The island of Sri Lanka, the southernmost part of the subcontinental mass of what is known today as south Asia, was separated from the subcontinent in recent geological times—c. 7000 BP.1 This separation by a narrow and shallow sea, just 40 km in length at its narrowest point, is just as important a factor in the island’s historical evolution, as the obvious proximity to the subcontinent and, therefore, its receptivity to a variety of influences—cultural, religious, political and economic—from there. In the earlier phases of the island’s history the great north Indian empires of the Mauryas and the Guptas had a profound influence on it. This was followed in later centuries by the influence of kingdoms located further south in the subcontinent, like the pallavas, and later on from the south Indian kingdoms of the P•ṇ•yas, Cheras and Cōḷas.2 Less obvious than the Indian influence, but over the centuries just as important, was the influence of south-east Asia in trade, first of all, and next through the common religion, Buddhism.
The physical size of the island, 65,610 sq. km, was large enough to ensure that throughout much of its history, political pressure from the Indian kingdoms could be successfully resisted, and even in regard to cultural and religious influences these could be absorbed, assimilated, adapted and, in some instances, transformed. There was seldom any danger of being overwhelmed by these cultural influences and the island’s Buddhist civilization, the most significant and enduring legacy of the north Indian empires, was retained, nurtured and protected long after Buddhism had ceased to be of any great significance in most parts of northern India.
Just as the proximity of Sri Lanka to India was an important factor in its historical evolution so too was its location in the Indian Ocean on the regional and transcontinental trade routes between south-east Asia and west Asia, and between China and these regions. Sri Lanka also had trade links with the great civilizations of Greece and Rome.3 The profits derived from this international trade combined with the agricultural surplus from the production of rice and other commodities helped finance the multitude of religious and secular monuments, including the irrigation systems, in the principal cities of ancient Sri Lanka.
Apart from the beauty of the island, which has attracted comments from writers from ancient times to the present day, there are its physical attributes, the hills and mountains of the central and southern parts of the island, and the plains which surround them. These plains occupy nearly four-fifths of the land space in the island, ranging in height from near sea level to around 300 metres. The flatness of the plains is broken by scores of rocks and rounded mounds which rise occasionally to heights of 300 metres or more, the erosional remnants of an area levelled down over aeons of interrupted denudation and weathering.
The island has a variety of climatic zones. Temperatures range from between 25°C and 29°C in the plains to between 13°C and 22°C in the central hills and mountains. The diurnal variation in temperature is more pronounced in the hills and mountains than on the plains.4 The island’s location in the tropics—5° 55’ to 9° 51’ N—brings it within the influence of the north-east and the south-west monsoons. The northern, eastern and south-eastern parts of the island get rains mainly from the north-east monsoon from late October to the end of January, while the rest of the country benefits from both the north-eastern and south-western monsoons and is much wetter. Rainfall in most parts of the island is also convectional. Thus the annual rainfall over most of the island is over 1,250 mm.
The variety of climatic zones, distinct regional rainfall patterns, along with distinct physical features, result in a number of ecological systems, but the one that concerns us most in this history of the island, is the division into a wet zone and a dry zone, relative terms based on the amount of rain, its seasonal patterns and its effectiveness. The north-central and south-eastern parts of the dry zone form the physical stage on which the dramatic history of the island was played in the ancient and medieval times.
On the history of the island up to the end of the first millennium, and indeed for three centuries of the second, there is a wealth of historical data. Of these the first category consists of the Pali chronicles, the Dīpavaṁsa and Mah•vaṁsa with its continuation the Cūlavaṁsa,5 which together provide scholars with a mass of reliable data, not available for other parts of south Asia6 for most of the period under study. Next come the archaeological remains of the civilizations of Sri Lanka’s dry zone, the magnificent array of religious and secular monuments written about in the chronicles mentioned earlier, and the irrigation works. The irrigation works consisted of reservoirs called ‘tanks’, many of them enormous in their capacity to carry water, and canals which carried water from the rivers to these tanks and supplied water to the fields for rice cultivation for centuries. Many of those tanks are still in use. They were repaired and reconstructed in the mid—and late nineteenth century and in the twentieth century. Third, there is the mass of inscriptional material mostly carved on rocks, painstakingly copied and collected by archaeologists over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and edited for the use of scholars.7
While the Sri Lanka chronicles contain a surprisingly full and reasonably reliable account of the early history of the island (they have no rival in India), their conception of its inhabitants at the time of the arrival of the Indo-Aryan colonizers and settlers, around the parinibb•na of the Buddha, as spirits, yaksas and n•gas, is more useful as an index to the beliefs and perceptions of the literati of ancient Sri Lankan society than for the extraction of factual information on the island’s prehistory and proto-history. Faxian, a Chinese traveller who lived on the island for some time, was not much more helpful when he wrote in the fifth century AD that Sri Lanka ‘originally had no human inhabitants, but was occupied only by spirits and n•gas with which merchants of various countries carried on a trade’. Our present state of knowledge of the prehistoric and proto-historic inhabitants of the island is a little clearer thanks to the research of archaeologists—especially those of the mid- and late twentieth century.8
While archaeological evidence on the prehistory of Sri Lanka is still rudimentary, it is possible for us to attempt the bare outlines of the beginnings of human society on the island, using data relating to India which affords a convenient, though not entirely reliable, point of comparison, and through recent archaeological discoveries in the island. The first appearance of Homo sapiens on the island could have occurred by about 125,000 BP. The evidence of human settlements is much stronger from about 34,000 BP onwards. The data on this comes from cave excavations in the lowland wet zone. These anatomically modern prehistoric humans belonged to what are called the Balangoda cultures.
A few quartz and bone implements are the only surviving traces we have of mesolithic man’s presence on the island. The stone-working technology of the Balangoda cultures appears to continue into proto-historic times. The neolithic or pottery phase saw the technique of producing stone implements by abrasion and the solid core drill.
The Balangoda cultures, in their mesolithic phase, seem to have had an island-wide distribution. There are indications of a rudimentary knowledge of agriculture, probably during the neolithic phase. Evidently Balangoda man—a cave-dweller—knew how to produce fire. The scarcity of calcined bones among his food remains suggests, however, that flesh was generally eaten raw and there is a hint too of cannibalism.
In physical characteristics, Balangoda man was predominantly Australoid with Neanderthaloid overtones. The Vadda aboriginals of Sri Lanka are physically closest to Balangoda man from among the ethnic groups who still live on the island today.
The transition from the mesolithic Balangoda culture to the proto-historical Early Iron Age is not well-documented in Sri Lanka. The earliest manifestation of the Iron Age in Sri Lanka is believed to be about 1000–800 BC. With the Early Iron Age came cattle, horses, paddy cultivation and pottery. Iron technology greatly increased the capacity of the land to provide a living to larger number of humans. It was now easier to clear the equatorial rainforests.
The submergence of Balangoda man and his physical and cultural attributes under pressure of the early colonizers from India would very likely have postdated 500 BC, with possible survivals into a much later period in the rainforests of Sabaragamuva, which were not penetrated by civilized man to any considerable extent until the end of the first millennium ad. The early colonizers from India found the island an attractive proposition for settlement; there was, for the most part, adequate water from convectional and seasonal rains; the dense tropical forests could be cleared using iron technology the colonists had brought to the island. Apart from these, pearl fishery was well-established in the north-western part of the island and a major source of copper was available at Seruvila on the eastern part.9 In addition, the island was strategically located on the trade routes between south-east Asia and west Asia.
In the Mah•vaṁsa, that irreplaceable literary source for the reconstruction of the early history of the island, the story of man in Sri Lanka begins with the arrival there, sometime in the fifth century BC, of Vijaya (the legendary founding father of the Sinhalese) and his turbulent companions—700 in all—who had been banished for misconduct from the kingdom of Sīhapura in northern India by Sīhab•hu, Vijaya’s father. After a long and eventful voyage they landed near the present site of Puttalam on the north-west coast and set about the business of establishing a foothold on the island. Beneath this charming exercise in myth-making lurks a kernel of historical truth—the colonization of the island by Indo-Aryan tribes from northern India.10 The original home of the first Indo-Aryan immigrants to Sri Lanka was probably north-west India and the Indus region.
There was, very likely, a later immigration from the east around Bengal and Orissa. The Mah•vaṁsa story of Vijaya has it that towards the end of his reign he invited his younger brother to come to Sri Lanka as his successor. This the latter was unwilling to do but he sent his youngest son, Panduvasudeva, instead. He landed at Gokanna (now Trincomalee) towards the north-east of the island with thirty-two followers and was subsequently enthroned at Upatissag•ma, thus ensuring the continuity of the Vijayan dynasty. Gokanna was a natural port of disembarkation for boats arriving from the Bay of Bengal and thus this account of the arrival of Panduvasudeva affords evidence of the possibility of a second wave of colonization, a hypothesis strengthened by the linguistic affinities between the Sinhala language in the early phase of its development and the prakrits of eastern India.
The Pali chronicles referred to earlier were the work of bhikkhus and, naturally enough, were permeated by a strong religious bias and encrusted with miracle and invention. The central theme was the historic role of the island as a bulwark of Buddhist civilization and in a deliberate attempt to underline this, a synchronizing of the advent of Vijaya with the parinibb•na (the passing away) of the Buddha is contrived.
When the Guide of the World, having accomplished the salvation of the whole world and reached the utmost stage of blissful rest, was lying on the bed of his nibb•na in the midst of the great assembly of gods, he the great sage, the greatest of those who have speech, spoke to Sakka who stood near him: ‘Vijaya, son of King Sīhab•hu, is come to Laṅk• from the country of L•la together with 700 followers. In Laṅk• O Lord of gods, will my religion be established, therefore, carefully protect him with his followers and Laṅk•’11
This was to become in time the most powerful of the historical myths of the Sinhalese and the basis of their conception of themselves as the chosen guardians of Buddhism and of Sri Lanka as a ‘place of special sanctity for the Buddhist religion’. This intimate connection between the land, the ‘race’ and the Buddhist faith foreshadowed the intermingling of religion and national identity which has always had the most profound influence on the Sinhalese.
The traditional accounts of the colonization of the island lay great emphasis on conquest by tribes of conquerors led by a warrior nobility. But while their contribution was important enough in its own way, this would have formed just one element in the Indo-Aryan migration. There is, for instance, the possibility that traders reached the island while sailing down the Indian coast and that the natural products of Sri Lanka, gems in particular, may have provided the incentive for some of them to found settlements there. The early settlers either absorbed, swept away or pushed into the remoter regions of the island the original inhabitants whom they encountered.
These Indo-Aryan settlements were established and developed in several parts of the island from about the fifth century BC. The earliest settlers were those on the west-central coast who pushed inland along the banks of the Malvatu Oya and founded a number of riverbank settlements. Their seat of government was Upatissag•ma where the first ‘kings’ of the Vijayan dynasty reigned. The settlers on the east coast would have moved inland along the Mahaveli River. Somewhat later, there was perhaps an independent band of immigrants who settled in Rohana in the south-east, on the mouth of Valave River, with M•gama as their chief seat of government. The settlers came in numerous clans12 or tribes, the most powerful of whom were the Sinhalese.
Their settlements were all in the dry zone, were riverine in character and rice was the staple crop. These migrants introduced the use of iron to the island. The iron axe and the iron plough, which they brought with them, revolutionized the pattern of life in their new environment. The earliest colonists were dependent on the north-east monsoon for cultivating a single annual crop of rice. The climate was rigorous if not harsh, the rains seasonal but not reliable. With the expansion of the settlements, provision of a regular supply of water for cultivation became a matter of vital concern to the community. Two general solutions applied together were used: irrigation by means of channels cut from rivers and the construction of tanks or reservoirs. Irrigation and the use of iron implements in clearing forests and in agriculture would have ensured fairly rapid changes in this proto-historic period.
When the first Indo-Aryan immigrants formed villages, there was very likely some general idea of tribal union, with every member of the clan entitled to an allotment of land sufficient for his wants. But joint family tenure was not a regular feature in the land tenure system of ancient Sri Lanka and we have no evidence at all of collective ownership of land. In Sri Lanka, as in India, the myth that the village was self-sufficient in its economy and self-governing and self-regulating in its social and political life, dies hard,13 even though it seems evident that the extension of the area under cultivation and habitation through the process of expanding irrigation facilities would by its very nature have emphasized the interdependence of villages rather than their self-sufficiency.
By 250 BC, there is evidence of a recognizably literate culture in the main areas of settlement—a contribution, no doubt, of the early Indo-Aryan settlers—even though the outlying communities may have remained pre-literate. Indeed, it is believed that the first appearance of writing in the Brahmi script was as early as c. 600–500 BC.14
It is very likely that the early Aryans brought with them some form of Brahmanism. By the first century BC, however, Buddhism had been introduced to the island and was well established in the main areas of settlement. According to the Mah•vaṁsa, the entry of Buddhism to Sri Lanka occurred in the reign of Dev•nampiya Tissa (250–210 BC), a contemporary of the great Mauryan Emperor, A•oka, whose emissary, Mahinda (A•oka’s son, as some authorities would have it, or his brother, as is suggested by others), converted Dev•nampiya Tissa to the new faith. Once again the Mah•vaṁsa’s account of events conceals as much as it reveals and what it hides in this instance is the probability that Buddhists and Buddhism came to the island much earlier than it suggests.
The Buddha (or the Enlightened One) was born in north India around 563 BC. The son of the Kshatriya chief of the republican Śakya tribe, his youth and early manhood were passed in ease and luxury. But in time he became increasingly dissatisfied with this life and as a comparatively young man he abandoned his home and family and opted for a life of asceticism in a search for salvation. Six years of this austere existence left him profoundly disillusioned with it and quite convinced that asceticism taken to exaggerated lengths was not the path of salvation. This realization spurred him on to a single-minded search for a more satisfying means of salvation. On the fortieth day of a long spell of meditation, an understanding of the cause of suffering dawned on him. He had attained enlightenment.
At the Deer Park at Sarnath (near Varanasi) he preached his first sermon and gathered his first five disciples. This sermon, the ‘Turning of the Wheel of Law’ as it was called, incorporated the Four Noble Truths (suffering, the cause of suffering, cessation of the cause, and the path leading to cessation), which form the nucleus of Buddhist teaching. The Buddha explained that the world was full of suffering, that this was caused by human desire, that the path to salvation lay in the renunciation of desire through the Eight-fold Path consisting of eight principles of action: right views, resolves, speech, conduct, livelihood, effort, recollection and meditation, the combination of which was described as the Middle Way, the basis of a life of moderation and equipoise. Salvation lay in achieving nirvana, or freedom from the wheel of rebirth. The doctrine of karma was essential to the Buddhist conception of salvation, but in contrast to the Brahmanical view of karma it was not used to buttress the prevailing caste structure, since Buddhism was basically opposed to caste. Buddhism was, if not atheistic, at least non-theistic in as much as the emphasis on causality as the basis of analysis left nothing to divine intervention and in the Buddhist system God was not regarded as essential to the universe. Despite the severely rational undertone of its arguments, its simplicity and freedom from complicated metaphysical thinking contributed to its immediate appeal to those who heard it.15
About a hundred years after the Buddha’s parinibb•na the sangha split in two—the Sthaviras (Elders) and the Mah•sanghikas (members of the Great Order). According to tradition there were three Buddhist councils, the first of which was held at R•jag•ha after the Buddha’s parinibb•na. It was at the second council, which took place at Vaishali a century later that the split occurred. At the third council in Pataliputra in 250 BC, during the reign of A•oka, the Sthaviras emerged as the orthodox or Theravada sect (the Sthavirav•da School). The more sectarian Buddhists succeeded in excluding the dissidents and innovators—the heretical Mah•sanghikas—the Sthavira or Theravada faction. This paved the way for the later schism of Buddhism into the Little Vehicle (Theravada) or more orthodox branch, and the Greater Vehicle or Mahayana branch with its stress on the compassionate bodhisattva, intent on enlightenment for himself and the liberation of others. Though Buddhist sources have naturally endeavoured to associate A•oka with the third council, he does not refer to it anywhere in his inscriptions, not even in those relating specifically to the sangha.
A•oka’s conversion to Buddhism occurred after his famous Kalinga campaign of 260 BC.16 Remorse-stricken at the carnage and fearful destruction he had caused when he utterly routed the Kalingas, he found himself attracted to Buddhism in his effort to seek expiation. After a period of two-and-a-half years he became a zealous devotee of Buddhism, but he would not permit his personal commitment to Buddhism conflict with the duty—indeed, the practical necessity—imposed on him as ruler of a vast empire to remain above the religious rivalries and competition within it. Thus the restraints of kingship in a multi-religious empire may have prompted the decision not to participate actively in and associate himself with the third council. However, he could and did lend his patronage to the missionary impulse which emerged from this council’s deliberations where the decision was taken to send missionaries to various parts of the subcontinent and to make Buddhism an actively proselytizing religion, which in later years led to its propagation in south and south-east Asia. One such mission was that sent to Sri Lanka in the time of Dev•nampiya Tissa.
The Mauryan Buddhist mission to Sri Lanka found itself preaching to a receptive audience. No doubt, the conversion of Dev•nampiya Tissa was decisive in ensuring its success. At a time when the authority of the kingdom of Anuradhapura over other ‘kingdoms’ in the island was on the increase, its patronage of Buddhism would have greatly hastened the acceptance of that religion by the people at large. According to both epigraphic and literary sources, the spread of Buddhism over the island’s settlements was swift. But as it expanded its sway, Buddhism was transformed by the assimilation of pre-Buddhistic cults and rituals and ceremonials of an exorcist character. Buddhism was coming to terms with its Sri Lankan environment.
The rapid spread of Buddhism was not without political implications. For one thing, religious sentiment strengthened the friendly links established between Sri Lanka and the Mauryan empire. The Buddhist mission to Sri Lanka had been led, as we have seen, by Mahinda who was either A•oka’s son or brother; following on his success came Sanghamitt•, a kinswoman of A•oka, to establish the order of Buddhist nuns on the island. Apart from frequent exchanges of gifts and envoys between the two countries, A•oka also sent a branch of the bo-tree17 under which the Buddha had attained enlightenment. This tree still survives at Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka, while its parent was cut down in later centuries by an anti-Buddhist fanatic. A close link was also forged between the state and Buddhism. Dev•nampiya Tissa himself granted a royal park in the capital city of Anuradhapura as a residence for the ordained priesthood. This was the beginning of the Mah•vihara, the historic centre of Buddhist orthodoxy in ancient Sri Lanka. Within a short time of Mahinda’s mission, Buddhism emerged as the established religion of the country. Finally, at this time, the level of development of Sri Lanka’s agricultural economy did not yet provide an adequate foundation for a unified and centralized state. But settlements spread all over the island were evidently speaking a common language and were soon found using a common script. The rapid spread of Buddhism was a potent factor of unification, primarily cultural no doubt, but one which strengthened the process of political unification within the island.
Sri Lanka’s close proximity to southern India has been the basis for the assumption that there were Tamil settlements on the island in the early years of its history. Certainly, Tamil and other literary sources point to substantial urban and trading centres in south India in the third century BC. Very probably, there were trade relations between them and Sri Lanka and it is also highly probable that the island’s trade with the Mediterranean world could have been through these south Indian ports. By the third century BC, Dravidian intrusion into the affairs of Sri Lanka became more marked. In 177 BC, two south Indian adventurers usurped power at Anuradhapura and ruled for twenty-two years, to be followed ten years later (in 145 BC) by another, El•ra, who maintained himself in power for a much longer period—for forty-four years, according to the Mah•vaṁsa—and earned an enviable reputation for justice and impartial administration. These Dravidian attempts at establishing control over the Anuradhapura kingdom appear to have been motivated partly at least by the prospect of influence over its external trade.
Apart from this, there is evidence from archaeological investigations conducted at Pomparippu in the north-west of the island in 1956 and 1957 of a culture which bears some resemblance to the south Indian megalithic culture;18 the similarities are most noticeable in the Adichchanallur site just across the water from Pomparippu.19 There are striking similarities in the style of urn burials and the characteristics of the pottery and the associated objects found at these two sites.
The settlement at Pomparippu and a possible one at Katiraveli in the east of the island need to be treated as isolated occurrences, not as evidence of widespread Tamil settlements.20 These two settlements could be dated between the second century BC and the third century BC. For many centuries thereafter there is no inscriptional or other archaeological evidence, or literary evidence, of Tamil settlements in the country. There were, of course, Tamil mercenaries who were brought to the island occasionally from about the fifth centuryAD, but more particularly from the seventh century AD onwards. Their presence in the early stages was for short periods and served a political purpose. They fought on behalf of aspirants to the throne and on behalf of rulers whose position was insecure. Thus, Sri Lanka from very early in its recorded history had seen groups of persons from southern India enter the island as traders, occasionally as invaders and as mercenaries but their presence was of peripheral significance in the early demography of the island.
The evidence available at present would tend strongly to support the conclusion that Indo-Aryan settlement and colonization preceded the arrival of Dravidian settlers by a few centuries. An expert on the subject, a Sri Lankan Tamil scholar, has pointed out that ‘on the basis of the present evidence we could say that it was only by about the tenth century that permanent settlements of Tamils began.... [These] settlements were by no means extensive but their importance lies in the fact that they formed the nucleus of the later settlements that covered the greater part of northern Sri Lanka’.21
The next theme that needs to be reviewed in this chapter is the process of political evolution which led to the emergence of a kingdom unifying the whole island under its sway. How this process of political unification came about and the main phases in it are matters on which no firm conclusions are possible. The account of these events in the Mah•vaṁsa is at once too bold in its outlines and too simple in its narration.22 While the Mah•vaṁsa treats all kings of Sri Lanka since the mythical Vijaya as rulers of the whole island, the inscriptional evidence points to quite a different situation, with the Anuradhapura kingdom (tradition attributes its foundation to Panduk•bhaya, the third king of the Vijayan dynasty) as merely the strongest, if that, among several in the northern plain23 and in the Malaya24 and Rohana regions, as well as in other parts of the country.
This structure had not changed substantially during the rule of Dev•nampiya Tissa. He held a consecration ceremony, forwhich the wherewithal was supplied by A•oka, somewhat more elaborate than that performed for A•oka himself, and assumed the title of Dev•nampiya Tissa maharaja. This was in a purposeful bid to transform the prestige accruing to him from his recently established political and religious links with A•oka and the Mauryan empire into the hard reality of overlordship over the whole island. In spite of this, other rulers on the island did not readily acknowledge his sovereignty.25 Certainly such influence as he had in the southern kingdom of Rohana was both minimal and temporary and this was despite the establishment of a kingdom at M•gama in Rohana by Mah•n•ga, his brother.
This collateral branch of the royal house at Anuradhapura eventually unified Rohana and thereafter established control over the whole island as well. It took them a century and a half to achieve it. The key figure in the unification of the south was K•vantissa, during whose rule the authority of M•gama began to be felt throughout Rohana. In a sense, K•vantissa was only accelerating a process of unification begun by his father, but very likely the threat posed by El•ra’s rule in Anuradhapura made it more urgent than ever before to impose M•gama’s hegemony over Rohana.
The phases in M•gama’s ascendancy in Rohana are worth noting because of its profound importance for the eventual unification of the island under a single ruler. The annexation of the tiny ‘kingdom’ of Giri ruled by Siva, K•vantissa’s brother-in-law, was the first step. Eased out of Giri, Siva merely moved further north to the ‘city’ of Soma close to the Rohana kingdom of Seru. Since Soma and Seru lay on the frontier between Rohana and the Anuradhapura kingdom, M•gama could scarcely risk their continued existence as independent political entities. But it was impolitic to use force to achieve their subordination since it could attract the attention of the ruler of Anuradhapura and afford him an opportunity for intervention. K•vantissa, therefore, sought to achieve his purpose—and did so—without resort to war: he merely moved into the area on the pretext of building a religious monument dedicated to the Buddha in apparent fulfilment of a prophecy of the Buddha himself. With the absorption of Soma and Seru, M•gama’s authority extended to the Mahaveli River which thus became the northern boundary of Rohana. Rohana was now poised for battle with the Anuradhapura kingdom, but K•vantissa, cautious as usual, did not take the offensive against El•ra. This, his son and successor Dutthag•mani did with decisive effect.
The long—fifteen-year—campaign waged by Dutthag•manī against El•ra, which culminated in a duel fought in accordance with Kshatriya rules of chivalry and the latter’s death, is dramatized as the central theme of the later chapters of the Mah•hvaṁsa as an epoch-making confrontation between the Sinhalese and Tamils, and extolled as a holy war fought in the interests of Buddhism. Dutthag•manī’s triumph was nothing less than the consummation of the island’s manifest destiny, its historic role as the bulwark of Buddhism: the southern kingdom ruled by the Sinhalese Buddhist had prevailed over the northern kingdom ruled by a Dravidian usurper who, despite all his admirable qualities as a man and ruler, was nevertheless a man of ‘false’ beliefs.
The Mah•vaṁsa’s account of these events glosses over facts and events which were inconvenient to its prime consideration of immortalizing the honour and glory attaching to Dutthag•manī. K•vantissa’s shrewd statecraft, which laid the foundations for his son’s success, receives scant attention. The Mah•vaṁsa depicts El•ra as the ruler of the whole northern plain and Dutthag•manī’s family as kings of the whole of Rohana ever since Mah•n•ga established himself in M•gama; this was not historically accurate, for El•ra was not the ruler of a united northern kingdom, nor were Dutthag•manī’s forbears kings of the whole of Rohana. Besides, the facile equating of Sinhalese with Buddhists for this period is not borne out by facts, for not all Sinhalese were Buddhists, while on the other hand, there were many Tamil Buddhists. There were, in fact, large reserves of support for El•ra among the Sinhalese and Dutthag•manī, as a prelude to his final momentous encounter with El•ra, had to face the resistance of other Sinhalese rivals who appear to have been more apprehensive of his political ambitions than they were concerned about El•ra’s continued domination of the northern plain. Nor did Dutthag•manī’s campaigns end with the capture of Anuradhapura after the defeat of El•ra. He brought the northern plain under a single political authority for the first time, and El•ra was only one, if still the most formidable, of his adversaries. There are references in the chronicles to Dutthag•manī’s battles with as many as thirty-two rulers in the course of his campaigns in this relentless quest for domination.
All this, however, is not to underestimate Dutthag•manī’s achievement. He accomplished what he set out to do, to establish control over the whole island. It was, in fact, the first significant success of centripetalism over centrifugalism in the island’s history.
The capital of the kingdom at the time of Dutthag•manī was, of course, Anuradhapura. It had been the principal urban centre in the north-central plains for two or three centuries prior to Dutthag•manī’s time (161–137 BC) as ruler of the island. The archaeological evidence available would appear to suggest that Anuradhapura’s emergence as an important urban centre preceded the establishment of an island kingdom by several centuries. By about 800 BC, Anuradhapura was as large as 10 hectares (ha) in extent and had expanded to 50 ha or so in the period 700–600 BC. In the time of the Mauryan ruler, A•oka, in the third century BC, it was nearly 100 ha in extent, making it the tenth largest city in the Indian subcontinent at that time and perhaps the largest south of Ujjain and Sisupalgahr.26 Anuradhapura was linked to a port city, Mahatittha (Mantota) on the north-west coast, an important centre in the Indian Ocean trade.27
By the time of Dev•nampiya Tissa, the city was an elegant and populous urban centre, part administrative centre, part trade centre and part religious centre. Early irrigation systems linked the city with its hinterland and some of the early tanks provided the water required for its expanding population. This was Dutthag•manī’s legacy and he expanded his inheritance by constructing or beginning the construction of some of the most celebrated religious edifices of ancient Sri Lanka. Anuradhapura had the unusual distinction of serving as the capital city for close to 1,500 years, a length of time unmatched by any other city in the Indian subcontinent.