One of the earliest reservoirs of the Anuradhapura system, attributed to King Devanampiya Tissa in the third century BCE and enlarged repeatedly afterwards.
It supplied the southern part of the city and its monastic establishments. Tanks of this kind were not simply water storage: the bund carried a road, the tank fed a cascade of smaller village tanks downstream, and the whole arrangement was maintained through rajakariya service obligations owed by every community in the surrounding area.1