The History of Sri Lanka The Ceylon Press

21 CE – 66 CE   
“By blood a king, in heart a clown.”  Alfred Lord Tennyson King Amandagamani Abhaya's ascent to the throne in 21 CE was both fair and orderly.  Even so, the dynastic DNA had long before morphed into a penchant for regicide, and in 30 CE this fatal habit was to reappear, heralding the dynasty’s final moments – ones that not even the most sensational or improbable soap operas could ever hope to emulate.
There was little if any warning.  It all just happened.  Kanirajanu Tissa, King Amandagamani Abhaya’s brother waited just 9 years before wielding the family knife, killing his sibling in 30 CE and seizing the throne for himself.
Proving right the old adage that one’s crimes eventually catch up with you,  Kanirajanu Tissa’s own reign was terminated after just 3 suspiciously short and turbulent years when in 33 CE, Chulabhaya, son of the assassinated Amandagamani Abhaya became king. He is down in the records as having died naturally, though this might credibly require a reworking of the word’s definition.
Chulabhaya managed to last little longer, but pragmatists now sensibly took to counting reigns in multiples of months, not years.   Three years later, in 35 CE Chulabhaya too was dead and his sister Sivali took the throne in 35 CE.
The ascension of Sri Lanka’s second female head of state, Queen Sivali, in 35 CE probably did more to hasten, rather than slow down, the Vijayan dynasty’s final tryst with oblivion.  What she lacked in the blood thirsty and ruthless qualities that had so marked out Anula, the country’s first female ruler, she did not seem able to make up for with any resolute authority.
Perhaps it was already too late for all that.  For decades now the kingdom’s rulers had demonstrated a greater interest in seizing the throne than ever ruling it with wisdom or strength.
Sivali’s rule laid bare the incipient civil war that had been raging through the palace corridors earlier.  The only difference this time was that the dynasty suddenly found itself with another dynasty to deal with, the Lambakarna - and not just itself, exhausting enough as that was.
Sivali bobs up and down in the months succeeding her ascension vying for control of the state in what looks like a three cornered struggle between herself, her nephew Ilanaga and the Lambakarnas.
Little about this period of Sri Lankan history is certain, except that from around 35 CE to 38 CE civil war preoccupied the entire country and left it without any plausible governance.
For a time Ilanaga seemed to be ahead of the pack.  But he then seems to have scoured a perfect own-goal when he demoted the entire Lambakarna clan for failing to attend to him in what he regarded as a right and proper fashion.  This abrupt change in their caste, in country held increasingly rigid by ideas of caste, galvanised them into full scale rebellion.  The king – if king he really was – fell and fled into hill country, returning 3 years later at the head of a borrowed Chola army to take back his throne in 38 CE.
The Lambakarna Clan were put back in their place, though it was to prove but a temporary place at best.  Ilanaga’s reign lasted another 7 years, before his son Chandra Mukha Siva succeeded in 44 CE.
Despite the chaos of this period of Sri Lankan history, and not without a little irony, it is astonishing to record how one of these last Vijayan kings – probably Ilanaga or his son Chandra Mukha Siva - still managed to find time to send an embassy to Rome.  Pliny the Elder records the event which occurred at some point in the reign of the luckless Emperor Claudius (41 – 54 CE). 
And at almost the same time a reciprocal one seems to have happened back in Sri Lanka with the (probably) accidental arrival of a Roman called Annius Plocamus.
Evidence of links between the two kingdoms can be found in both countries.  Archaeologists working near the Via Cassia north of Rome identified an 8-year old mummy from the s

77 BCE – 21 CE  
“Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person.”  Back When We Were Grownups, Anne Tyler It took over barely 40 years for the penultimate Vijayan kings to lay out the full and final road to oblivion, years that made the mafia tales of the Prohibition era or a Shakespearean tragedy appear tame.  But travel them they did – and with unforgettable horror.
History hints that the Valagamba’s succession may not have been entirely orderly; if so, then Valagamba’s earlier trust in adopting Mahakuli Mahatissa, the son of his slain and traitorous enemy, can be read as a suicidal move.
But however he came to the throne, Mahakuli Mahatissa stayed the course, though whether he did anything constructive remains a niggling historical curiosity. What is known however, is that what came next proved right the Calvin and Hobbes’ astute observation: “It's never so bad that it can't get any worse."
On the face of it, Mahakuli Mahatissa’s succession seemed to go to plan. His stepbrother, Choura Naga, the son of King Valagamba took the throne in 62 BCE and married Anula.
Anula would turn out to be one of the island’s more colourful characters. What little is known of poor King Choura Naga is that he managed to get himself poisoned by Anula in 50 BCE. The widowed queen placed his little step nephew, Kuda Thissa on the throne. But not for long. Anula was ever a lady short of patience. Tiring of her ward, she poisoned him in 47 BCE and installed her lover, a palace guard, as Siva I.
Clearly the problems they faced in their relationship were beyond mere counselling for Siva was despatched in the same tried and tested method, and the queen installed a new lover, Vatuka, to the throne in 46 BCE.  This was something of a promotion for the Tamil who had, till then, been living the blameless life of a carpenter.
By now Anula was well into her stride. The following year the carpenter was replaced in similar fashion by Darubhatika Tissa, a wood carrier – who also failed to measure up.
Her last throw of the love dice was Niliya, a palace priest who she installed as king in 44 BCE before feeding him something he ought not to have eaten. At this point Anula must have reached the logical conclusion: if you want something done well, do it yourself.
And so, from 43 to 42 BCE she ruled in her own name, Asia’s first female head of state, beating President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga by two thousand and thirty six years.
Anula’s own reign ended at the hands of her brother-in-law, Kutakanna Tissa, who, having sensibly become a Buddhist monk during Anula’s reign, remained alive and so able to rescue the monarchy.  He did so by burning the queen alive in her own palace in 42 BCE, bringing down the curtains on a royal career that eclipsed that of the entire Borgia clan put together.
As the queen’s palace fragmented to ash, clockwork royal leadership took the place of palace coups.
Could it be that after all this turmoil, the kingdom was given time to recover, repair and heal?
For eighteen blissfully uneventful years Kutakanna Tissa ruled with monkish devotion.
He was succeeded by his son, Bhathika Abhaya in 20 BCE.
The peaceful passing on of power seemed a welcome new trend set to continue when King Bhathika Abhaya was himself succeeded by his younger brother Mahadatika Mahanaga in 9 CE.
And then, yet again, in 21 CE when king Mahadatika Mahanaga was succeeded by his son, Amandagamani Abhaya.
But, as Woody Allen noted, “if you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.”
 The illustration is from a painting by Rajni Perera, one of Sri Lanka’s leading contemporary artists; based in Canada.
The recording is read by David Swarbrick; and all disappointing, inexact and incomplete renderings of Sinhala and Tamil names are entirely of this own unintentional and apologetic making, for which your forgiveness is asked.
The Ceylon Press currently produces three po

103 BCE – 77 BCE  
“And then there were none”  Agatha Christie With the murder of Khallata Naga, the Anuradhapuran Kingdom made the leap to regularizing regicide as if it was no more unusual than brushing one’s teeth. 
Valagamba – the rightful heir and son of King Saddha Tissa – had first to defeat and kill Kammaharattaka, Khallata Naga’s nemesis, before he himself could take what he clearly saw as his rightful place at the head of things. 
This he seems to have achieved with reasonable briskness, for by 103 BCE he was king.  And obviously one who felt uncommonly safe –one of his first acts was to adopt the general’s son and marry his wife.
But decades of royal misrule had set in train a reaping of deadly consequences.  Barely had the celebratory kiribath had time to be digested than all the hounds of hell slipped their leads. 
A rebellion broke out in Rohana.  A devastating drought began – a less than positive development in a land where the king was considered to have the power to cause rain.  The kingdom’s preeminent port, Māhatittha (now Mantota, opposite Mannar) fell to Dravidian Tamil invaders.
And at a battle at Kolambalaka, the hapless King Valagamba himself was defeated, racing from the battlefield in a chariot lightened by the (accidental?) exit of his wife, Queen Somadevi.
In a 14 year tableau reminiscent of Agatha Christie’s novel “Five Little Pigs” the grand Anuradhapura Kingdom was then manhandled to atrophy. Two of the Dravidians returned to India, leaving one of the remaining five, Pulahatta, to rule from 104-101 BCE, with history struggling to keep up.
Pulahatta was killed by Bahiya, another of the five remaining Dravidians and head of the army, who was in turn murdered in 99 BCE by Panayamara, the third Dravidian who had been unwisely promoted to run the army.
Proving those who do not read history are doomed to repeat it, Panayamara was assassinated in 92 BCE by his general, the fourth Dravidian, Pilayamara.  Seven months was all Pilayamara managed to last - before dying in skirmishes with rebels and passing the throne to the last Dravidian and army commander, Dathika who ruled until  his defeat in battle in 89 BCE.
Despite losing his throne back in 103 BCE, the deposed king Valagamba had evaded capture, his many escapes and hiding places illuminating the map of Sri Lanka like a Catch-Me-If-You-Can treasure hunt.  His most famous hideaway was probably the Gunadaha Rajamaha Viharaya in Galagedera, just where the flat plains of the Anuradhapura Kingdom rise into the mountains that enfold the centre of the island, and with them, protection  and cover. From that time to the final routing of the invaders in 89 BCE, Valagamba carried out a guerrilla war that, month by month, won ascendency.
Eventually grappling his way back to power in 89 BCE, Valagamba retook his crown through a series of small, successful incremental skirmishes - although, given the murderous incompetence of his Dravidian interlopers, it may have been like pushing on an open door.
Valagamba’s long and determined campaign to win back the throne he had earlier enjoyed just for a few months marks him out as one of the country’s pluckiest rulers.  His defeat and killing of the upstart Dathika in 89 BCE, gave  him 12 years of real rule, and put the dynasty back at the centre of the state. 
Valagamba set to work building a monastery, stupa and more memorably converting the Dambulla caves in which he hid during his wilderness years, into the famous Rock Temple that exists today.
Less adroitly, Valagamba managed to drive a wedge between the monks, his favouritism of one sect for another, setting in motion the island’s first Buddhist schism.
Despite this, it was under Valagamba’s patronage that 30 miles north of Kandy 500 monks gathered at the Aluvihare Rock Temple to write down the precepts of Buddhism.
It was to be momentous moment.  Until then Buddha’s teachings had been passed on orally - but

161 BCE – 103 BCE   
“There is a great deal of ruin in a nation.”  Adam Smith For a glorious, albeit extended moment, it seems as if the Vijayan good times had returned. Dutugemunu's nature, clear from his early childhood, was naturally geared to dominate, take control, and direct.  Not for nothing does island history remember him as “the great”.
 Certainly, his victory in 161 BCE left him ruling nearly the whole of the island – more territory by far than even that of the great king, Pandu Kabhaya.
 And as if to confirm the return of Vijayan order, the construction of more buildings commenced. Anuradhapura expanded exponentially, its infrastructure, utilities, water resources so upgraded as to ensure that it would flourish for centuries to come, the longest surviving capital city of the Indian sub-continent.
Still more spectacular was the building of many of its most celebrated structures.  A large monastery, the Maricavatti, was erected, together with a nine-story chapter house for monks, with a bright copper-tiled roof; and most famous of all, what is today called the Ruwanweliseya, the Great Stupa which housed Buddha’s begging bowl.  The building programme was not restricted to the capital alone – 89 other temples are said to have been constructed, along with hospitals and smaller tanks.  Trade opened up with the west, the ports busy with merchants from Arabia, Persia and possibly even Rome.
But back at the palace, events were going less smoothly. Dutugemunu's heir, Saliya, having fallen for a girl from one of the lowest castes, was disinherited.  The ailing king, dying before his eye-catching Stupa was finished, ensured the throne passed instead to his own brother, Saddha Tissa in 137 BCE.
For the next 33 years it seemed as if life had got back to normal, or to whatever passed for normal amidst the seemingly indestructible building and gardens of Anuradhapura.
King Saddha Tissa busied himself building the obligatory new monastery and, more usefully, a tremendous water tank, the Duratissa Reservoir which held 336 million cubic feet of water.
But as the late British prime minister Harold Macmillan remarked on the unpredictability of politics, the sudden appearance of “events, dear boy, events,” was to unseat everything.
Saddha Tissa’s death, 18 years later in 119 BCE, set off a power struggle, with his son, Thulatthana, taking the throne – though not for long.  It also fired the gun to start the dynasty’s race towards its next great disaster, just 15 years later.
Thulatthana's coronation was a crowing too soon.  He was not, in all probability, the next legitimate heir, that honour going to his older brother, Lanja Tissa.  But Lanja Tissa was busy far south of Anuradhapura, in Ruhuna, and so not on site to determine the right order of succession.
Inevitably, war broke out – albeit briefly.  Thulatthana was defeated and killed and for the rest of 119 BCE to 109 BCE, Lanja Tissa ruled the kingdom, with, no doubt, much justified satisfaction.
His death, ten years later, brought his brother, another son of King Saddha Tissa to the throne, Khallata Naga.
Khallata Naga’s inheritance was much impoverished by the events of the past years.  Something was broken within the kingdom – some abiding sense of order and law.  The palace coup and murder around king Thulatthana had shunted the state back to how it was in 205 BCE, when the luckless king Asela was killed, having been unable to repair the damage reaped on the kingdom by his more careless rulers.
And just now, it was all to depressingly similar.  Dynastic self-harm had normalized treason, regicide, and rebellion.  The state was unstable. And ungovernable.
Inevitably therefore, Khallata Naga found himself busy quelling rebellions – but to no avail.  Killed by his own chief general in 103 BCE, another messy power struggle broke out before Valagamba – yet another son of King Saddha Tissa – took the throne in 103 BCE by

205 BCE – 161 BCE
“The sword of justice has no scabbard.”  Antione De Riveral Invaders are rarely liked and often forgotten.  But the 44 year reign of the Tamil king, Ellalan, merits much more than a modest footnote in the island’s story.  Unlike almost all other conquerors before or since, Ellalan cherished his kingdom as much as any man might his own home.  He came to rule – not rape and pillage.
In the northern Tamil city of Jaffa stands a curious white clock tower, with Italianate windows, Roman pillars, and a little minaret. Built by subscription to honour the 1875 visit of Prince of Wales, it was damaged in the civil war and repaired, partly with the help of a later Prince of Wales, Charles, in 2002. Before it, as if leading a charge, is a golden elephant, ridden by a golden king – Elara, or in Tamil, Ellalan.
Ellalan (205 BCE – 161 BCE) is a strange figure, his Tamilness eliciting not even a scintilla of condemnation in The Mahavamsa, which notes instead “a Damila of noble descent, named Elara, who came hither from the Cola-country to seize on the kingdom, ruled when he had overpowered king Asela, forty-four years, with even justice toward friend and foe, on occasions of disputes at law.,”
The ancient text then goes onto illuminate Ellalan’s many acts of justice and generosity. Just, to the point of terrifying, he even executed his own son for transgressing the law. Virtuous though he was, Ellalan was, all the same, a footnote for the Vijayans were not yet finished with their rule. The main line of succession had been destroyed, but a cadet branch existed in the southern Kingdom of Ruhuna, a Vijayan redoubt ruled over by the descendants of King Devanampiya Tissa’s brother, Mahanaga.
The Kingdom of Ruhuna had never really been part of the Anuradhapura domain. Indeed, since at least the reign of King Surathissa the Anuradhapura Kingdom itself had begun to fracture, The Mahavamsa pointing out the presence of 32 semi-independent Tamil states coexisting alongside King Ellalan’s Anuradhapura.
Ruhana at this time was fortunate enough to be ruled by the Vijayan King, Kavantissa, who pursued a focused and implacable strategy of soaking up the little would-be challenging kingships the boarded his land.  By the time of his death he had created a powerful southern state, one that was perfectly poised to help the family regain control of Anuradhapura itself.
The death of King Kavantissa let loose a predictable sibling spat, carried out by his two sons,  Dutugemunu and Tissa.  In a series of trials involving elephants, the kidnapping of the dowager queen, and set-piece battles, Dutugemunu emerged victorious. His victory in his home kingdom was to have a profound impact on the island as a whole for it was in his reign that the Vijayans were to finally assert their dominance across the entire island.
A notable adherent of Walt Disney’s modus operandi (“Around here, however, we don't look backwards for very long”), Dutugemunu, throne secure, set off for the north with an army of chariots, monks, horses, a lucky spear, his favourite elephant (Kandula) and, states The Mahavamsa, Ten Giant Warriors (Nandhimitra, Suranimala, Mahasena, Theraputtabhya, Gotaimbara, Bharana, Vasabha, Khanjadeva, Velusamanna, and Phussadeva). Composed, as was normal of four units – elephants, horses, chariots, and infantry – the army was spectacularly successful.
Having learnt much from his sagacious father, Dutugemunu began by first mopping up the splintered Tamil statelets in the north. The campaigns reached their climax outside the walls of Anuradhapura.
The old king Ellalan, mounted on his elephant Mahapabbata, faced his younger rival, mounted on his elephant, Kandula.  Did he tremble when he heard Dutugemunu call out 'none shall kill Ellalan but myself'? 
We can but guess.  The ancient texts report that the deadly combat was honourable but decisive, a spear thrust finally ending Ellalan’s life in 161 BCE.  

367 BCE – 205 BCE   
“What goes up must come down”  Isaac Newton    The death of Sri Lanka’s visionary king, Devanampiya Tissa, ushered in a period of unnerving calm.  All seemed fine with the state – and yet something, somewhere, was going fatally wrong, leaving it wide open to invasion.
If there was a serious shortcoming in the reign of Devanampiya Tissa, it was his apparent lack of children; and in the 30 years that followed two of his brothers and possibly even an uncle took up the royal reins, with little obvious beneficial effect – as far as the country was concerned. 
 First up was Uththiya, one of old king Mutasiva’s many sons.  His ten year rule from 267 BCE to 257 BCE is a marvel of obscurity.
 He was succeeded by his brother, Mahasiwa, whose own ten year rule, from 257 BCE – 247 BCE, goes almost as unremembered - apart from the fact that he built the Nagarangana Monastery. 
By the time Mahasiwa’s uncle, Surathissa, took the throne in 247 BCE, things were clearly going most seriously wrong, and the young country would have been wise to take to heart the words of the Egyptian writer, Suzy Kassem: “Never follow a follower who is following someone who has fallen. Its why the whole world is falling apart.” 
For by now the kingdom itself was falling apart.  It had become so ineptly run and poorly defended as to lay itself wide open to invasion – the first recoded invasion of the country from South India. 
Three kings, and three decades on from the kingdom’s apparent apogee, the governance of the country had clearly eroded – and badly.  The systems, protections, administration, and defences put in by the last two or three great kings had broken down, the reason a matter on which speculation could rest until the return of the dodo itself.  Why did it all go so very wrong?  No one knows.  But the state no long had its eye on the ball.  Clearly Devanampiya Tissa’s heirs had in very short supply the ten perfections that make the life of Buddha aspirants positive: morality, renunciation, wisdom, energy, forbearance, truthfulness, resolution, kindness, equanimity, and liberality.
 The invasion came in the ignominious form of couple of Tamil horse traders, Sena and Guttik.
Spotting the ultimate commercial opportunity (a kingdom) in the weak rule of King Surathissa, the traders met little resistance in conquering Anuradhapura and slaughtering the ineffectual Surathissa.  They were to rule it for 22 years, the first of a succession of Tamil invaders.
 It was a humiliating end to the golden years of the Vijayan dynasty.  And yet, like the immortal jellyfish, Turritopsis dohrnii, dead, in this case, did not mean dead - for the fight had not quite left the Vijayans.
Out there in the wilderness lay Asela, another son of old King Mutasiva. After Surathissa was killed, Asela took refuge far south in the Kingdom of Ruhuna – a sub kingdom that had been established by Mahanaga, another son of King Mutasiva.
Descending on the horse trader kings with much shattered dignity to put right, Asela killed them in battle. 
After decades of poor rule followed by a pair of asset stripping Indian merchants, there was much that King Asela had to put right.  But the task proved too much for him and his own rule was brought to an abrupt end 10 years later in 205 BCE when he himself was killed in battle by Ellara, an invading Tamil Chola.
That he should meet such an end, after so much trouble to restore his family’s right to reign, seems almost unfair – but as Nicholas Sparks gloomily observed ““life, I’ve learned, is never fair. If people teach anything in school, that should be it.”
 Ellara was to rule the Anuradhapuran Kingdom for 44 years, smashing the awesome edifice of Vijayan rule that had already given the island so much of its lasting cultural identity.  
The illustration is from a painting by Rajni Perera, one of Sri Lanka’s leading contemporary artists; based in Canada.