Last Chance Saloon: The Ceylon Press History of Sri Lanka 13
11/25/24 • 3 min
The Ceylon Press History of Sri Lanka 13
Last Chance Salon
Sri 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 Wonderland
Lewis Carroll
1865.
Tough Love
It 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 Babble
From 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-Mahaya...
The Ceylon Press History of Sri Lanka 13
Last Chance Salon
Sri 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 Wonderland
Lewis Carroll
1865.
Tough Love
It 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 Babble
From 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-Mahaya...
Previous Episode
A Murder of Kings: The Ceylon Press History of Sri Lanka 12
The Ceylon Press History of Sri Lanka 12
A Murder of Kings
Sri 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 L...
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