountain, where many medicinal plants still grow. There is a major magnetic anomaly near Unawatuna, which Arthur C. Clarke attributes to a meteorite strike, and it is said that satellites lose their orbits with unusual frequency overhead. The Portuguese had a dreadful reputation in Sri Lanka as looters and pirates, and are said to have given false light signals from Rumassala to lure unsuspecting Arab trading ships onto the rocks.