What was it in the fatal combination of new money, old suspicions, religious strife, mercenaries and regicide that brought the last Moriyan kings to ruin? For almost a third of the 236 years during which the Moriyan kings ruled over Sri Lanka, stability of a kind had been enjoyed. Sure, it had come at the cost of patricide, familicide, and the kowtowing to a global superpower – but 4 kings over a near 70-year period, averaging between them about 18 years apiece, was consisten

Family dramas nearly unsettled the first Moriyan kings until King Moggallana took over. Or so it seemed. What was it about the choices he made that so brutally undermined his successors? As Moggallana returned to his capital in Anuradhapura and seemed, on the face of it, to be restoring life to whatever had passed for normal before his brother Kassapa had murdered their father, it might have been hoped that national life would steady. But steadiness was not what lay ahead f

Famed for building the 8th wonder of the ancient world in Asia, what drove the great Moriyan king, Kashyapa, to plunge a sword into his own body? Given such flawed beginnings, it is surprising that Kashyapa, father-killer that he was, enjoyed a reign that lasted as long as it did – from 473 to 495 CE. Having completed the bizarre brickwork that turned his father into a building by walling him up, Kashyapa’s reaction to the patricide that had left him reviled by subjects and p

After decades of occupation and state madness, a great new Anuradhapura king set about putting things right. But how did he end up as the poster boy of the most notorious assassinations in world history? That so disappointing a dynasty was about to take office was in no way apparent at its beginnings. Indeed, the very opposite political calculation was what most wise onlookers might have offered for the early 450s saw Sri Lanka in turmoil – but with the cavalry just around t

What is it about Sri Lanka’s lion – cherished by the Moriyan kings at Sigiriya and elsewhere – that so perfectly captures one of the country's most critical national traits? To Tanzania goes the mane. Sri Lanka excepted, the land boasts more lions than any other country. Admittedly, Sri Lanka’s capacious pride of lions is a depiction rather than a collection of living, breathing, roaring specimens – but right across the island, lions dominate the scene with a flamboyance that

Water flowed, and the kingdom functioned as the long, late Indian summer of Lambakarna rule drew to its end. Or did it? What drove the dynasty to destruction and laid the land open to invaders? 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's accession to the throne in 253 CE. After decades of Lambakarna kings, many eagerly pious, ruling with unremitting incompetence,

Regicide vied with restitution as the Lambakanna dynasty moved into its middle age – but just how well did the state survive these years of make-do, mayhem and murder? 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, with seconds to spare, prevented the country from collapsing altogether and gave it a modest but life

After the ruinous excesses of the last Vijayan kings, Sri Lanka’s Lambakanna were to rule for two periods, the first lasting 369 years. But how did they rescue the state from ruin? Often, it seems, history hits you like an unyielding celebrity, all dressed up, very loud and awfully important. Even though, for the most part, it is much more like a recluse, willing to surrender but the barest of hints as to its very existence. And though history pretends that everything a

It was the mastery of water that powered the Anuradhapuran Kingdom, but how did its first Lambakarna kings ensure so rapid a development of its technology as to superpower their domain? Far into the north of Sri Lanka, forty kilometres from Anuradhapura to the south, and fifty more to the western seaboard, lie the ruins of a shrivelled reservoir - Kuda Vilach Chiya. The tank is close to some of the country’s most iconic and mythical sites, including the landing place of P

It was a counterfeit lookalike king who presided over the bloodbath collapse of the Vijayan dynasty that had ruled Sri Lanka for over 600 years. How did things ever come to such a pass? It took a hundred and twenty-eight years for the last Vijayan kings to travel the final road to oblivion, years that made the mafia tales of the Prohibition era or a Shakespearean tragedy appear tame. But travel them they did – and with unforgettable horror – all eighteen monarchs, of

As a third and fourth Tamil invasion subjugated Sri Lanka, who were the feisty avenging kings who rescued it from the suspicion that things are never so bad that they can't get any worse? If ever there was a king who was entitled to get very cross indeed, it was Dutugemunu, one of the island’s standout sovereigns. Known, not unjustifiably as “The Great,” Dutugemunu was to rescue his car crash of a dynasty, only to watch it (albeit from the life thereafter) speed off the

Barely 300 years into its nationhood, Sri Lanka was invaded twice. Why was it that no one saw the turmoil that lay ahead, and who were its conquerors? Good advice is often nearer to hand than even the most foolish leader can imagine. Or be minded to seek. One hundred and fifty years earlier, and six thousand six hundred and one kilometres away, Thucydides, whose work, The Peloponnesian War, set such standards for history as to anticipate every conceivable future military

Two great Sri Lankan kings ruled in quick succession – Pandu Kabhaya and Devanampiya Tissa. How did this double windfall hasten the tiny kingdom to burst into a great state? In the previous 100 years, Sri Lanka’s little Vijayan kingdom twice risked absolute oblivion, courtesy of its carefree kings. But twice too, in the following 170 years, the self-same state would step up and prosper beyond all expectations, thanks to two other kings, both innate masters of nation-build

How did Sri Lanka, barely 7 decades old, survive the death of its founding father, Vijaya, and its first recorded civil war, which erupted over the death of Vijaya’s nephew? “If I want a crown,” remarked Peachey, hero of Kipling’s Man Who Would Be King, and unexpected alter ego of Prince Vijiya, Sri Lanka’s first monarch, “I must go and hunt it for myself.” If Peachey’s motivation was glory and riches, plain and straightforward, Vijaya’s was about raw survival, dodging a

Sri Lanka’s first recorded monarch established a family that would rule for over half a millennium, and a nation that flourishes to this day. But how did that all begin? Sri Lanka’s first recorded monarch founded a dynasty that would last over 600 years. Expelled from either Bengal or Gujarat (scholars argue, as scholars do) by his father, Prince Vijaya, the founding father of an eponymous royal family, arrived on the island in 543 BCE, his landing kicking off recorded Sing

From people to orchids, lions to river fish – how was Sri Lanka first settled? And what happened to its earliest inhabitants? Adam’s Bridge was a bridge crying out for repair, even before the great storm of 1480 shattered it forever. Unpredictable and uneven, sailing had long been the better option. But for Sri Lanka’s first settlers – who had still to master boats – a short walk from India was all it took. And walking was what they did: Palaeolithic and later Mesolithic mi

The simple fact that Sri Lanka is an island has determined the country’s character; for “islands,” as Richard Dawkins remarked, “are natural workshops of evolution.” But how did this all happen? Rusty, derelict, and irresistibly optically challenged, the old Talaimannar Lighthouse is a gratifyingly improbable key to unlocking the start of Sri Lanka’s recorded history. It presents an even more unlikely clue to explain the profound differences the island shows compared to the

In almost every aspect of its existence, Sri Lanka defies logic - yet still it spins a potent and inexplicable magic. So how exactly did it get to be like this? What makes Sri Lanka unique? It took a refugee from Nazi Germany, with an interest in economics and Buddhism, to note the singular connection between two of the most apparent characteristics that distinguish Sri Lanka. “Small,” remarked E. F. Schumacher in his eponymous book in 1973, “is beautiful.” It was economic