THE LAST CITY

City of Beautiful Ruins

Polonnaruwa, the majestic capital of the island’s last independent unitary Kingdom, is a swansong written in stone that, for 142 years, served as a final rallying cry for the island-kingdom before it descended into a series of wandering capitals, fragmentary realms, and colonisation.  Its monumental structures, carved and crafted with an almost unrivalled delicacy, are the last outstanding achievement of the old Anuradhapuran Kingdom.

Polonnaruwa is an astonishing creation, given how short its lifespan was – barely a quarter of that of Anuradhapura. Amidst its palaces, audience halls, temples, stupas, pools, and monasteries, one artefact in particular stands out: the Gal Vihara. The Gal Vihara is, in fact, four vast, quite separate but linked images of the Buddha carved on a single large granite rock face. The largest of them – at over forty-six feet long – depicts the death of Buddha. He lies on his side, one hand stretched right out across his side and hip; the other crooked beneath his face, resting on a soft bolster. The statue is astonishingly realistic and straightforward, the unremembered sculptor taking into account the very grain of the granite to give it a lifelike buoyancy that places it effortlessly among the most incredible sculptures anywhere in the world. Dead, dying, or merely sleeping, the serene and heart-stilling face of Buddha is in some ways a most fitting symbol through which to account for the Kingdom of Polonnaruwa, for it is as if the Kingdom itself slept through most of its 142 years of life. 

A rough rule of thumb has it that a dynasty or Kingdom can live through at least four successive evil reigns as long as it is refreshed by a fifth great or even merely competent reign. This, alas, was not the fate of Polonnaruwa. Its sixteen rulers enjoyed reigns that averaged, at best, eight years each and numbered just two truly great monarchs – not enough to ensure the lasting impact of the dynasty. And it would have gotten nowhere had its first founding monarch been one of its two great kings. 
 
A Sure Start
Bringing to an end seventy-seven years of Chola-inflicted devastation, King Vijayabahu was to go down in history as “Mahalu Vijayabahu” (Vijayabahu the Old) and “Maha Vijayabahu” (Vijayabahu the Great).   Both, fortunately for the island, were absolutely true. Over a fifty-five-year reign, the king was able not simply to push the Chola empire back across the Palk Straits into Tamil Nadu, but also to substantially repair some of the significant damage their rule had caused.  

It gave his nascent dynasty a sure start. That he chose to make Polonnaruwa his capital was expedient; situated as it is a hundred kilometres to the south east of Anuradhapura, and so less susceptible to invasion. Critically, its irrigation systems remained intact, enabling it to support both the growing city and its surrounding network of paddy and agricultural land. Even so, validating his links to the Anuradhapuran kings, Vijayabahu had himself crowned amidst the ruins of the old city. No sooner had he captured Polonnaruwa from the garrisons abandoned there by the Chola emperors (preoccupied with putting down rebellions elsewhere in their empire), than he had his hands full stifling his own internal rebellions. 

But if ever there was a king who could multitask, it was Vijayabahu. As the last barnacles of the Chola rule were scraped away, rebels were silenced, and the kingdom’s defences against external threats were strengthened – measures which included taking two anti-Chola Indian princesses as brides. Roads were constructed, tanks, temples, slices, and canals repaired, royal administration reinstated, and Buddhism restored. Indeed, so significant an injury had the religion sustained that at the start of his reign, it was impossible to find the correct number of ordained monks necessary to ordain future monks. Burmese monks were enlisted to help. A new temple was built in Polonnaruwa to house the sacred Tooth relic itself. Bit by painful bit, the Kingdom rewound itself to something approaching normality. The coinage was restored, and the economy opened up, benefiting from the gradual dismantling of the once-invincible Chola monopoly that had emasculated the Bay of Bengal's commerce.

The Own-Goal Kings
When the old king finally died in 1110, his death ushered in a remarkable period of royal instability, characterised by successive own goals. He was initially succeeded by his brother, King Jayabahu I. Jayabahu was defeated in war by Vikramabâhu I, who managed to get himself killed after barely a year by his nephew, Vikramabahu I, the avenging son of King Vijayabahu. Although the new king would rule for twenty-one years, much of it was spent shoring up his precarious position within the murderous and serpentine world of palace politics. Vikramabahu’s energies were consumed mainly by seeing off internal threats, most notably delivered by his own aunt on behalf of her son. He was eventually ousted by his own brother, Gajabahu II, in 1131, but this was not enough to break the deadly cycle of palace politics and naval gazing. Soon enough, Gajabahu was himself ousted by Vikramabahu’s grandson, Parakramabahu I, in 1153. And so, just in time, began the reign of one of the country’s greatest rulers
 
The Great King
Parakramabahu I was one of a handful of genuinely great rulers of the island.  His 33-year reign, from 1153–1186, throws up one of the great “what-ifs” of Sri Lankan history. What if, for example, there had been more like him – at least one every six or seven kings. Would Sri Lanka have sailed through the treacherous colonial age more like Thailand, a strong and independent Kingdom able to resist the spice-hungry Europeans that set up shop as its foreign rulers, still less the fractious local mini-kings whose modest kingdoms were later staked out on land once ruled by Parakramabahu? It is a pleasing game to play, but sadly, just a game. Parakramabahu stands out simply by being so wholly different from most other monarchs who attempted to rule the island from north to south. 

As befits all great kings, his birth was attended by a complicated narrative of myths and auguries, all of course, favourable. Adept at ducking and diving the inevitable web of palace politics, he made his first mark ruling Dakkhinadesa, one of the subkingdoms attached to Polonnaruwa. Little time was wasted in getting the Kingdom busy with constructive activity; shrines, temples and public buildings were restored, new dams and canals created, forests cleared for farming, and the famous Parakrama Samudra constructed – now better known as the Sea of Parakramabahu, a massive reservoir with a storage area of more than five thousand acres capable of irrigating eighteen thousand acres. Even trade was encouraged, especially gems, cinnamon, and war elephants. Most critically, he reorganised his army and soon enough took the fight to Gajabahu in Polonnaruwa. 

After five years of unceasing warfare, Parakramabahu won both the crown and all-island rule in 1153. For the next thirty-three years, war, reform, religious revival, and construction were to be the mantra with which he built back his kingdom. What remaining monks there were had become corrupt and divided, so in 1165, the king assembled a Theravada council in Polonnaruwa, pushing through a set of demanding reforms that sent many monks scurrying overseas for cover. Thereafter, the remaining orders were called back annually to report on progress. Internal rebellions were put down with brutal efficiency. Towns and cities were rebuilt – including, most importantly, Polonnaruwa itself. Alms houses, hospitals, defensive walls, barracks, temples, pools, palaces, and audience halls were all erected with stunning style and speed. Irrigation was restored – the Culawamsa states that he restored or constructed over one hundred and sixty-five large tanks, two thousand three hundred and seventy-six minor ones, three thousand nine hundred and ten canals and 1one hundred and sixty-three dams. Tamil prisoners of war were co-opted as forced labour. He even waged war – albeit to little lasting benefit - on India and Myanmar, though this did have the advantage of putting the defensive Cholas still more on the retreat. 

And in the ever more open market that was the Bay of Bengal, his policies enabled greater freedom for Sri Lankan trade, especially with South India. Many historians have since claimed that this was all too much, too soon. When he died in 1186, his treasury was exhausted, and his country, like a marathon runner who has been sent back round the track several times too many, was badly in need of a break. But perhaps his greatest failure was to allow the hopelessly fluid expectations around succession that had dogged the monarchy for millennia to go unchanged.  This, ultimately, would lead to the destruction of the short-lived Kingdom itself in record time.
 
A Descent Into Hell
The great king was succeeded by his nephew, the 'poet king', Vijayabahu II – for barely a year before this hapless monarch was sent early on his way to a better world by another relative, Mahinda VI in 1187. Mahinda managed one of the shortest innings of any king, five days, before also getting himself killed by his successor, Nissanka Malla, another relative of Parakramabahu. The new king managed to last a little longer – nine years in fact - but alas little of any lasting good was achieved in his reign. Polonnaruwa gained a few beautiful extra structures – a stupa, a new temple for the tooth relic, the gorgeous Nissanka Latha Mandapaya – and, in a modest nod to immortality, a super life-sized statue of the king himself. 

Tanks and temples were repaired elsewhere; his armies further harried Chola India; the Dambulla cave temple was restored; and the crippling tax regime of the great king was relaxed – though this added to the echoing emptiness of the treasury. And in one of the less-than-helpful contributions to nationhood, the caste system was significantly tightened. Occupational caste became hereditary, severely limiting the ambitions of otherwise able subjects. It was less a new beginning than business as usual - albeit at a trot rather than a gallop. Nissanka Malla’s death in 1196 brought in the one-day rule of his son, Vira Bahu I, who was crowned at night and murdered by dawn by his army chief, who complained that the son was a poor substitute for the father. 

The next king, his nephew, managed to hang on for a little longer – three months in fact, before being assassinated in his turn by another nephew, Chodaganga. The new king’s own inevitable deposition nine months later, in 1197, brought in a more refined version of regicide. His eyes were put out by a new army commander, who installed Lilavati, Parakramabahu’s wife, on the throne.
 
The Game Of Thrones
The last absolute ruler of Polonnaruwa was that rarest of things: a Sri Lankan queen. The few previous queens the island had experienced left Lilavati ample room for reputational improvement. Royal herself, widow of the great king, there is little doubt that she had as nuanced an understanding of power and palace politics as she had of being grand. To these qualities, she added resilience, her reign yo-yoing in and out of depositions and chaos like a boomerang on a remote. 

Nothing is known of how she survived the anarchy that engulfed the country following her husband’s death. But as regicide followed regicide, it is perhaps unsurprising that the army turned finally to her as a legitimate ruler.  Her first three years on the throne were “without mishap,” remarked the Culavamsa with measured and censorious approval. But her luck was not to hold. Soon enough, Sahassamalla, a prince of obscure origins, deposed her in 1200. By 1202, Sahassamalla himself had been ousted – again by the overmighty army who turned to another queen to replace him. 

This time it was the turn of Kalyanavati, the widow of King Nissanka Malla. Although almost nothing is known of her reign, the Chronicle of the time depicts it briefly as peaceful and prosperous, and the queen herself as suitably religious and pious. But the country needed far more from its rulers than piety. On the other side of the Palk Straits, the topsy-turvy world of South Indian musical thrones had reignited with the Pandians, Cholas and even the Cheras of south-west India struggling for a supremacy that all too often spilt over into Sri Lanka. At the very time when vigilance and strengthening defences against Indian invaders were paramount, the Polonnaruwa establishment busied itself with internal power politics. Never more had the proverbial deckchairs been better rearranged on this tropical Titanic. To make matters worse, the feuding groups all too often turned to Tamil mercenaries to help them get their way, giving South India a deadly inside track within the Polonnaruwa court. 

At some point in 1208, Queen Kalyanavati disappeared from the historical record, and the army installed Dharmasoka, a three-month-old infant, as the country’s new king. Quite what happened to the wretched child remains a mystery, though it is possible that Chola armies, by now happily reinvading the country, put him to death themselves. The baby was succeeded in 1209 by his father,  Anikanga – but not for long. Seventeen days into his reign, the army culled him too and put Lilavati back on the throne. 
 
A Blood-Spattered Anarchy
At this point, it is helpful to think of Bashar Hafez al-Assad’s Syria, Libya after Gaddafi, the Paris Commune of 1871, the French Revolution around 1793, or perhaps Russia in the years just before Lenin seized control.  Anarchy was the only game in town. Indian invaders came and went without check; the Polonnaruwa court was a snake pit of warring cabals; the army was overmighty and ultimately incompetent, like a latter-day Roman Praetorian Guard; the kings themselves were a travesty of expendable puppets. Queen Lilavati’s second coronation had barely finished when Lokissara, an opportunistic soldier (possibly Singhala turned Dravidian), crossed the Palk Straits with a new Tamil army and, according to the unreliable chronicles, “ brought the whole of Lanka under his sway.”  

Not quite all, it would seem, for a Polonnaruwa general had him dispatched to his maker within nine months, clearing the way for Lilavati's third coronation in 1211.  At this point, the chronicles fall over themselves with praise, describing her as “of the dynasty of the Sun and Moon...she who afterwards shone in royal splendour.”  Celestial though she may have been, it had little impact on her staying power. In 1212, the last queen was deposed by Parakrama Pandyan II, a Pandyan king.

The Curtains Fall
Parakrama Pandyan II ruled for three years before being dethroned by yet another Indian invader, Kalinga Magha, in 1215. Of him, the Culavamsa pulls no punches, describing him as 'an unjust king sprung from the Kalinga line'. Under this new tyrant, the island descended ever deeper into bloodshed and chaos. Those who could fled south to Ruhuna; the rest lay subject to the new king’s scorched-earth policy as he raided the land, pausing especially to ransack the stupas and temples of Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa. The Polonnaruwa Kingdom had come to a pitiful end, and the island itself begged the harshest words of doom and gloom to depict its agonising plight. It was the end of any credible attempt to rule the island as a single country. Not until the signing of the Kandyan Convention, over six hundred years later in 1815, would Sri Lanka once again become a sustainable single state within a single island. And it would take seven hundred and thirty-six years before the island itself could remerge as a unitary and independent nation.