The Wicked Monarchs of Sri Lanka: Part 2

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The Wicked Monarchs of Sri Lanka: Part 2

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After the excesses of Prince Vijaya and Queen Annua, it is time to encounter our third candidate king and winner of an abiding place in the island’s register of wicked monarchs. So little is actually known about Yassalalaka Tissa, King of Anuradhapura that he almost fails to make the cut. And yet three key qualifications mark him, two of which are so beautifully distinctive as to ensure his remembrance for as long as anyone ever bothers to remember the island’s ancient kings. His path to power was so traditionally iniquitous that has become an almost essential distinction for any candidate for this guide: he murdered his predecessor. Simply by virtue of his ascension, Yassalalaka Tissa makes the grade, though the ancient sources helpfully validate this by calling him “a vicious ruler.” But by virtue of his placement in the line of the founding Vijayan kings, his inclusion here offers an irresistible and matchless neatness to the account. For he was to be the last true Viyayan ruler. His own murder, in 60 CE, just 8 years after seizing the throne, brought to an end the royal dynasty that, more than any other, set up the country to be what is was. And what an ending it was, its preposterous characteristics being the third main reason to include in this guide. Yassalalaka Tissa own reign suffered from the fact that his dynasty had never really recovered from the effects of having overcome the island’s third invasion by Tamil warlords between 103 to 89 BCE. This was to so weaken the kingdom as to fatally undermine its confidence and capability. It all started with yet another grubby and bloody power struggle that saw one brother kill another to grab the throne before passing it on – briefly – to yet another bother, Khallata Naga, who was himself to be despatched by a fourth, Valagamba, in 103 BCE. It was a damned succession. Barely had Valagamba digested the celebratory when all the hounds of hell slipped their leads and the kingdom’s preeminent port, Mahatittha (now Mantota, opposite Mannar) fell to invaders. The third Tamil invasion of Sri Lanka was on. Valagamba fled, lucky to be alive and in a 14-year tableau reminiscent of Agatha Christie’s novel “Five Little Pigs” the once grand Anuradhapura Kingdom was then manhandled to atrophy. Two of the Dravidians returned to India, leaving one of the remaining five, Pulahatta, to rule from 104-101 BCE. At this point, history struggles to keep up. Pulahatta was killed by Bahiya, another of the five remaining Dravidians and head of the army, who was in turn murdered in 99 BCE by Panayamara, the third Dravidian who had been unwisely promoted to run the army. Proving those who do not read history are doomed to repeat it, Panayamara was assassinated in 92 BCE by his general, the fourth Dravidian, Pilayamara. But by now Valagamba, ever the comeback king, began his return, his guerrilla tactics toppling Pilayamara who had lasted all of seven months on the throne; and then defeating the last of the Pandyan chiefs, Dathika. Valagamba’s return to power should have seen in a long lasting and confident restart for the dynasty – but too much blood had been split, and regicide had been so normalized as to undermine nearly every succeeding monarch with its malign and cancerous weight. Two periods over the next 130 years in particular were to be its undoing, the first being the chaos unleased by the ambitions of Queen Annua herself who murdered 7 kings before being murdered in her turn. Just 5 kings later chaos once again took hold, when a civil war, promoted by one too many serial regicides, caught up with a king called Kanirajanu Tissa who was to be despatched in 33 CE by his successor, Chulabhaya in time honoured fashion. Dead within 2 years, Chulabhaya’s sister, Sivali took the throne for 4 months before – but by now a proper civil war had struck up, with all its attendant disasters, including leaving they kingdom itself utterly ruleless for periods of time. Sivali bobs up and down in the months succeeding her ascension vying for control of the state in what looks like a three cornered struggle between herself, her nephew Ilanaga and the Lambakarnas. For by now the Vijayan dynasty not only had itself to contend with – it also had the much put upon and exasperated nobility, especially the Lambakarna family. Little about this period of Sri Lankan history is certain, except that from around 35 CE an uncensored civil war preoccupied the entire country, leaving it without any plausible governance. For a time Ilanaga seemed to be ahead of the pack. But he then seems to have scored a perfect own-goal when he demoted the entire Lambakarna clan. This abrupt change in their caste, in a country held increasingly rigid by ideas of caste, galvanised them into full scale rebellion. The king – if king he really was – fell and fled into the hill country, returning 3 years later at the head of a borrowed ...