Bloodbath: The Ceylon Press History of Sri Lanka 9

It took 128 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 seem tame.   But travel them they did – and with unforgettable horror – all eighteen monarchs, of whom at least two-thirds were murdered by their successors, plunging the country into yet another civil war. It all started with Mahakuli Mahatissa’s heir, a succession which, on the face of it, seemed to go to plan. His stepbrother, Choura Naga, the son of King Valagamba, took the throne in 62 BCE and married Anula. The kingdom, rescued from its third Tamil invasion by Valagamba in 89 BCE, had enjoyed almost thirty years of peace, and maybe even some nation rebuilding by the time Choura Naga and his new wife enjoyed their marriage’s poruwa ceremony, witnessing the Ashtaka recite his religious chants at precisely the pre-ordained auspicious time.   As events were later to prove, the Ashtaka was to have his work cut out for him over the next few years, becoming so in demand that he became a nationwide celebrity in his own right.  Anula would turn out to be one of the island’s more colourful characters; the kind of person Anne Tyler had in mind in “Back When We Were Grownups,” writing “once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person.”   What little is known of King Choura Naga is that he managed to get himself poisoned by Anula in 50 BCE, an act of realpolitik in which his wife quite probably played on her husband’s deep unpopularity with the traditional Theravada Buddhist monks who dominated the country.   This was not a school of Buddhism that won Choura Naga’s devotion. Indeed, he even went so far as to destroy eighteen of their temples, earning the eternal disapprobation of The Mahavaṃsa, who recorded the poisoning with great satisfaction: “the evildoer died and was reborn in the Lokantarika-hell.” The political support Anula’s coup enjoyed is lost to all but the most pernicious speculation. Still, she filled the vacancy she had created by placing Choura Naga’s young nephew, Kuda Thissa, on the throne. But not for long.  Anula was ever a lady short of patience. Tiring of her ward, she poisoned him in 47 BCE and installed her lover, a palace guard, as Siva I.  It was the start of the Love Period in ancient Sri Lankan history, every bit as deadly as a cobra bite. Long-term love was not to be the hapless Siva’s destiny.  He, too, was poisoned, and the queen installed a new lover, Vatuka, on the throne in 46 BCE.  This was something of a promotion for the Tamil, who had till then been living the blameless life of a carpenter.  By now, Anula was well into her stride. The following year, the carpenter was replaced in a similar fashion by Darubhatika Tissa, a wood carrier, who also failed to measure up. Her last throw of the love dice was Niliya, a palace priest whom she installed as king in 44 BCE before feeding him something he ought not to have eaten. At this point, Anula must have reached the logical conclusion: if you want something done well, do it yourself. Busy women, after all, don't have time for excuses, only solutions. And so, from 43 to 42 BCE, Anula ruled in her own name, Asia’s first female head of state, beating President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga by two thousand and thirty-six years.  It was not a success.   After just four months, her group-breaking reign ended at the hands of her brother-in-law, Kutakanna Tissa, who, having sensibly become a Buddhist monk during Anula’s reign, remained alive and so able to rescue the monarchy.   He did so by burning the queen alive in her own palace in 42 BCE, bringing down the curtains on a royal career that eclipsed that of the entire Borgia clan put together. As the queen’s palace burned to ash, a commendably clockwork form of royal leadership took the place of palace coups.  For sixty-three halcyon years, son succeeded father or brother, brother, for three generations, giving the kingdom a modicum of time to recover, repair and heal. For eighteen blissfully uneventful years, Kutakanna Tissa ruled with monkish devotion, adding to the many religious buildings in Anuradhapura, including, with a filial devotion that contrasted strongly with the previous regime, the Dantageha Nunnery for his mother, who had become a nun.  He built a new palace and park for himself and, remarkably, also made time to restore and extend the kingdom’s basic infrastructure.  New walls, “seven cubits high”, and moats were built around Anuradhapura; two large reservoirs were established – Ambadugga and Bhayolippala. Not the merest whiff of homicide hangs over Kutakanna Tissa’s death, and he was succeeded by his son, Bhathika Abhaya, in 20 BCE.  The new king was to go down in history as one of the most religiously devoted monarchs the island had seen, no easy task given the stiff competition from those of his predecessors who had chosen virtue over assassinations.   Religious buildings were made even more magnificent, to the point of being replastered with a unique mortar that included a variety of sweet-smelling plants and pearls. New religious festivals and ceremonies were added to an already groaning ecclesiastical calendar and, for this most olfactory of monarchs, even the temple floors were ordered to be strewed with “honeycombs, with perfumes, with vases (filled with flowers), and with essences, with auri-pigment (prepared) as unguent and minium; with lotus-flowers arrayed in minium that lay ankle-deep”. Needless to say, the death of this “pious ruler of the earth” was a matter of deep regret to The Mahavamsa. Most unusually, his beatific statue still stands - opposite the Ruwanweli Stupa, built by the ancestor to whom he owed so much – Dutugemunu. The King was succeeded by his younger brother Mahadatika Mahanaga in 9 CE, a king almost as pious, famed for his enthusiastic temple building and the land donations he made to monasteries.   As with many, if not all, of the Vijayan kings, his wife was Tamil, and both their sons were destined to become kings. But with them, the family reputation for dynastic devotion was to break down, giving way to something more in the spirit of Cain and Abel. In waving a sorrowful farewell to his reign in 21 CE, The Mahavamsa obliquely notes a world soon to be forever shattered: “thus men of good understanding, who have conquered pride and indolence, and have freed themselves from the attachment to lust, when they have attained to great power, without working harm to the people, delighting in deeds of merit, rejoicing in faith, do many and various pious works.” Amandagamani Abhaya succeeded his father, Mahadatika, with exemplary order and propriety.  A man almost as pious as his father, he continued the royal tradition of gilding the religious lily. He made a name for himself amongst vegetarians by banning all animal slaughter. It was, with hindsight, inevitable that a man so totally out of touch with everyday life, still less the practical needs of his nation, should end up being killed by his own brother just nine years into his reign.