The Guardians: The Ceylon Press History of Sri Lanka 11

The History of Sri Lanka

The Ceylon Press History of Sri Lanka 11

The Guardians

Sri Lanka & The Golden Revolution

The Grandest of Guards

In 1929, as Wall Street crashed and the roaring twenties came to an abrupt end, archaeologists digging in faraway Trincomalee uncovered the remains of a once-lofty temple, built a stone’s throw from the Indian Ocean, sometime after 307 CE.

Beneath earth, trees, and jungle, stretching out to the shores of a great lake, the Velgam Vehera’s many scattered ruins were brought back to sight for the first time in centuries: brick stupas, stone inscriptions, balustrades, buildings, moon stones – and mura gals.

These mura gals – or guard stones – are especially moving, standing in silent upright pose, guardians of the flights of steps that had led a multitude of forgotten people out of the everyday and into the sacred temple itself. The steps they protect have worn down to just a few flights, the moonstone they encompass is almost entirely rubbed away; the temple beyond is now just an outline of ancient bricks, and the guard stones themselves are plain, almost stumpy, but still doing their ageless job as sentinels of the site.

Similar guard stones stand in many other parts of the island, easy to see if you know what you are looking for, silent guardians of the state within. For to be a guardian is no little thing.

Guardian is an emotive word in Sri Lanka. It can be found incorporated by health and education providers, insurance companies, the army, the priesthood, the home guard, air force, a news website, hotel and even a wedding business. But long ago it was also the meaning given to the Lambakarnas, the dynasty that succeeded the founding Vijayan dynasty.

Originating possibly in India, it is likely that the Lambakarnas claimed descent from Sumitta - a prince who formed part of the escort that had brought the Bodhi-tree from India in 250 CE. From this botanical pilgrimage, they would go on to become one of the island’s great barons, alongside other such families as Moriyan, Taracchas and Balibhojak.

Their power derived from their position as hereditary guardians or secretaries to the king. They took a prominent part in religious ceremonies. But there was more to them than merely carrying coronation parasols and flags. They were connected to the military, to weapon manufacture and, as writers, must have been involved in much of the critical administration of the kingdom.

They managed the transition from one of several aristocratic families to ruling family with what, at first, appeared to be consummate ease. After the ruinous excesses of the last Vijayan kings, this new replacement dynasty seemed to grip the one fundamental axiom of kingship: govern well, live long. They were to rule all or much of the island (depending on the period) over two distinct periods. The first of these was to last for 369 years through the reigns of 26 monarchs, from 67 CE to 436 CE.

Death of The Doppelganger

For a terrible period of time, amounting to just over half the length of the Vijayans, the Lambakarna monarchs twice faced utter ruin.

The first time ruin stared them in the face, they managed to draw back from the regicide and power implosions that rocked them to regain their savoir faire. But the second outbreak propelled them inexorably to their destruction, leaving the state weak, distracted, and unable to fend off an invasion of the island from the Pandyan dynasty of South India, the fourth such invasion for Tamil India that Sri Lanka suffered.

Just under half the Lambakarna monarchs were to die at the hands of their successors, victims to a predilection for assassination that ran like a malign monomeric thread through their DNA. Even so, the nation they left behind was bigger, richer, more complex, developed and built out than it had been on its inheritance by them back in 67 CE. Stupas, monasteries, reservoirs, canals, temples, and dwellings filled out the land. The mores of society progressed. Agriculture flourished and technical advances from construction through to medicine bestowed its benefits on the kingdom. In particular the advances they made in water technology to build dramatically larger reservoirs, enabled the state to exponentially increase its agriculture and, through that, raise state revenues to support increased urbanisation and further infrastructure capital developments.

Despite its palace coups, the state was strong enough to weather repeated religious schisms, as well as succession crises; and – ultimately – its sixteen-year occupation by Tamil kings, enabling the country to bounce back, albeit this time under yet another new dynasty.

Overcaution, on behalf of the last (albeit fraudulent) Vijayan king, Subharaja, propelled the new Lambakarna dynasty and its first king to the throne. The soothsayers had been busy whispering appalling forecasts into his ear, foretelling of his certain destiny with death at the hands of someone called Vasabha.

Herod-like, the troubled monarch ordered the execution of anyone of that name – not quite on the scale of the massacre of the innocents as in Bethlehem in 2 BCE – but certainly in a similarly bloodthirsty league. Had Subharaja not acted as he did, it is quite possible that he would not have created a persecution complex in one particular Vasabha, now bent on excising the source of his danger.

Subharaja had come into the throne by impersonating the then (and, as it turned out, last) Vijayan king, Yassalalaka Tissa, so convincingly it seems that he successfully managed to have him killed, taking the throne for himself. The story, coming to us via the Mahavaṃsa Chronicle, is too bizarre to wreck with close questioning. But true or not, Subharaja was no Vijayan, despite his pretence of belonging to the ruling dynasty. His grip on power would have been modest at best.

Just a few decades earlier the Lambakarna family had flexed their considerable familial power and plunged the country into a civil war that saw at least one legitimate ruler vanquished. Now they were ready to do it all over again, unimpressed as any halfway decent aristocrat might be by the pretensions of an imposter king. As the wretched bodies of perfectly innocent men called Vasabha piled up across the island, the one the soothsayer actually had in mind managed to evade capture, betrayal, and execution.

Welcome, The Cavalry

Prince Vasabha was the kind of Lambakarnan that the dynasty could have well done with a few more of as it migrated from aristocratic family to ruling family

Rather like the cavalry in old American Westerns, the new king arrived in the nick of time. The state, if not quite worn out, was stumbling on with the political equivalent of one leg, two broken hips and a congenital heart disease. It was badly in need of a talented head State Doctor and a spell in the I.C.U.

Recruiting an army, Vasabha wasted little time in putting it to proper use. By 67 CE King Subharaja was dead and the Vijayan dynasty deposited at the sorrowful gates of the historical cul de sac into which they would disappear. A new dynasty was in town and ready to reform, repair and realign the realm.

Having taken one prediction to heart and with such apparent rewards, the new king took the...