The Ceylon Press History of Sri Lanka
Redeemer Victorious
The Ceylon Press History Of Sri Lanka Book 20. Redeemer Victorious
THE CEYLON PRESS HISTORY OF SRI LANKA BOOK 20. Redeemer Victorious
Sri Lanka & The Great Deliverance
DAVID SWARBRICK
Published by The Ceylon Press, 2026
Copyright The Ceylon Press
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Copyright
2026 David Swarbrick
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“Begin at the beginning,” the King said, very gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”
The King of Hearts
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll 1865
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ONE
Family Lessons
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The day earmarked for the destruction of the Kiribath Vehera was still long to come, over 300 years away. When the returning Lankbranaka regained their throne in 691 CE, there was much to put right in a country that had been wracked by decades of civil war, caused in large part by themselves but, in no less measure, by the tenacious ineptitude of the reigning regicidal Moriyan dynasty. The Lambakanna, revived and determined, were to rule the kingdom for 326 years, an innings only slightly shorter than the 370 years earlier when the dynasty had occupied the Anuradhapura throne between 66 CE and 436 CE.
Their first administration much resembled their second in its beginnings: throwing up a man who would grow into a great king, putting the country to rights. But thereafter the resemblances ended. The first Lambakannas had seen their power whittled away largely by an over-fondness for palace coups, botched successions, murder, and the occasional over-reliance on soldiers – sometimes mercenaries – of dubious loyalties.
During the administration of the second Lankbranaka, a period of unique regal Ahimsa reigned, as successor after a successor displayed such great reverence for the life of the then-reigning king that it ended naturally, not at an assassin's sword.
Of the twenty-six late Lambakanna kings, it is hard, indeed almost impossible, to find a whisper of malicious gossip about how they may have gained the throne. Neither ancient chronicles, nor pillar inscriptions, nor the testimonies of travellers, nor the study of coinage and buildings indicate any other than matchless manners in the matter of would-be homicide. Perhaps the wholesale slaughter of the preceding 228 years, when half the kings were murdered by the other half, had branded the kings to come with an appreciation of successional non-violence. Certainly, the returning Lambakannas, in the form of the new king, Manavanna, could not have failed to understand the awesome cost of such violence - to the state, still less to themselves.
Manavanna’s own father, Kassapa II, had won his throne by killing his predecessor, and his own death had triggered a final bout of civil war in which Tamil mercenaries, in shifting alliances with the Lambakannas and Moriyans, won and lost power in pirouettes of dizzying complexity. But Manavanna’s own path to power lay more ominously through the wharves and great temples of the ancient Pallava port city of Mamallapuram, north of Sri Lanka in what is now Tamil Nadu.
For over 600 years – until 897 CE - the Pallavas had been one of five dynasties that ruled over southern India, occupying their time, as dynasties like to do, brawling with other neighbouring dynasties for land and power. For hundreds of years, the Pallavas fought with the Tamil Cheras who ruled the Malabar coast; the Pandyans in Madurai; the Karnataka Chalukyas; and the Cholas, who, from their capital at Thanjavur, came to occupy most of Southern India, as well as much of Sri Lanka, parts of the Ganges and Sumatra. Sri Lanka’s late Lambakanna rule can only really be understood by first knowing a little of what was going on just north of the Palk Straits, in southern India, for the repercussions of these Indian wars were to have a transformative impact on the island.
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TWO
Enter The King
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Manavanna fled to India with his wife Samghamana shortly after the death of his father, King Kassapa II, in 659 CE, to escape the suicidal political instability that enveloped the island when Hatthadatha seized Anuradhapura and proclaimed himself King Dathopatissa II. Manavanna was to spend almost 20 years there, befriended by the Pallava King, Narasimhavarman I. Charismatic, so physically dominating he was known as “the great warrior”, determined, smart, expansive, as much a master of the arts and sciences as he was of war, he began his reign avenging his father’s death by sacking the Chalukyan capital at Vatapikonda and killing its king. He returned home with the almost-sacrosanct Vatapi Ganapati statue of Lord Ganesha, an adornment in keeping with his growing reputation for creating architectural masterpieces - for the shore temples, pavilions and shrines he commissioned in the shapes of temple chariots hewn from the granite rocks at Mahabalipuram are one of Asia’s greatest religious structures. Mahabalipuram was also expanded into a major port and naval base, helping the Pallavas dominate trade with Sri Lanka and part of the Indian Ocean trade routes.
With the ancient sources modest on details and the other historical evidence often baffling in terms of dates, it is hard to assess exactly what Manavanna did for Narasimhavarman I over those two decades, but, sword bearer as he was, it is unlikely that he was idle as the Pallava king scrapped his way through southern India, when not building his masterpieces. And ultimately, it was in Narasimhavarman’s best interests to have a compliant power in his far south in the form of a new king, Manavanna.
With the military help of Narasimhavarman, Mahavamsa’s first attempt to capture the island almost succeeded. The Anuradhapuran king, Dathopatissa II, fled, but the mercenary army ground to a halt when Manavamma fell ill. The aspiring insurgent returned to India for many years, securing victories against other South Indian states for his Pallava paymasters whilst also fathering three sons who would, in turn, become kings after him - Aggabodhi V, Kassapa III and Mahinda I. The Chronicles note that he lived in no discomfort, for the king put him "on an equal footing with himself regarding food and lodging and honour and equipage.” But a second invasion attempt, made with a larger mercenary force in 691 CE, did succeed, as both the Mahavamsa and the Kasakudi copper plates confirm.
In truth, his campaign was probably more like pushing on an open door, for by 691 CE, Anuradhapura was little more than a playground for Tamil merchants under Poththakutta and only loosely loyal to Hatthadatha - aka King Dathopatissa II. Much of the country was beyond the writ of any law as the hapless Poththakutta was soon to discover. Fleeing from the besieged capital after Hattadatha himself had been killed, the Tamil merchant leader was poisoned by a friend who, in a dither of mixed loyalties, chose to kill both himself and Poththakutta. From all who survived that day, it was a job well done. The Lambakanna had regained their erstwhile throne, Manavamma had got himself a kingdom, and the Pallavas had ousted rival Tamil power groups from the island, the better to keep it under their own influence.
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THREE
The New Writ
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Thirty-five years stretched beyond the new king, a length of rule few earlier kings had ever enjoyed - and none very recently. Given that he spent 20 years in India and would have gone there at around 10-15, he may have been around 35 when he took up his crown. He brought to the task qualities and a mindset that few others had offered over more than 1,000 years of island kingship. He was a tested and assured military commander. The son of an earlier king, he would have harboured no doubts about his own rightful destiny to rule. And over the decades in India, he would have seen at close hand the detailed functioning of one of Asia’s most successful states, for the Pallavas were not simply military masters. They also dominated trade, built influential relationships to control commerce with Java, Sumatra, Cambodia, and China, harnessed religion to their benefit, managed an economy that produced abundant rice, collected taxes efficiently, issued credible coinage, and ran a kingdom through a polished and proficient bureaucracy.
Manavanna would have had no doubt about what a successful state should look like. He began by giving himself the title Senaḍipati, the first island king to use the word. It indicated that he was king by right of military power. And as such, he rebuilt the army, and, as archaeological evidence suggests, military defences too. Rebellions ceased.
His strong military ties with the Pallavas eliminated the threat of other Tamil dynasties interested in opportunistic invasions, and it is likely that the various mercenary groups linked to competing Indian dynasties would have retreated, left, or sued for peace. There was nothing left to fuel the old Moriya-Lambakanna dynastic conflict, and of the Moriyans we (almost) hear no more. Government was stabilised; the centre was back in control. “From that time,” The Cuḷavamsa Chronicle writes, “Manavanna set up in the island the umbrella of his domain, warding off therewith, as it were, all harm from the inhabitants of the Island.”
Irrigation systems were overhauled and repaired, and there is substantial archaeological evidence of his improvements in the creation, repair, and maintenance of tanks, along with the associated administration and infrastructure. Eight large new reservoirs were created. Archaeological surveys indicate that over 30,000 tanks were in use during this later Lambakarna rule, and many of them would have been restored by Manavanna. Rice production could recommence, creating surpluses and fortifying the very heart of the economy. State administration, tax collecting, and bureaucracy would have been restored. His Pallava alliance, which was to last for almost the entirety of Lambakanna's rule, gave the island preferred access to trade links to South India and beyond.
Monasteries and temples were repaired, and reendowed; and new ones built, especially those linked to Theravada Buddhism, with a return to traditional piety – and not just in Anuradhapura but in Matara too. The iconic Lovamahapaya - Brazen Palace – was reroofed.
His death, in 726 CE, triggered the calmest and most orderly of clockwork successions, a clear testament to the peace Manavanna had brought to the island. Three sons, already elderly by the time of their father’s death, were to rule after him - Aggabodhi V, for 6 years until 732; Kassapa III, for 7 years and Mahinda I, for 4 years, with not the faintest of rumours in any ancient chronicles of coups, rebellions or subversive rival factions ready to obstruct so mannered these successions.
And yet the king bequeathed more than a pacified, confident, and prosperous state to his heirs. He also passed on one that was demonstrably dependent on the support of a powerful outside ally – the Pallavas. There is no evidence that the Pallavas abused this position: it was, after all, in their best political and commercial interests to have such a firm and functioning island ally in the Lambakannas. But that proximity brought with it a proliferation of sharing and of Indian influences in everything from royal brides and trade to architecture, which is ever more evident from this time on. The protection offered by the Pallavas was only effective as long as the dynasty itself held strong, and when its lands were conquered by the Chola kings about 880 CE, the clock on Andhra-Urban independence was set ticking once again.
But this was still to come. For the next 15 years, this band of brothers, who had come of age in India, ruled, carrying on much as their father had.
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FOUR
Clockwork Kings
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First up was King Aggabodhi V from 726 to 732 CE. The chronicles have him down as a stickler for fairness – “the employment of officials in wrong places, undeserved favour or unlawful seizure of property was unknown with him,” it notes approvingly, going on to elaborate some of the tanks he also commissioned. But its greatest praise is for his piety.
He repaired the ancient Thuparama stupa as well as four other monasteries. “Everyone in his kingdom cultivated action which leads to Heaven,” writes the Culavamsa, “for as the monarch acts so do also his subjects.” “To all creatures,” it notes, “he gave the nourishment by which each of them lives, and whatever makes them happy with that he blessed them. Thus, after the Ruler of men had performed meritorious works for six years, he, the peace-maker, went to the Heaven of the King of the gods.”
There are rumours in the chronicles that the king might not have been all he seemed; there are hints of undefined power struggles with unnamed groups, and the king may even have been deposed, but there is no indication that he was then executed, and the tales of his deposition are now so faint as to be barely believable. Either way, his brother King Kassapa III came next, reigning from 724 to 730 CE and taking piety to new heights. “He won his people by generosity,” states the Culavamsa, “by friendly speech and by care for their welfare. Offices he bestowed on various people according to merit, and he himself enjoyed the pleasures of life, free from all sorrow. For laymen, bhikkhus and brahmapas, the prince encouraged the way of life fitting for each and carried out the command to kill no living creature.”
By the time the last of the three brothers came to power - King Mahinda I between 730 and 733 CE – humility and devotion seemed to be the only show in town. The new king was said to be so humble that he actually refused to be crowned, opting instead for the title “Adipada” (governor/deputy) rather than king. His worldly reticence may have been due to bereft gay love, for the Culavamsa notes that “he had a friend by name Nila, with whom he had for long had intimate intercourse. But he had died beforehand. In memory of him, he would not have it. Alas! even the dominion over the Island he deemed not blissful, since his friend was wanting. Friends,” notes the sagacious Chronicle dourly, “are so hard to get.” Companionless and devout, he busied himself during his short reign by building at least one nunnery (Meheni Aramaya) and a monastery (Mahindatata Vihara), providing religious endowments, and ensuring that the Mahapali Dana Sala had ten cartloads of food daily for Alms.
He outsourced much of the burdens of actual government. “On Aggabodhi, the son of his brother Kassapa,” writes the Chronicle, “he conferred the dignity of Uparaja and gave him abundant revenues. He assigned him the Eastern Province and Ruhuna the King gave to his own son.” With hindsight, this generous degree of royal delegation proved imprudent, and as his nephew Aggabodhi VI took the throne, the first fissures in the great government established by Manavanna began to appear.