This happened some 15 years ago. The government sent a bulldozer to clear and flatten the playground (Deepthi Grounds) in Mahawilachchiya. I was not at the ground when this happened. This is what had happened. While flattening the ground, some clay artifacts had been unearthed by the bulldozer unexpectedly. The children and the youth gathered there had taken them home and nobody knew what they exactly were.
I too saw some of them and checked them myself. They looked like images of humans. Some of them were with breasts and some were without breasts so that we thought that the items were images of men and women. I was worried that these items were being wasted and they might have an archeological value. So, I told the youth that we should inform the authorities and they would take necessary actions to preserve the items. The youth opposed it saying that if they found any archeological value of the items they will take the ground under them and start excavating and eventually the youth would lose the ground to play. This was fair argument but I thought that I might be neglecting a national duty by not informing the government. So, in secret, I took one of the artifacts to the Department of Archeology in Anuradhapura. The officer in charge thanked me for bringing the item and he checked it and smiled. According to him it was a phallus the ancient women used to worship in order to conceive children. Only after he told me that I saw the similarity of the item with a phallus. The face of the image had been made on the head of the phallus and the bust of the image was on the rest of the phallus. They did not have legs. The officer explained me that the images of men were offered to god by those who expected sons and the others that looked like women were offered to ask for daughters from god. He further said that these artifacts belonged to an era before the Buddha was born and they had been found from some other locations as well. To prove it he asked a junior officer to bring a certain item. There he was carrying a huge phallus that was so heavy and big he could hardly carry it.
Nanda Wanninayaka 