Other southern temples

Various temples from the Sri Lankan south, or, as they call it, the Deep South. Some of these are hundreds of years old, some fairly new.  They don't have the history or deep significance of the ancient sites, but are still interesting in one way or another.

A feature of Sri Lankan Buddhism is an emphasis on a hell realm where those who have failed to live a virtuous life suffer the consequences. The representation reminds me of some western religions. This large temple starts with a diorama depicting suffering in hell and has a long hallway with picture pairs: the upper picture depicts an offense and the lower picture the consequences.

Sometimes modern can be real cheesey. This setting was heavily commercialized.

While the ancient temples are very traditional and tend to represent a more traditional Buddhism, temples of recent centuries include a lot of Buddhist mythology unique to Sri Lanka and often make heavy use of dioramas and paintings to depict them. They also like a combination where a background painting has figures that pop out of painting into a statue.