Episodes

  • Last Chance Saloon: The Ceylon Press History of Sri Lanka 13

    Last Chance Saloon: The Ceylon Press History of Sri Lanka 13
    Nov 25 2024
    The Ceylon Press History of Sri Lanka 13Last Chance SalonSri Lanka & The Fourth Invasion“How fine you look when dressed in rage. Your enemies are fortunate your condition is not permanent. You’re lucky, too. Red eyes suit so few.”Alice's Adventures in WonderlandLewis Carroll1865.Tough LoveIt is unnecessary to employ the mind reading capabilities of Descartes or The Amazing Kreskin to discern how Sri Lanka might have reacted to Gotabhaya taking the throne in 253 CE.After decades of Lambakarna kings, many eagerly pious, ruling with unremitting incompetence, Gotabhaya was nothing less than a shock. After all, he had been one of the very same three plotters who drove the kingdom into yet another civil war just years earlier, apparently as unaccountable to good governance as any of the many earlier Lambakarna kings who ruled as if they were celestially charged to gambol their through reigns like ancient Ves dancers, leaving lakes of regicidal blood in the wake of their inopportune administration.It was as if some brooding and machismo junior army officer had upended his own army, bending generals, kings and sleek courtiers to the austere new realities of a victorious coup in the style of Jerry Rawlings, or Gamal Abdel Nasser. Comparing notes with either of them would have given Gotabhaya all the validation he required. Not that he was the sort to seek approval.Competent dictators have their moment in the sun too; and the time was more than ripe for the arrival of Gotabhaya. His very name is still used in the country to suggest authority, command, control. Army bases, naval ships, even an ex-president who strove with little success to aspire to his reputation – all bear the name of this stern Lambakarna king. What he lacked in charm, charity, and religious tolerance, Gotabhaya made up for with the sort of firm government that took the fizz out of regicide.And so, in around 253 or 254 CE, Gotabhaya grabbed the throne and for fourteen years ruled Sri Lanka with the proverbial rod of iron. A man of deeply conservative religious beliefs, he was unimpressed by the Vajrayana movement, a form of tantric Buddhism that was making slim but noticeable appearances into his kingdom. The movement was closely aligned with Mahayana Buddhism and seen by many as incompatible with the Theravada Buddhism that had been practiced on the island since the 3rd century BCE. The king did all he could to thwart it, even banishing sixty monks for such beliefs.But what he kept out with one door slammed shut, he inadvertently let in with another. For he entrusted his sons’ education to an Indian monk named Sanghamitta, a closet follower of Vaitulya Buddhism. The Vaitulya doctrinal strand was even more radical than the Vajrayana doctrine that Gotabhaya was so busy trying to eradicate. Like a time bomb, the impact of this private religious education on his successor, was timed to go off the moment this alarming and archaic old king died.His death, in 267 CE, left behind a most divided country. Several ministers, blithefully (and, as it turned out, suicidally) bold, refused to participate in his funeral rites. His son and heir, Jetta Tissa I, a chip off the monstrous old block, had dozens of them rounded up, staking their impaled heads in a mournful circle around the old king’s body, a pitiless and iconic pageant of power that has haunted the island through the centuries, its most recent appearance being during the brutal JVP uprising in 1971 and 1987 when anxious neighbours calling on nearby villages might find such similar circles of horror.Even so there is a time when a country needs tough love; or even just tough everything, and Gotabhaya’s son sought, with creditable success, to assiduously out-tough his terrifying old father. This display of strong-armed governance under yet another king was probably what was most needed to help keep at bay the lurking regicidal and anarchic tendencies inherent in the dynasty. Jetta Tissa’s decade long rule is unlike to have been an easy ride for those around him. Indeed, states The Mahavamsa Chronicle “he came by the surname: the Cruel”. It then elaborates with dismay the steps he took to move patronage and resource from the orbit of Theravāda Buddhism to Vaitulya Buddhism.Quelling the BabbleFrom the perspective of the majority Theravada Buddhists, life manged to take a further turn for the worse when Mahasen, the king’s brother, took the throne in 277 CE, a succession notable for being natural. Like his brother, Mahasen had been educated by the radical monk Sanghamitta.A twenty-seven-year reign lay ahead of the new king, who got off to a good start commissioning what would include sixteen massive reservoirs (the largest covering an area of nearly twenty square kilometres) and two big irrigation canals. But this did little to defray the resentment his pro-Mahayana religious policies caused, which prompted a wave of further insurrections opposing his own ...
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    3 mins
  • A Murder of Kings: The Ceylon Press History of Sri Lanka 12

    A Murder of Kings: The Ceylon Press History of Sri Lanka 12
    Oct 5 2023
    The Ceylon Press History of Sri Lanka 12 A Murder of KingsSri Lanka & The Time of Ruin “We are all victims in-waiting.” Rumours of Disaster Two periods of state-sponsored homicidal self-indulgence were now to grip the kingdom. The first killings broke out in 195 CE; and the second in 248 CE. Both were leavened by brief moments of stability that managed, with seconds to spare, to prevent the country from collapsing altogether; and give it a modest but life affirming breathing space. Such pirouetting on political tightropes was hardly a novelty. The Vijayans, the previous dynasty, had indulged in much the same – fuelling at least four periods of regicide covering several decades and prompting at least two civil wars over six hundred plus years of dynastic reign. To this now the Lambakannas added these two more, bringing the total number of regicide bacchanalia to at least six since Prince Vijaya had first stepped foot on the island back in 543 BCE. It is doubtful whether any other contemporary kingdom on the planet showed such record-breaking prowess. Few, if any, that came later would have dynasties that possessed such a full set of dark skills as to trump this dubious achievement. This particular lethal phase was, in retrospect, modest by the standards of what was to follow. But this is not to detract from its disruptive consequences, nor its mystery. Over a two-year period three kings were to occupy the throne in a succession swifter even than a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers foxtrot. On Kanittha Tissa’s death in 193 CE, his son, Cula Naga assumed power, only to be assassinated by his brother Kuda Naga in 195 CE. Kuda Naga was then despatched to the uncertain fields of reincarnation when his own brother-in-law, Siri Naga I had him killed in 195 CE. The only hint to help explain what might have promoted all this, mere family politics aside, is a famine mentioned in The Mahavamsa: “so small a quantity of food were the people reduced in that famine,” it notes, referring to the brief reign of Kuda Naga, when, it said “the king maintained without interruption a great almsgiving”. Famine is no friend of political stability and if it was the cause behind Cula Naga’s murder, the later food banks set up by his brother Kuda Naga were insufficient to calm the situation. Lost Clues There is nothing in terms of corroborating archaeological evidence to help us understand this dismal and murky period of national madness - though such evidence, for other periods, does exist. Stone inscriptions, for example, carry an unusually high degree of importance in Sri Lanka where the climate is preconditioned to quickly destroy any organic material used to record events. And, unlike other sources, they have better weathered the repeated theft and destruction carried out on the country by its many occupiers - be they Tamil or European. But of the four thousand stone inscriptions discovered in Sri Lanka, only one and a half thousand have been properly recorded and preserved. Written in Sinhala, Tamil, Brahmi, Pali – and even Chinese, Arabic, Persian, and Sanskrit, they most typically record donations made to temples, the rules around the maintenance of religious places, the establishment of tanks and how local officials should administer water resources. But so far none of them are of any help in understanding this particular period of Sri Lankan history. This may change as many more inscriptions indubitably await discovery. In 2023 for example, the largest stone inscription ever found on the island was uncovered in Polonnaruwa, measuring forty-five feet in length and eighteen feet in height. But none found and deciphered so far helps us with this period as the second century CE slipped, blood drenched, into the third. Buildings tell the story of the times; but no buildings or even repairs of any significance can be dated to this precise period. Coins also help validate the historical record; and some of the island’s coins date back to the third century BCE. Their symbols, dates, the metal they are made from, the craftsmanship and place where they were found – all tell their own stories but very few date from this very early period of Sri Lankan history. And those that do exist suffer from poor cataloguing and storage - and a great deal of theft, including a record heist involving over one thousand silver punch marked coins dating back two thousand years held in the custody of the Archaeology Department; and of which now only sixteen coins remain. Pottery is also an important voice in the historical record. Many shards of marked pottery have been excavated, most engraved with but two or three characters. But the joined-up study of ceramic inscriptions is a journey that has yet to be fully undertaken by academics – despite the fact that the first and earliest example of such artefacts in the whole of South Asia was found in Sri Lanka on a pottery shard dating...
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    11 mins
  • The Guardians: The Ceylon Press History of Sri Lanka 11

    The Guardians: The Ceylon Press History of Sri Lanka 11
    Oct 5 2023
    The Ceylon Press History of Sri Lanka 11 The GuardiansSri Lanka & The Golden Revolution The Grandest of Guards In 1929, as Wall Street crashed and the roaring twenties came to an abrupt end, archaeologists digging in faraway Trincomalee uncovered the remains of a once-lofty temple, built a stone’s throw from the Indian Ocean, sometime after 307 CE. Beneath earth, trees, and jungle, stretching out to the shores of a great lake, the Velgam Vehera’s many scattered ruins were brought back to sight for the first time in centuries: brick stupas, stone inscriptions, balustrades, buildings, moon stones – and mura gals. These mura gals – or guard stones – are especially moving, standing in silent upright pose, guardians of the flights of steps that had led a multitude of forgotten people out of the everyday and into the sacred temple itself. The steps they protect have worn down to just a few flights, the moonstone they encompass is almost entirely rubbed away; the temple beyond is now just an outline of ancient bricks, and the guard stones themselves are plain, almost stumpy, but still doing their ageless job as sentinels of the site. Similar guard stones stand in many other parts of the island, easy to see if you know what you are looking for, silent guardians of the state within. For to be a guardian is no little thing. Guardian is an emotive word in Sri Lanka. It can be found incorporated by health and education providers, insurance companies, the army, the priesthood, the home guard, air force, a news website, hotel and even a wedding business. But long ago it was also the meaning given to the Lambakarnas, the dynasty that succeeded the founding Vijayan dynasty. Originating possibly in India, it is likely that the Lambakarnas claimed descent from Sumitta - a prince who formed part of the escort that had brought the Bodhi-tree from India in 250 CE. From this botanical pilgrimage, they would go on to become one of the island’s great barons, alongside other such families as Moriyan, Taracchas and Balibhojak. Their power derived from their position as hereditary guardians or secretaries to the king. They took a prominent part in religious ceremonies. But there was more to them than merely carrying coronation parasols and flags. They were connected to the military, to weapon manufacture and, as writers, must have been involved in much of the critical administration of the kingdom. They managed the transition from one of several aristocratic families to ruling family with what, at first, appeared to be consummate ease. After the ruinous excesses of the last Vijayan kings, this new replacement dynasty seemed to grip the one fundamental axiom of kingship: govern well, live long. They were to rule all or much of the island (depending on the period) over two distinct periods. The first of these was to last for 369 years through the reigns of 26 monarchs, from 67 CE to 436 CE. Death of The Doppelganger For a terrible period of time, amounting to just over half the length of the Vijayans, the Lambakarna monarchs twice faced utter ruin. The first time ruin stared them in the face, they managed to draw back from the regicide and power implosions that rocked them to regain their savoir faire. But the second outbreak propelled them inexorably to their destruction, leaving the state weak, distracted, and unable to fend off an invasion of the island from the Pandyan dynasty of South India, the fourth such invasion for Tamil India that Sri Lanka suffered. Just under half the Lambakarna monarchs were to die at the hands of their successors, victims to a predilection for assassination that ran like a malign monomeric thread through their DNA. Even so, the nation they left behind was bigger, richer, more complex, developed and built out than it had been on its inheritance by them back in 67 CE. Stupas, monasteries, reservoirs, canals, temples, and dwellings filled out the land. The mores of society progressed. Agriculture flourished and technical advances from construction through to medicine bestowed its benefits on the kingdom. In particular the advances they made in water technology to build dramatically larger reservoirs, enabled the state to exponentially increase its agriculture and, through that, raise state revenues to support increased urbanisation and further infrastructure capital developments. Despite its palace coups, the state was strong enough to weather repeated religious schisms, as well as succession crises; and – ultimately – its sixteen-year occupation by Tamil kings, enabling the country to bounce back, albeit this time under yet another new dynasty. Overcaution, on behalf of the last (albeit fraudulent) Vijayan king, Subharaja, propelled the new Lambakarna dynasty and its first king to the throne. The soothsayers had been busy whispering appalling forecasts into his ear, foretelling of his certain destiny with death at the hands of someone called Vasabha. ...
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    6 mins
  • The Kingdom That Walked On Water: The Ceylon Press History of Sri Lanka 10

    The Kingdom That Walked On Water: The Ceylon Press History of Sri Lanka 10
    Oct 5 2023
    The Ceylon Press History of Sri Lanka 10 The Kingdom That Walked On Water “No wise fish would go anywhere without a porpoise.” Alice in Wonderland The Lost Laboratory Far into the north of Sri Lanka, forty kilometres from Anuradhapura to the south, and fifty more to the western seaboard, lie the ruins of a shrivelled reservoir - Kuda Vilach Chiya. The tank is close to some of the country’s most iconic and mythical sites, including the landing place of Prince Vijay, paterfamilias of the nation, the palace of his forsaken native queen; and the country’s first recorded Singhala kingdom. Kuda Vilach Chiya sits on the eastern edge of what is now Wilpattu National Park. Reaching the spot is no easy matter since it lies within a deep entangled jungle for which special permission must be granted to gain access. Even after that, it requires a tractor to take you any closer to the site, and then a lengthy journey on foot. For countless centuries this has been leopard country. Wilpattu’s vast 130,000-hectare wilderness is one of the island’s best kept wildlife secrets, so well off the tourist trail as to exponentially nurture its hundreds of rare species of fauna and flora - along with many endemic species: the Toque and Purple-faced Leaf Monkeys, Golden Palm Cat, Mouse Deer, Dwarf Toads, Hour-Glass Tree and Wood Frogs, Ceylon Jungle Fowl and Ceylon Grey Hornbill. Even the ultra-rare Sloth bear can be seen here, attracted by the sweet golden fruit of the Palu Tree. But despite all these exceptional features, it is for its water that Wilpattu matters most. Its name is more literally translated as the “land of Villu,” “villu” being lakes. The whole area is pockmarked with shallow rainwater lakes. But the lakes are eclipsed by Kuda Vilach Chiya, a much more deliberate water feature, and one that is hard to make much sense of at first. Today it amounts to little more than a long two-to-three-kilometre embankment overgrown by trees and grasses and breached in many places by migratory elephants. It is all that remains of the extraordinary man-made lake that was constructed here sometime after 67 BCE by the first Lambakanna king, Vasabha. Hardier survivors from that time are two masterpieces of ancient aqua engineering, the creation of which allowed Sri Lanka’s builders to construct astonishingly vast water reservoirs. These in turn would propel the 500-year-old kingdom into the political stratosphere. The constructions – Bisokotuwas – allowed water to exit a reservoir without putting so much pressure on the dam embankment that it would collapse. As a result, the size of the reservoir was able to scale up to unprecedented levels; and water of unimaginably enormous quantities could be collected to extend agriculture, support ever larger and more urban populations and produce crops whose surplus would rapidly and exponentially enrich the young state. The Bisokotuwas at Kuda Vilach Chiya are precision made structures, the stone slabs used on the inner face fitting so perfectly together that there is no room for even the modest weed to grow. Rising above it, the sluice tower itself can still be seen, part of the same remarkable lost laboratory of water. The same Lambakanna king, Vasabha, is also credited with the construction of the Mahavilach Chiya Wewa, a tank barely five kilometres away from Kuda Vilach Chiya, with a storage capacity of two thousands four hundred acres that even now is a key part of the modern Sri Lanka’s water infrastructure. Quite why two such large tanks were built so close to one another is a mystery. But their very existence, and that of the Bisokotuwas that made them possible, is the point that most matters. Crying Out for Water The area around Kuda Vilach Chiya, though remote even by Sri Lankan standards, bears the impact of multiple moments of serious history. Not for nothing was it chosen for its capacious reservoirs. It was once a place of some importance. Ten thousand years earlier and thirty kilometres north are hypnotic cave paintings of the Neolithic age in Tantirimale. Two hundred or so years earlier the local temple, Thanthirimale Rajamaha Viharaya, marks the spot where the sacred Bo tree rested as it travelled to Anuradhapura from India under the protection of the Indian Emperor Ashoka’s daughter, Sangamitta. Some historians even believe that the site was once home to the lost kingdom of Panduvasdewu Nuwara, the early Vijayan realm that most immediately predated Anuradhapura itself. A monastery lies on the same site, its excavated gardens littered with stone containers created to contain gems, and the statues of gods and lions ruined when the country’s last unitary kingdom fell to invaders in 1215 CE. And in the nearby jungle ancient monastic caves crouch, decorated with a script that predated Buddhism itself – Brahmi. All around it stretch the flat and softly undulating lands of the country’s massive Dry ...
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    8 mins
  • Bloodbath: The Ceylon Press History of Sri Lanka 9

    Bloodbath: The Ceylon Press History of Sri Lanka 9
    Oct 5 2023
    The Ceylon Press History of Sri Lanka 9BloodbathSri 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 CatAlice's Adventures in WonderlandLewis Carroll Setting off for OblivionIt 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 ...
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    6 mins
  • Merry-Go-Round: The Ceylon Press History of Sri Lanka 8

    Merry-Go-Round: The Ceylon Press History of Sri Lanka 8
    Oct 5 2023
    The Ceylon Press History of Sri Lanka 8 Merry-Go-RoundSri Lanka & The Spinning Sovereigns “Well that was the silliest tea party I ever went to! I am never going back there again!” Lewis Carroll The Great KingIf ever there was a king who was entitled to get very cross indeed, it was Dutugemunu, one of the island’s standout sovereigns. Known, not unjustifiably as “The Great,” Dutugemunu was to rescue his car crash of a dynasty, only to watch it (albeit from the life thereafter) speed off the proverbial royal road yet again, and with such casual ingratitude as to make common cause with Mark Twain - “if you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and man”. In the hundred years that preceded Dutugemunu taking the throne, the dynasty had managed to get itself dethroned twice. In the following hundred years they were to do it once more, this time with much greater injury to the state. Stability is rarely the embodiment of absolute monarchies; and Sri Lanka suffered more than most from almost institutionalized political volatility as if, just below the surface of the realm, with the constant rumbling and tremor of a gathering earthquake, yet another government eruption made itself ready. Instability haunted most of the dozen or so kings that succeeded Dutugemunu. Five were rogue invaders from Tamil India; at least two were fated to be murdered by their scheming successors; and most of the rest reigned as if having signed up for a farce. Only Dutugemunu and his later nephew, Valagamba, the Comeback King, were to move the kingdom progressively onwards. For the rest, it was as if a life-changing ennui had floated into the palace throne room, a debilitating cloud that left every monarch much like Phil and Ralph in “Groundhog Day: Phil: "What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same and nothing that you did mattered?" Ralph: "That about sums it up for me." Had he had any presentiment of what was to come, it is probable that even Dutugemunu, so famously proactive as to make a Long-life Battery appear idle, would have chucked in his chips and moved on. But thankfully no plot-spoiling deity, soothsayer, or psychic was to interrupt his indomitable spirit; and for a glorious moment it seemed as if the Vijayan good times had returned. The lucky dynasty was back in business. Although history has drawn back from letting us know Dutugemunu's height, it is probable that he was short, for if ever a leader existed with the Napoleon Syndrome it was this man, whose nature, evident from the many myths and tales of his childhood, was naturally geared to dominate, and control. “Growing duly, Gamani came to sixteen years, vigorous, renowned, intelligent and a hero in majesty and might,” reported The Mahavamsa, with an almost palpable sense of relief and thanksgiving. The Prodigal ReturnsDutugemunu's path to ruler of Lanka was far from straightforward, coming as he did from a lesser twig of the Vijayan family tree. Despite these disadvantages, Dutugemunu famously found his way through an obstacle course of family hurdles intended to arrest his monarchical ambitions. He even made a point of conquering the many mini-Tamil fiefdoms that had sprung up around and possibly within the Rajarata during Ellara reign – a far from straightforward task as the four-month siege of Vijitanagara illustrated. Here, having to calm his panicking elephants against incessant Tamil attacks using “red-hot iron and molten pitch,” it was evident how the campaign was no walkover, but one that needed planning and determination to ensure victory. But the triumph was ultimately his. Power was consolidated; and his final victory over Ellara 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 more of what would become its most venerated celebrity 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 – eighty-nine other temples are said to have been constructed, along with hospitals and smaller tanks, in other parts of the kingdom. The kingdom was return to order – exactly the kind of order that Megasthenes, the Greek historian based in India had noted just a hundred years ...
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    6 mins
  • Conquered: The Ceylon Press History of Sri Lanka 7

    Conquered: The Ceylon Press History of Sri Lanka 7
    Oct 5 2023
    The Ceylon Press History of Sri Lanka 7 ConqueredSri Lanka & Time of Sorrows “That’s the reason they’re called lessons,” the Gryphon remarked: “because they lessen from day to day.”The GryphonAlice's Adventures in WonderlandLewis Carroll Stubbornly Stupid Good advice is often nearer to hand than even the most foolish leader can imagine. Or be minded to seek. One hundred and fifty years earlier, and six thousand six hundred and one kilometres away, Thucydides, whose work, The Peloponnesian War, set such standards for history as to anticipate every conceivable future military and political ploy, had the perfect solution in mind to fend off the catastrophe that befall Sri Lanka on the death of their visionary king, Devanampiya Tissa in 267 BCE – or 207 BCE, depending on whether you accept the tempered chronology of such scholars as the impossibly talented Wilhelm Geiger. That such advice could have been given or received is not as far-fetched as its first seems. The Mahavamsa refers to visits by what they call ‘yona’ to Sri Lanka in the fourth to third centuries BCE, “yona’ being the word the Persians used for their arch enemy, the Greeks. Other chroniclers note how Pandu Kabhaya established a special quarter of his dazzling new city, Anuradhapura, for foreign merchants, including, it is suspected, the Yona Greeks, sometime after 437 BCE. Just across the Palk Straits, in India’s current Bihar province, Megasthenes, the Greek Ambassador to the Maurya court around 290 BCE, was busy mixing with, amongst others, those very same Anuradhapuran Greeks come to badger and barter with the Mauryas. Historian as he was himself, he was also the sort of bookish man who may have had a few spare scrolls of Thucydides’ main works to lend to the governing literati of the time, including the Sri Lankan kings and their associates. But if there ever had been a loaning of scrolls, it seems that Devanampiya Tissa’s successors failed to read them. Certainly, they missed Thucydides’ most famous thoughts about the three “gravest failings;” namely “want of sense, of courage, or of vigilance”. For it was the want of all three, especially the last of these attributes, which was to tip the Vijayan kingdom not once but twice into such long and shocking periods of surrender that for well over half the intervening century it was a kingdom under occupation; its great city of Anuradhapura recast with a Tamil polish; and its plaintiff kings killed or exiled. Back in 267 BCE, as Devanampiya Tissa moved into what all would have hoped to have been Pari-Nirvana (the post nirvana state of total release), this was far from what anyone would have thought even remotely possible. The great kingdom was utterly solid, surely? Unbreakable. Resilient. Or was it? For glum historians inclined to search for the deepest runes and trumpet them loudly, Devanampiya Tissa’s death was actually the start of a bleak three-hundred-year promenade that would lead to the dynasty’s inevitable collapse, a journey that would also fatally embed the country with an ongoing appetite for incipient disaster, regardless as to which dynasty, president, or occupying invader was calling the shots. Over this sorrowful period, through the reigns of almost 30 kings, Sri Lanka was to enjoy just three short periods of peace; interspersed with three Tamil invasions and occupations; several decades of continuous regicide; and a concluding civil war in which the Vijayans turned their spears dhunnas (bows), muguras (clubs), adayatiyas (javelins), kaduwas (swords) and kunthas (spears) upon one another until there was no credible heir left standing, merely an preposterous and fleeting lookalike monarch, until he too was murdered by a group of nobles for whom enough was quite enough. The False Peace No-one saw the turmoil that lay ahead. That such chaos should await did not seem even wildly probable as Devanampiya Tissa’s brother, Uththiya, succeeded to the throne. He was to be followed by two more brothers, Mahasiwa, and Surathissa, all three of them, according to The Mahavamsa, ever on the side of neatness, to rule for respectably lengthy periods of ten years a piece. Whether they died in their beds or were murdered by their successors over this thirty-year period is a guessing game for clowns. The Mahavamsa maintains a prim muzzle on the matter. Certainly, the period was suspiciously uneventful; unnervingly calm even. All seemed fine with the state – and yet something, somewhere, was going fatally wrong. “What goes up,” said Isaac Newton, “must come down.” At best it is probable that nothing happened, merely a governing indolence that spread like rising damp or unseen termites Perhaps all three brothers were so distracted by the promise of enlightenment as they got to grips with the new religion their brother had introduced, that they forgot about all other aspects of good governance. Of vigilance, there ...
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    6 mins
  • Heaven on Earth: The Ceylon Press History of Sri Lanka 6

    Heaven on Earth: The Ceylon Press History of Sri Lanka 6
    Oct 3 2023
    The Ceylon Press History of Sri Lanka 6Heaven On EarthSri Lanka & The Double Windfall“I entered my room, and undrew the window-curtains, just in time to see the sun burst in glory from his ocean-prison, and clothe the world in the light of a new day.” Lewis Carroll Nearer to HeavenIn the previous 100 years Sri Lanka’s little Vijayan kingdom twice risked absolute oblivion, courtesy of its carefree kings.But twice too, in the following 170 years, the self-same state would step up, and prosper beyond all expectations, thanks to two other kings, both innate masters of nation building. For Pandu Kabhaya, and his grandson, Devanampiya Tissa, were to set the mark way beyond what any other island leader might later hope to achieve and, in the rarified world of royal hustings, emerge as the nation’s two greatest monarchs by a country mile, Like the prize ride in a fairground big dipper, that such a double-double whammy should even have happened is about as rare as throwing a dozen sixes in Monte Carlo. But little else should be expected of the Vijayans, the luckiest of all the dynasties, for whom every cloud had not one, but several, silver and gold, linings. “The teeth of the dog that barks at the lucky man,” avowed a somewhat orthodontist-orientated Singhala folk saying, “will fall out”. If true, then over the reigns of Pandu Kabhaya (437 - 367 BCE ) and Devanampiya Tissa (307 - 267 BCE), the island’s dogs would have been on a strict milk-and-roti diet, to better manage their missing molars. Over this period, the tiny Vijayan state was radically expanded, endowed with a magnificent capital city (Anuradhapura); distinct laws; civil and administrative infrastructure; investments in agriculture and water harvesting; increased trade; and a new language – the earliest inscriptions in Sinhalese date from close to this period. And, most critically of all, a new religion – Buddhism. The subtle and profound chemistry between these manifold factors were to combine to create, like the rarest of new life in a petri dish, not just the world’s only Singhala state; but one that would still be flourishing, despite all manner of catastrophes encountered along the way, today. Pandu Kabhaya’s (improbably long) 70-year reign (437 to 367 BCE ) would have come as a blessed relief to family and subjects alike after so much earlier dynastic squabbling. Having outsmarted, out-manoeuvred, foiled, defeated, imprisoned, and killed nearly all his troublesome uncles, he took up his place as victorious head of the fledgling Vijayan dynasty and set in train the real beginnings of the Anuradhapura Kingdom when he made his home in the future capital and, in Louis XIV-style, began building. By then the site of Anuradhapura was already some 200 years old and covered over 20 acres. Pandu Kabhaya took it to still greater heights for what followed was, to paraphrase Deborah Kerr and Carey Grant many centuries later, "the nearest thing to heaven". In all areas of enterprise - from farming and engineering to administration and construction, his rule harnessed the best available expertise to build a capital with the hugest of hearts, and through it, dominate an entire island. In the style of the much later and far away William the Conqueror and Doomsday Book, this king too commissioned a massive survey to take full stock of his domain – all the better the tax and manage it, plan investments, patronage, defence and yet further ascendency. A later medieval record from just one location – Kurunegala – states that the king formed 1,000 new villages in the area, his grandson later despatching pedigree Indian buffalos to graze there. Even allowing for the exaggeration of breathless flunkies; even knocking one zero off the total, it still amounts to colossal development. Some thirty men were appointed in this area alone to be at the king’s specific executive command, overseen by one Alakeswara Mudiyanse, a man whose name alone has survived these many hundreds of years. Lord of LankaFrom Anuradhapura right across the Rajarata – the King’s country – and quite probably beyond, the royal writ ran.It encompassed old settlements and new ones too, exacting a political and social domination that would have placed the kingdom at the apogee of the other competing island societies that co-existed with it, for a time at least, and especially to the east and south. In what was most probably something of a first for the Vijayan state, Pandu Kabhaya’s rule respected his Vedda allies, the Yakkhas, Cittaraja and Kalavela, clans of the island’s earliest original inhabitants. They had, after all, most likely been keen and critical allies in his fight against his many uncles. Now was the time for reward. The Mahavamsa records his beneficial diligence: ““He settled the Yakkha Kalavela on the east side of the city, the Yakkha Cittaraja at the lower end of the Abhayatank…and on festival-days he sat ...
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