thumb|Statue Upulvan-Vishnu, [[Seema Malaka, Sri Lanka]] Upulvan (, ; Sanskrit: Utpalavarna) is the guardian deity (Pali: Khettapala; Sanskrit: Kshetrapala) of Sri Lanka. Sri Lankan Buddhists believe him also as a protector of the Buddhism in the country. The name Upulvan depicts his body colour which means "blue water lily coloured". The cult of Upulvan started during the medieval period in Sri Lanka. According to the local lore and legend, Upulvan is the god whom the Buddha entrusted with the guardianship of Sri Lanka and Buddha Śāsana of the country.
thumb|Statue Upulvan-Vishnu, [[Seema Malaka, Sri Lanka]] Upulvan (, ; Sanskrit: Utpalavarna) is the guardian deity (Pali: Khettapala; Sanskrit: Kshetrapala) of Sri Lanka. Sri Lankan Buddhists believe him also as a protector of the Buddhism in the country. The name Upulvan depicts his body colour which means "blue water lily coloured". The cult of Upulvan started during the medieval period in Sri Lanka. According to the local lore and legend, Upulvan is the god whom the Buddha entrusted with the guardianship of Sri Lanka and Buddha Śāsana of the country.
==Historical accounts and legends== 160px|thumb|right|Upulvan-Vishnu worshipped as a guardian deity in Lankatilaka Vihara. According to the Sri Lankan chronicles Dipavamsa and Mahavamsa, north Indian prince Vijaya and his seven hundred followers were blessed by god Upulvan upon their arrival to Sri Lanka in 543 BC. The second appearance of god Upulvan in literary sources occurs in the 7th and 8th centuries and again after a gap of several centuries his name reappears in 13th and 14th centuries as the god par excellence. Though god Upulvan is mentioned in Mahavamsa as the guardian deity of Sri Lanka, the first reference to the worship of Upulvan is dated to the 13th century.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).