77 BCE – 21 CE

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 podcast shows.
1. The Jungle Diaries (www.theceylonpress.com/thejunglediariespodcast)
2. The History of Sri Lanka (www.theceylonpress.com/thehistoryofsrilankapodcast)
3. Poetry from the Jungle (www.theceylonpress.com/poetryfromthejunglepodcast)

161 BCE – 103 BCE

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 killing the general and – in an act of reckless trust - adopted the general’s son and marrying his wife.

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 podcast shows.
1. The Jungle Diaries (www.theceylonpress.com/thejunglediariespodcast)
2. The History of Sri Lanka (www.theceylonpress.com/thehistoryofsrilankapodcast)
3. Poetry from the Jungle (www.theceylonpress.com/poetryfromthejunglepodcast)

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.

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 podcast shows.
1. The Jungle Diaries (www.theceylonpress.com/thejunglediariespodcast)
2. The History of Sri Lanka (www.theceylonpress.com/thehistoryofsrilankapodcast)
3. Poetry from the Jungle (www.theceylonpress.com/poetryfromthejunglepodcast)