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In 100 pint-sized chapters, The Ceylon Press History of Sri Lanka, makes accessible an engaging account of an island renowned for a history many times larger and more byzantine than that of far bigger nations. From prehistory to the present day, each short chapter makes lucid a period of the island’s history, telling the intricate story of its rulers, people, and progression.
The Ceylon Press History of Sri Lanka 9
Bloodbath
Sri Lanka & The Tainted Crown
“I went to a hunting party once, I didn’t like it. Terrible people. They all started hunting me!”
The Cheshire Cat
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll
Setting off for Oblivion
It took a hundred and twenty-eight years for the last Vijayan kings to travel the 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 – all eighteen monarchs, of whom at least two thirds were murdered by their successors, plunging the country into yet another civil war.
It all started with Mahakuli Mahatissa’s heir, a succession which, on the face of it, seemed to go to plan. His stepbrother, Choura Naga, the son of King Valagamba, took the throne in 62 BCE and married Anula.
The kingdom, rescued from its third Tamil invasion by Valagamba in 89 BCE, had enjoyed almost thirty years of peace; and maybe even some nation rebuilding by the time Choura Naga and his new wife enjoyed their marriage’s poruwa ceremony, witnessing the Ashtaka recite his religious chants at precisely the pre-ordained auspicious time. As events were to later prove, the Ashtaka was to have his work cut out for him over the next few years, being in such demand as to become a nationwide celebrity in his own right. For Anula would turn out to be one of the island’s more colourful characters; the kind of person Anne Tyler had in mind in “Back When We Were Grownups,” writing “once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person.”
What little is known of King Choura Naga is that he managed to get himself poisoned by Anula in 50 BCE, an act of realpolitik in which his wife quite probably played on her husband’s deep unpopularity with the traditional Theravada Buddhist monks who dominated the country. This was not a school of Buddhism that won Choura Naga’s devotion - indeed he even went so far as to destroy eighteen of their temples, earning the eternal disapprobation of The Mahavaṃsa who recorded the poisoning with great satisfaction: “the evildoer died and was reborn in the Lokantarika-hell.”.
The political support Anula’s coup enjoyed is lost to all but the most pernicious speculation, but she filled the vacancy she had created by placing Choura Naga’s young 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. It was the start of the Love Period in ancient Sri Lankan history, every bit as deadly as a cobra bite.
Long term love was not to be the hapless Siva’s destiny. He too was poisoned, 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. Busy women, after all, don't have time for excuses, only solutions.
Pious Ruler of the Earth
And so, from 43 to 42 BCE Anula ruled in her own name, Asia’s first female head of state, beating President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga by two thousand and thirty six years. It was not a success.
After just four months her group-breaking 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 burnt to ash, a commendably clockwork form of royal leadership took the place of palace coups. For sixty three halcyon years son succeeded father or brother, brother, for three generations, giving the kingdom a modicum of time to recover, repair and heal.
For eighteen blissfully uneventful years Kutakanna Tissa ruled with monkish devotion, adding to the many religious buildings in Anuradhapura including, with a filial devotion that contrasted strongly with the previous regime, the Dantageha Nunnery for his mother, who had become a nun.
He built a new palace and park for himself and, remarkably, also made time to restore and extend the kingdom’s basic infrastructure. New walls “seven cubits high” and moats were built around Anuradhapura; two large reservoirs were established – Ambadugga and Bhayolippala.
Not the merest whiff of homicide hangs over Kutakanna Tissa’s death; and he was succeeded by his son, Bhathika Abhaya in 20 BCE. The new king was to go down in history as one of the most religiously devoted monarchs the island had seen, no easy task given the stiff competition from those of his predecessors who had chosen virtue over assassinations. Religious buildings were made yet more magnificent even to the point of being replastered in as unique building mortar that included a variety of sweet smelling plants and pearls
New religious festivals and ceremonies were added to an already groaning ecclesiastical calendar and, for this most olfactory of monarchs, even the temple floors were ordered to be strewed with “honeycombs, with perfumes, with vases (filled with flowers), and with essences, with auri-pigment (prepared) as unguent and minium; with lotus-flowers arrayed in minium that lay ankle-deep”.
Needless to say, the death of this “pious ruler of the earth,” was a matter of deep regret to The Mahavamsa. Most unusually, his beatific statue still stands - opposite the Ruwanweli Stupa, built by the ancestor to whom he owed so much – Dutugemunu.
Civil War
The King was succeeded by his younger brother Mahadatika Mahanaga in 9 CE, a king almost as pious, famed for his enthusiastic temple building and the land donations he made to monasteries.
As with many, if not all the Vijayan kings, his wife was Tamil and both their sons were destined to become kings. But with them the family reputation for dynastic devotion was to break down, giving way to something more in the spirit of Cain and Abel.
In waving a sorrowful farewell to his reign in 21 CE, The Mahavamsa obliquely notes a world soon to be forever shattered: “thus men of good understanding, who have conquered pride and indolence, and have freed themselves from the attachment to lust, when they have attained to great power, without working harm to the people, delighting in deeds of merit, rejoicing in faith, do many and various pious works.”
Amandagamani Abhaya succeeded his father Mahadatika with exemplary order and propriety. A man almost as pious as his father, he continued the royal tradition of gilding the religious lily; and made a name for himself amongst vegetarians by banning all animal slaughter.
It was, with hindsight, inevitable that a man so totally out of touch with normal life, still less the practical needs of his nation, should end up being killed by his own brother just nine years into his reign. Kanirajanu Tissa, wielded the family knife, killing his sibling in 30 CE, his regicidal impulses heralding the dynasty’s final moments – ones that not even the most sensational or improbable soap operas could ever hope to emulate.
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 turbulent years when in 33 CE, Chulabhaya, son of the assassinated Amandagamani Abhaya became king. It is unlikely that Kanirajanu breathed his last with anything approaching a natural death
But Chulabhaya was to last no longer, dead in 35 CE, by which time it was clear that civil war and dynastic squabbling was the only song in the country’s repertoire. For four bleak months his sister Sivali took the throne, but the ascension of Sri Lanka’s second female head of state probably did more to hasten, rather than slow down, the Vijayan dynasty’s final tryst with oblivion. What she lacked in the blood thirstiness that had so marked out Anula, the country’s first female ruler, she did not seem able to make up for with any counter balancing authority.
Perhaps it was too late for all that. For decades now the kingdom’s rulers had demonstrated a greater interest in seizing the throne, or investing in the other-worldly than ever ruling it with wisdom or investing in its more practical necessities.
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. For by now the Vijayan dynasty not only had itself to contend with – it also had the much put upon and exasperated nobility, especially the Lambakarna family.
Little about this period of Sri Lankan history is certain, except that from around 35 CE to 38 CE an uncensored civil war preoccupied the entire country, leaving it without any plausible governance.
For a time Ilanaga seemed to be ahead of the pack. But he then seems to have scored a perfect own-goal when he demoted the entire Lambakarna clan. This abrupt change in their caste, in a 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 the 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.
The Lookalike
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 second half of the 2nd century CE they called Grottarossa. Amongst her artefacts was a necklace of 13 sapphires from Sri Lanka.
And dating a few decades before this in Sri Lanka there is unmistakable evidence of Roman influences at the Abhayagiri Vihara monastery site in Anuradhapura. Here, nestling amongst the sculptured carvings of elephants and bulls are to be found winged cupids and griffins – and the acanthus leaves common on almost all Greek and Roman art.
Back in Rome, as the Emperor Claudius was getting ready to be murdered by his wife, Agrippina so ushering in the calamitous reign of Nero, back in Sri Lanka King Ilanaga’s son and successor, Chandra Mukha Siva, was facing the same fate in 52 CE – albeit at the hands of his own brother Yassalalaka Thissa in 52 CE. The stage was now set for one of the most eccentric periods of island governance.
With the ascension of the regicidal Yassalalaka Thissa, the last chorus of the Vijayan throne sounded, in Frank Sinatra style: “and now the end is near, and so I face the final curtain.”
With a story too bathetic to be encumbered by any inconvenient disbelief, The Mahavamsa recounts the bizarre end of this once great dynasty in 60 CE.
“Now a son of Datta the gate-watchman, named Subha, who was himself a gate-watchman, bore a close likeness to the king. And this palace-guard Subha did the king Yasalalaka, in jest, bedeck with the royal ornaments and place upon the throne and binding the guard's turban about his own head, and taking himself his place, staff in band, at the gate, he made merry over the ministers as they paid homage to Subha sitting on the throne. Thus, was he wont to do, from time to time.
Now one day the guard cried out to the king, who was laughing: `Why does this guard laugh in my presence?' And Subha the guard ordered to slay the king, and he himself reigned here six years under the name Subha Raja.”
Despatched by his own lookalike, Yassalalaka Thissa, the last Vijayan king died, one hopes, seeing the unexpectedly funny side of assassination. King Subha’s own reign lasted 6 years when, whetted by a 3 year rule back in 35 CE, the Lambakarna clan took royal matters back into their own hand and put the ex-palace guard to death.
A new Lambakarna king, Vasabha, was now to take the throne.
Death of a Dynasty
After 609 years, the Vijayan dynasty had come to an inglorious end.
Despite a rich choice of murderous would-be rulers, kings such as Vijaya, Pandukabhaya, Mutasiva, Devanampiya Tissa, and Dutugemunu, had been able to establish the confidence, culture, and mindset of an entire nation, giving it the ballast and energy necessary to propel itself forward for centuries to come.
With a writ running at times across the entire island, they transformed a series of unremarkable warring statelets and villages into a nation. They bequeathed it with a legacy of literature, architecture, religion, and infrastructure that no other dynasty bettered.
Looking out at water rippling still over the great tanks they built with cutting-edge engineering; sitting in the shade of the magnificent palaces and courts constructed at Anuradhapura, reading inscriptions that point to the bounty of trade routes extending from the island to places as far away as Rome; in the ancient chants of Buddhist priests, the coinage, delicate statutory, frescos and books that survive to this day: in taking all of this in, you take as said an early nation every bit as impressive as any in the ancient world – and way ahead of most.
Its laws regulated an dynamic state, its armies and weapons defended it with a rigour that was effective. Even as they disappeared from history, the achievements of the Vijayans lay before it in the indispensable foundations of an entire island-nation state.