The kingdom of Anuradhapura, the classical Sinhalese kingdom, lasted nearly 1,500 years and the city of Anuradhapura lasted just as long as the capital city. In the earliest phase of its history, Anuradhapura was the capital of the principal kingdom on the island; it was the capital of the island kingdom since the time of Dutthag•manī (161–137 BC) to the end of the tenth century, a longevity unmatched by any other capital city in south Asia.
This present chapter provides a brief survey of some of the principal features of the political history of the Anuradhapura kingdom from the time of Dutthag•manī’s successor, Saddh•tissa, to the Cōḷa conquest, a thousand years of history with all the vicissitudes of fortune that such a long period of time would normally bring. In Chapters 3, 4 and 5, we review some of the principal features of the life of this classical Sinhalese kingdom, beginning with the network of irrigation systems, the backbone of its economy, its external and internal trade and its economy. Chapter 5 reviews the history of Anuradhapura as a Buddhist kingdom, the oldest Theravada Buddhist kingdom in existence.
The political history of the kingdom can be divided into three distinct phases or periods. The first phase is the early Anuradhapura period, the kingdom’s first seven centuries to the reign of Dh•tusena in the fifth century, the principal feature of which was the rise and consolidation of its power. The middle Anuradhapura period saw the maturation of the kingdom, a phase in which one saw considerable instability, particularly in the seventh century, and the regular entry of Tamil mercenaries brought into the island by Sinhalese kings to help prop up their power, or by aspirants to the throne. The mercenaries formed the nucleus of a Tamil element in and around the court. The late Anuradhapura kingdom saw two centuries of political stability (the eighth and ninth centuries) followed by a century of increasing stress and instability as the Sinhalese kingdom struggled to cope with external threats from south Indian kingdoms. Those threats became more formidable in the tenth century and culminated in the absorption, if not of the kingdom itself, of at least most of it, under the Cōḷa empire, while the great city of Anuradhapura ceased to be the capital city.
From the tenth century onwards, Anuradhapura’s past glories remained part of folk memory and traces of that glory were visible in its role as a city of pilgrimages. For many centuries, the city lost its battle with the jungle tide. Not till the 1870s, nearly a thousand years later, did it begin to enjoy a new political status, but only as the administrative capital of a province, during the years of British colonial rule.1
Throughout its history, there were three factors conducive to instability in the Anuradhapura kingdom. These were: dynastic conflicts, succession disputes and pressures from south India. The first two, dynastic conflicts and succession disputes, were more prevalent in the first two phases of its history, while the third was more significant in the late Anuradhapura kingdom. There were incursions and interventions from south India in the first two phases as well, but these were relatively brief and not very threatening to existing institutions and structures or as destructive as the invasions of the late Anuradhapura period, in particular, the Cōḷa invasion of the tenth century.
The dynasty of Dev•nampiya Tissa became extinct in the first century ad. We do not know how this happened. One significant feature of the subsequent political history of Sri Lanka was that the right to the throne appeared to lie with one of two powerful clans, the Lambakannas and the Moriyas. By the beginning of the first century ad, the Lambakannas were established in power, enjoying by far the most prestige of all the clans. Their claims to this position of primacy did not go unchallenged. The opposition came mainly from the Moriyas, who became in time their chief rivals for power. Their periodic struggles for the throne are a conspicuous feature of the history of this period. The Lambakannas were more successful than their rivals, as the following brief summary of the dynastic history of this period would show.
The first Lambakanna dynasty2 (established by Vasabha, AD 67–111) retained its hold on the throne at Anuradhapura3 till the death of Mah•n•ma in AD 428, when the dynasty itself became virtually extinct. In the confusion that followed his death, there was a south Indian invasion and Sinhalese rule—such as it was—came to be confined to Rohana. The Moriya Dh•tusena led the struggle against the invader and for the restoration of Sinhalese power at Anuradhapura. His success brought the Moriyas to power but not to a pre-eminence such as that achieved by the Lambakannas in the past few centuries. Indeed Dh•tusena (455–73) had hardly consolidated his position when he was murdered by his son Kassapa, who usurped the throne at Anuradhapura at the expense of Moggall•na I, Kassapa’s brother, whom Dh•tusena had been grooming as his legitimate successor.
Despite a political structure that was prone to instability, there was—as Chapters 3, 4 and 5 will show—enormous creativity in irrigation technology and extraordinary agricultural progress and the establishment and expansion of a Buddhist civilization along with the architecture and arts of such a vibrant civilization, in the early Anuradhapura kingdom. The kingdom’s political institutions which had evolved over the centuries demonstrated great resilience during periods of crisis, but occasionally there were times when the structure as a whole was revealed to be rather brittle. Yet, productive effort in the economy, inventive genius in technology and inspiration in cultural activity seemed to be unaffected by these periods of instability.
Indeed the history of the early Anuradhapura period reveals a political structure at odds with itself, confronting the challenges of dynastic rivalries, succession disputes and the accompanying political crises, generally coping adequately with them, but occasionally almost overwhelmed by them. Often these political crises were themselves a reflection of a crucial flaw in the form of administrative and political structures unable to keep pace with the productive energies of an expanding economy, or, for that matter, with the political ambitions of rulers who sought control over the whole island without acquiring the requisite administrative machinery, which alone could have converted this aspiration into a hard political reality.
In the middle Anuradhapura phase, beginning with Upatissa II (517–18) and his successors, there was a return of the Lambakannas to power, but the re-establishment of Moriya control came just over fifty years after the death of Upatissa II, through Mah•n•ga (569–71). His immediate successors, Aggabodhi I (571–604) and Aggabodhi II (604–14), managed to maintain the Moriya grip on the Anuradhapura throne but not to consolidate their position, for the Lambakannas were, in fact, always a formidable threat, and under Moggall•na III (614–19), they overthrew Sanghatissa II (614), who proved to be the last of the Moriya kings.
It took nearly six decades of frequent episodes of turmoil for the Lambakannas to re-establish their supremacy. Once they had done so they maintained their pre-eminence once again over a very great length of time. Indeed, the second Lambakanna dynasty established by M•navamma (684–718) gave the island two centuries of stable government. In the last phase of the dynasty’s spell of power, the severest tests that confronted it came from south Indian invaders and not local rivals, a theme to which we shall return later in this chapter.
Once the Moriya challenge to the Lambakannas petered out by the end of the seventh century ad, competition between them was replaced by a Lambakanna monopoly of power. But the comparative political stability of the period of the second Lambakanna dynasty owed less to the disappearance of the Moriya threat to their power than to other factors. Of these latter, the most important had to do with the law of succession to the throne.
In the early Anuradhapura kingdom, there appears to have been no clearly recognized law of succession to the throne. What mattered were the wishes of the ruling monarch4 who generally chose a favoured member of the royal family, a son or a brother, whose title, however, was seldom unchallenged by others who felt they had as good a claim to the throne. With the establishment of the second Lambakanna dynasty, succession to the throne came to depend more on custom and well-established practice and kings followed each other in the succession from brother to brother and on to the next generation. In combination with a stable and accepted mode of succession to the throne, the sanctity that now surrounded the king—due to the spread of Mahayanist Buddhist ideas, in particular the belief that kingship was akin to divinity—made it much more difficult for pretenders to the throne and rivals in general to command a politically viable following even when weak kings ascended the throne. Disputed successions had contributed as much to political instability in the Anuradhapura kingdom before the accession of the second Lambakanna dynasty as dynastic conflicts.
The most celebrated of these succession disputes was that between Moggall•na and Kassapa, an important feature of which is linked with one other contributory cause of political instability at this time. The reliance of Moggall•na I (491–508) on an army of Indian (largely south Indian) mercenaries5 to dislodge Kassapa proved in the long run to be more significant than his victory over the latter. These auxiliaries became, in time, a vitally important, if not the most powerful, element in the armies of Sinhalese rulers some of whom, notably Aggabodhi III (628, 629–39) and D•thopatissa I (c. 639–50), showed them great indulgence and favour because they owed their position largely to their support. From serving the strictly limited purposes for which they had been hired—fighting on behalf of aspirants to the throne, or sustaining a ruler in power—they became, in time, kingmakers, a volatile and unpredictable group and a turbulent element who were in themselves, quite often, the greatest threat to the stability of the realm. They were also the nucleus of a powerful Tamil influence in the court.6
When M•navamma seized the throne, he curbed the powers of the Tamil army commanders and courtiers, removed many of them from the high positions they held and in general established a stricter supervision over their activities. He achieved considerable success in his avowed policy of reducing Tamil influence in the affairs of state. His successors sought to continue this policy, but were less effective in this for they could never do without these mercenaries.7 Indeed, a reduction of Tamil pressures on the Sri Lankan polity was impossible in view of the political situation in south India.
These south Indian pressures constituted a very powerful element of instability in the politics of the late Anuradhapura kingdom. The flourishing but vulnerable irrigation civilization of Sri Lanka’s northern plain was a tempting target for south Indian powers across the narrow strip of sea which separated it from them, and while ever so often it came under the influence, if not control, of one or other of them, it could still retain its independence by setting one of them against the other or others, which in effect meant that Sri Lanka was generally wary of the predominant power in south India. Sri Lanka was drawn into the political struggles of south India as a necessary result of her geographical position, but her entanglement in them was not always intrinsically defensive in intent.
With the rise of three Hindu powers in south India—the P•ṇ•yas, Pallavas and Cōḷas—in the fifth and sixth centuries ad, ethnic and religious antagonisms bedevilled relations between them and the Sinhalese kingdom. These Dravidian states were robustly Hindu in religious sentiment and quite intent on eliminating Buddhist influence in south India. In time, south Indian Buddhism was all but wiped out by this aggressive Hinduism and, as a result, one supremely important religio-cultural link between south India and the Sinhalese kingdom was severed. Besides, the antipathy of these south Indian states to Sri Lanka normally whetted by the prospect of loot, was now for the first time sharpened by religious zeal and ethnic pride. One important consequence flowed from this: the Tamils in Sri Lanka—the mercenaries being the most important element among them over the years—became increasingly conscious of their ethnicity, which they sought to assert in terms of culture and religion, Dravidian or Tamil and Hindu. Thus the Tamils on the island, in particular the mercenaries, became sources of support for south Indian invaders, an unpredictable fifth column at the outset but a much more predictable one in time.
Rulers of the Anuradhapura kingdom sought to establish control over the whole island, but generally this was more an aspiration than a reality.8 The more powerful of them succeeded in unifying the country, but such periods of effective control over the island were rare and no institutional structure capable of surviving when royal power at Anuradhapura was weakened—especially at times of disputed succession—appears to have been devised.
With the passage of time, the number of administrative units within the island increased. By the first quarter of the sixth century, there were already three of these. Sil•k•la (518–31) handed over the administration of two of the provinces of the kingdom to his elder sons, retaining the rest for himself. To his eldest son, Moggall•na, he granted the division to the east of the capital; Dakkhinadesa, which was the southern part of the Anuradhapura kingdom, went to his second son, together with the control of the sea coast. Within two decades of his death there were four units:9 Uttaradesa (northern division), Paccimadesa (western division), Pachinadesa (eastern division) and Dakkhinadesa (southern division). Of these, Dakkhinadesa was the largest in size. From the time of Aggabodhi I, its administration was entrusted to the mahap• or mahay• the heir to the throne, and so came to be called the M•p• (Mahap•) or M•y• (Mahay•)-rata as opposed to the R•jarata (the king’s division). It soon became so important that along with R•jarata and Rohana it was one of the three main administrative divisions of the island.
In seeking to establish their control over the whole island, the Anuradhapura kings confronted formidable difficulties, not the least of which was the particularism (one might even say a well-developed sense of local patriotism) which made rulers of outlying regions, in particular Rohana, jealously protective of their local interests and identity. Needless to say, the dynastic and succession disputes and, in time, repeated invasions from south India were hardly conducive to the strengthening of any administrative machinery for the control of these provinces from Anuradhapura. Dakkhinadesa itself could on occasion pose difficulties, but never on the same scale or regularity as Rohana, and was easier to bring to heel when resourceful and ambitious kings ruled at Anuradhapura.
Particularism then was a perennial issue and Rohana—the home of lost and potentially viable causes, the refuge of Sinhalese kings overthrown by foreign invaders and a bridgehead for a reconquest or the liberation of Anuradhapura from foreign rule—was the crux of the problem. During most of the period covered in this chapter, its rulers behaved as though they were independent potentates and Rohana’s status varied from time to time from that of a mere administrative division of the Anuradhapura kingdom to a principality and a semi-independent or independent kingdom. To take one example at random: throughout most of the reign of Sil•k•la (518–31) and his successors, Mah•n•ga had effective control over Rohana first as a rebel, then as an accredited governor of the province and finally as an independent ruler. When he in turn became king at Anuradhapura (569–71), he united the whole island under his rule. It is likely that with the two Aggabodhis who succeeded him to the throne, the authority of the rulers of Anuradhapura prevailed in Rohana, but during the troubled century that followed, Rohana’s local rulers appear to have reasserted their independence.
In the early centuries of the Anuradhapura kingdom, there is little or no evidence of a regular army, except for a small body of soldiers who guarded the palace and the capital city. Though a regular force was established with the passage of time with foreign—largely south Indian—mercenaries as a component element in it, this was still far from being a standing army which could have been used on a regular basis to impose the will of the ‘central’ authority over recalcitrant provinces far from the capital. Nor was the administrative structure adequate for the purpose of serving as an efficient mechanism of control over such provinces from Anuradhapura. The inscriptions of this period reveal the existence of a sabha or council of ministers. It is impossible to determine whether this developed from the earlier institution known as the ämati pajaha or whether it was something completely new. Nor have we any clear picture of the functions of this council. In the early centuries of the Anuradhapura kingdom, the main officials were few: the sēn•pati (the chief of the ‘army’), the bhand•g•rika (treasurer), a few adhyaksas, mah•m•tras and a purohita. By the tenth century, there was a regular hierarchy of officials with a wide range of titles. Evidently a complex administrative structure had emerged; its writ ran in many parts of the country and affected many aspects of the lives of the people (especially in the vital field of irrigation). But it is impossible to reach any firm conclusions about the precise functions of the bulk of these officials, or to assess the nature of their impact on the outlying provinces. Clearly, the relationship between Anuradhapura and Rohana was governed not so much by formal administrative structures or institutional links as by the more volatile and unpredictable give-and-take of personal ties.
One important theme emerges from this: the comparative weakness of the central authority vis-à-vis the outlying provinces under the Anuradhapura kings generally. Thus the Sinhalese kingdom was not a highly centralized structure but one in which a balance of political forces incorporated a tolerance of particularism. This held true for the whole history of the Anuradhapura kingdom.
There is also the position of the paramukhas (from the Sanskrit pramukha, chief or notable) or the kulīṇa gentry closely connected with the clan structure of Sinhalese society. They were clearly people of standing and importance, a social elite of distinctly higher status than the village headmen (gamika) and others. Kinship ties linked some of them to the ruling elite—high officials in the court and elsewhere—and in some instances to the royal family itself. It is very likely that they had special privileges in terms of land and their claims to ‘proprietary’ rights over land and irrigation works go back to the earliest inscriptions. In the political struggles of the Anuradhapura kingdom—and in the succeeding centuries when the capital was at Polonnaruva—they were a factor to be reckoned with by the rulers of the day and foreign invaders as well. More to the point, they were among the prime beneficiaries of the dynastic conflicts of these centuries and the struggles for power within the royal family; their bargaining power and influence were thus at a premium and this too militated against the concentration of authority in the hands of the ruler.
The consequences that flowed from this weakening of royal authority and from the tolerance of particularism were not always or necessarily harmful: they gave great scope to local initiatives at the district and village leve110 and these appear to have been strong and resilient enough to cope with turmoil during power struggles at the centre, or during foreign invasions. During much of the history of the Anuradhapura kingdom they could have been, and indeed they often were, more enduring than the institutions controlled, if one could use that term, from the centre. This probably explains how a political structure, at the centre, prone to instability in periods of crisis could have sustained the magnificent irrigation system that was one of the glories of the Anuradhapura kingdom. No doubt the maintenance of the system in good repair, quite apart from its expansion, required a sophisticated machinery under some form of central control. But it was the permanent institutions rooted among the people at the village level that ensured the survival of the system during periods of turmoil, which were such a regular feature of the Anuradhapura kingdom.
The accession of M•navamma and the establishment of dynastic stability in the period of the Lambakanna monopoly of power in the seventh to the tenth centuries saw a consolidation of the political structure whose main features we have analysed here. The succession disputes which disturbed the politics of the early Anuradhapura kingdom so frequently had largely disappeared. There was an enlargement and greater sophistication in the administrative machinery; royal authority was augmented and particularism was at a discount when powerful rulers controlled Anuradhapura, as they did with greater frequency in the late Anuradhapura period. The strengthened monarchy and institutional structure confronted other and more powerful challenges in the form of pressure from south India. This had been one of the factors of instability of the early Anuradhapura kingdom, but it assumed much more serious proportions and eventually overwhelmed Sri Lanka in the late tenth and eleventh centuries. It is to this theme that we now turn our attention.
We have seen how M•navamma sought to impose restraints on Tamil mercenaries and courtiers. But he himself had seized power with Pallava assistance. While his accession to the Anuradhapura throne marked the beginning of a long period of dynastic stability, the association, if not alliance, with the Pallavas was to bring political perils in its train. When the P•n•yans were building their first empire and were in confrontation with the Pallavas for supremacy in south India, Sri Lanka was inevitably opposed to the P•n•yans. By the middle of the ninth century, the P•n•yans had prevailed over their rivals and set about settling scores with the latter’s allies, including the Sinhalese kingdom. There was a devastating P•ṇ•yan invasion of the island during the reign of Sena I (833–53) under Sri M•ra Sri Vallabha (815–60), during which they found ready support from the island’s small Tamil population. They sacked Anuradhapura and imposed a substantial indemnity as the price of their withdrawal.
Shortly after the P•ṇ•yan withdrawal, the Sinhalese were afforded an opportunity for intervention in P•ṇ•yan affairs. A Sinhalese army invaded the P•ṇ•ya country in support of a rebel P•ṇ•ya prince and during their successful campaign they ravaged the city of Madurai. Meanwhile, the Pallavas and their allies harassed the P•n•yans on their northern frontier. The result was a distinct weakening of P•ṇ•ya power but not to the advantage of the Pallavas, for this occurred at a time (the last quarter of the ninth century) when the Cōḷas11 were emerging as a formidable threat to both the P•n•yans and the Pallavas. The latter were the first to be absorbed by the Cōḷas, who then proceeded southward to P•ṇ•yan territory.
Disturbed by the prospect of a Cōḷa hegemony over south India, the Sinhalese, in a remarkable but totally understandable reversal of policy, threw their weight behind the P•n•yans in a desperate attempt to sustain them as a buffer state between the expanding Cōḷa empire and Sri Lanka. A Sinhalese army was sent to south India in 915 in support of the P•ṇ•yan ruler R•jasimha II against the Cōḷas, but to little effect, for Par•ntaka I (907–55) inflicted a crushing defeat on the P•n•yans whose king now fled to Sri Lanka carrying with him the P•ṇ•yan regalia. The Cōḷas never subdued the P•ṇ•yan territories as completely as they had the Pallava kingdom. The Sinhalese now had to face the wrath of the victors, for whom the desire—and need—to capture the P•ṇ•yan regalia was an added impetus to a retaliatory invasion of Sri Lanka. There were other compelling political reasons as well: the Sinhalese kingdom was a threat to the security of the southern frontier of the Cōḷa empire, as a refuge for defeated P•ṇ•yan rulers and as a base for potential invasions of the mainland. In short, the consolidation of Cōḷa power in the P•ṇ•yan kingdom was incomplete so long as Sri Lanka remained independent. Apart from these, there was the prospect of loot,12 of control over the pearl fisheries of the gulf of Mannar and the gems for which the island was famous, as well as its trade.
Up to the middle of the tenth century, the Cōḷa military expeditions to Sri Lanka were in the nature of brief but destructive incursions and once the immediate objectives of the missions had been achieved, the Cōḷa armies withdrew to the mainland. Under R•jar•ja the Great (983–1014), however, the Cōḷas embarked on a more aggressive and ambitious programme of conquest which devastated the city of Anuradhapura and the Sinhalese kingdom and the R•jarata, the heartland of the defeated Sinhalese kingdom, became part of the Cōḷa empire. Mihindu V, who ascended the throne in 982, the last Sinhalese king to rule at Anuradhapura, was captured by the invading Cōḷas in 1017 and died in captivity in south India. The island had barely recovered from the devastation of the P•ṇ•yan invasion of the ninth century when it faced the more cataclysmic effects of the Cōḷa invasion and occupation. The conquest of the island was completed under R•jar•ja’s son R•jendra. Resistance to the Cōḷas began very early and southern parts of the island slipped out of Cōḷa control but the R•jarata continued to be ruled by the Cōḷas as a mandalam or province of the Cōḷa empire. The mandalam was subdivided into valandūs (which were mostly named after Cōḷa royalty), n•dus and ūrs.
A more significant—and permanent—change introduced by the Cōḷas was the decision to shift the capital from Anuradhapura to Polonnaruva—a move determined, in this instance, by considerations of security.13 The Mahaveli itself afforded some protection to this city. The main threat to the Cōḷas in the R•jarata came from Rohana, and Polonnaruva was well placed to guard against invasions from that quarter since it lay near the main ford across this river which an invading army from Rohana needed to force. There were other advantages as well. Proximity to the Mahaveli, the longest river in Sri Lanka, enhanced the economic value of Polonnaruva’s location, an important consideration, given the development of commercial relations with south-east Asia and China in which the port of Gokanna (modern Trincomalee) on the east coast was an important centre. Indeed it has been argued that the transfer of the capital to Polonnaruva reflected ‘the dynamics of Indian Ocean’ trade.14
Within a few years of R•jendra’s completion of the conquest of the island, Rohana became the centre of a protracted resistance movement against the Cōḷas. There was opposition to them in the R•jarata as well. Early attempts at dislodging the Cōḷas by organizing raids from Rohana had foundered badly, partly on account of divisions among aspirants to the Sinhalese throne, and the Cōḷas were able occasionally to recruit support for themselves from among local notables in Rohana. While the particularism for which Rohana was notorious was an obstacle in the early stages to a concerted bid to expel the Cōḷas from the island, that obstacle was eventually overcome. A successful resistance movement drove the Cōḷas out of Sri Lanka under the leadership of Vijayab•hu I (1055–1110).