kingdom of Sitawaka

When the Portuguese arrived in Sri Lanka in the early sixteenth century they found an island that comprised a number of kingdoms. At the time, apart from the familiar Kandyan Kingdom, there was the aspiring Sitawaka Kingdom among others. As the Portuguese soon learnt, it was Sitawaka that held the balance of power and posed the greatest threat to their expansionist intentions.

Sitawaka, the ancient royal residence situated near Avissawella on a tributary of the Kelani Ganga (river), derives its name from Sita, who is supposed to have been imprisoned by Ravana in a grove somewhere in this neighbourhood.

As far as history is concerned, Sitawaka gained prominence for a relatively short period of 72 years, between 1521 and 1593. It was one of several squabbling kingdoms that patch-worked Lanka at a time the coastal areas were held by the newly-arrived Portuguese, the first European colonists.

The turmoil of the period is exemplified by the fact that Sitawaka was raided some five times in its brief history, which, according to Roland Raven-Hart who visited the place in the 1950s and wrote about it in his Ceylon: History in Stone (1964), makes it “the most-captured city in the world, considering its short importance.”

“Not that it was usually taken by storm,” Raven-Hart continues. “The king adopted the annoying tactics later employed by the Kandyan Kingdom, of abandoning his city to the invaders – on occasion with the palace lights burning and white cloths spread, then as now a sign of honour to welcome a guest. He vanished into the hills, watching for the chance of harrying the invaders; and whenever things looked up for him, he went and besieged the nearby Kotte Kingdom.

“It was a seesaw war: but a further complication enters – Kandy, at times an allay of Sitawaka against the Portuguese, at times attacked by Kotte, at times seeking Portuguese help against both Sitawaka and Kotte. It is like a mad game of billiards, played by the balls themselves.”


By the mid-sixteenth century, the ageing first king of Sitawaka, Mayadunne, handed over military leadership to his son, who promptly defeated the Kandyans on the battlefield and earned himself the new name of Rajasinghe, or “King Lion.” Moreover in 1559 he routed a Portuguese army near the Kelani Ganga. The Sitawaka Kingdom now held practically all the lowlands except Colombo, and the Portuguese were reduced to hit-and-run raids along the coasts.

Rajasinghe succeeded his father in 1581. He had originally been a Buddhist like his father, but owing to the treachery of some monks he apostatised to Hinduism. Subsequently he built many Hindu temples. The finest, although sadly incomplete, is the Berendi Kovil, named for Bhairawa, or Siva, at Sitawaka.

This remarkable king had the audacity to besiege the Portuguese at Colombo. Indeed the city almost fell in 1587 after he drained the protective crocodile-infested lake by cutting a canal into it. However the Portuguese had access to the sea and with their naval supremacy were able to bring provisions and men from India.

A minor revolt in his kingdom forced Rajasinghe to abandon the siege. Although this revolt was put down without difficulty, a later one in 1590 in Kandy proved to be his undoing. Eight years earlier he had captured Kandy, but now the kingdom rebelled under a Buddhist king. Rajasinghe was forced to retreat from Kandy and died of blood-poisoning caused by a bamboo-splinter on a sandbank, a spot which the inhabitants of Sitawaka showed Raven-Hart half a century ago. With him died the kingdom of Sitawaka.

From then until 1815, Avissawella was on the frontier between the Portuguese, the Dutch and finally British-held coastal areas and the Kandyan Kingdom. The Portuguese and Dutch built forts there, and clashes between colonists and Kandyans were frequent. But with the fall of the kingdom in 1815 to the British, the place became more accessible. One of the first to describe it was John Davy in An Account of the Interior of Ceylon (1821): “Avissawella is an inconsiderable village, romantickly situated almost at the base of bluff hills of black naked rock, which rise precipitously from a surface of rich foliage to a height perhaps of 1,000 feet. On a low but steep conical hill, just by the rest-house, there are the remains of a small military post, which has been unoccupied since we have had possession of the Interior.

“Sitawaka, once a royal residence, and a place of considerable consequence, is now merely a name. No traces of what it once was are now to be seen by the traveller passing along the road; and for a time none were supposed to exist. Lately, some remains of buildings have been discovered. In June 1819, when travelling this way the third time, I was conducted by the natives to an old fort situated on a tongue of elevated ground.”

Davy goes on to reveal that British vandalism resulted in the degradation of the site. “The ruin was not uninteresting, and might have been worth preserving; I say, might – knowing that the work of destruction has commenced, and that the walls, which two centuries had spared, have been pulled down either in part or entirely, and their stones removed to build a new rest-house. The curious traveller will complain of this measure; whilst the indolent one will bless his stars for being saved the trouble of forcing his way through thickets to see an old ruin, the materials of which, newly arranged, afford him a comfortable shelter.”

Nevertheless, the ruins of the defensive walls and royal palace can still be seen, and the unfinished Berendi Kovil still exhibits some fine stonework, so the site is well worth an exploration. Raven-Hart admirably describes the kovil: “Only the platform remains, quite small within a moat crossed by a bridge of massive slabs. The wall of the platform is gloriously simple, with delicate flowered fillet, a garland of stone that must be seen to be appreciated. Apart from the fillet, the chief ornaments are pilasters, separated by perfectly flat areas which had to be cut away in order to leave the pilasters in relief; and on one of the flats is an odd little parrot, entirely unrelated to anything in the design. It seems obvious, and quite delightful, that the workmen got fed up with recessing that flat surface and left the birds in relief for fun, to be chiselled away on a morrow that never came.” And the “morrow that never came” was, of course, because of the death of Rajasinghe.

Kingdom of jaffna

Scholars who attempt to lift the veil of obscurity that envelops the early history of Jaffna face formidable obstacles: scarcity of literary evidence, very few archaeological findings and biased interpretations of available data.

Unlike the Sinhalese whose ancient chronicles such as the Mahavamsa and the Culavamsa which give the "Sinhalese a myth about their origin, which farfetched as it is, convinced them that they were a people with something special about them",l the Tamils do not possess any such comparable literature. The earliest local Tamil chronicles on Jaffna were composed in the Middle Ages. A prose work entitled Yazhppana Vaipava Malai was compiled by poet Mayilvakana Pulavar in 1736 A.D. This work depended on earlier writings such as Kailaya Malai, Vaiya Padal, Pararasasekaran Ula and Raja Mural. These, composed not earlier than the fourteenth Century A. D., contain folklore; legends and myths mixed with historical anecdotes.

Mahavamsa and Culavamsa contain references to Tamils but are rather silent on the early history of Jaffna.

References to Tamils of the North which are said to be found in the Hindu epics of Ramayana, in the ancient Tamil Classics and in the devotional Tamil literature have yet to be critically studied and appraised. and Mahabharata

As far as archaeology is concerned, one may mention four rounds of field Works.

Excavations were carried out in 1918 and 1919 at Kantarodai, an ancient capital of Jaffna, and at Vallipuram, a coastal town situated about six kilometers from Point Pedro. Punch-marked coins called puranas that were current in India during the time of Buddha (6th to 5th centuries B.C.) and copper rods - "kohl" sticks that were very similar to the ones Egyptians used to paint with and dating back to 2000 B.C. - were discovered. Sir Paul E. Pieris, who conducted these excavations, expressed his conviction that the Northern part of Sri Lanka was a "flourishing settlement" even before the birth of Vijaya, the legendary founder of the Sinhalese.

Excavations carried out in 1956 and 1957 at Pomparippu, Puttalam, a region intimately connected with the North, have revealed the existence of a culture bearing some resemblance to the South Indian Megalithic culture flourishing in the first millennium B.C. discovered at Adicha Nallur in the Tirunelveli region of Tamil Nadu: striking similarities are to be found in the features of Black and Red Rouletted pottery, in iron implements and in the style of urn burials.

Excavations were carried out in 1970 by a Pennsylvania University Museum team at Kantarodai. Though no burial monuments were found, the team reported the probable existence of a Megalithic stage of development in Jaffna.

Excavations were conducted between 1980 and 1983 which witnessed startling discoveries. The following conclusions are mainly based on these excavations.

• The first inhabitants of Sri Lanka might have migrated through a landbridge that linked up northwestern Sri Lanka with southeastern Tamil Nadu. This land connection physically existed till 7000 B.C. No wonder, scholars have maintained that "man did not evolve in Ceylon but... arrived in the island from the main continent of India" Besides, the close proximity of Jaffna Peninsula to South India must have prompted periodic migration from the sub continent to the northern coastal areas of Sri Lanka. One could not disagree with the statement of Paul Peiris that "it stands to reason that a country which is only 30 miles from India and which would have been seen by Indian fishermen every morning as they sailed out to catch their fish, would have been occupied as soon as the Continent was peopled by men who understood how to sail". In point or fact, in the course of the centuries, South Indians came to Sri Lanka either as successful traders, seamen, soldiers, artisans or refugees fleeing from political upheavals in their motherland.

• Jaffna was not the first habitat of the earliest migrants. A few microlithic (an earlier phase) tools were found at Poonakari and Mannittalai, two points very close to, but not inside, the Peninsula. This may have been due to the absence of microlithic tool material there."

• The earliest inhabitants of Jaffna were Megalithic people. This culture had in general the following distinguishing features: tank-irrigated cultivation, developed settlements, a special pottery technique which produced Black and Red Wares, the introduction of iron technology and a certain style of burial chamber. The urbanization "in South India, the rise of earliest kingdoms and chieftaincies in this region and the refinement of the language to the stage of producing the Cankam Tamil Literature were the culmination of the Megalithic culture".