The Polonnaruwa Kingdom - III

The Polonnaruwa Kingdom - III

Contiued with part two   here to go previous one

Magha's rule and its aftermath are a watershed in the history of the island, marking as they did the beginning of a new political order. For one thing, Polonnaruva ceased to be the capital city after Magha's death in 1255. The heartland of the old Sinhalese kingdom and Rohana itself was abandoned. The Sinhalese kings and people, in the face of repeated invasions from South India, retreated further and further into the hills of the wet zone of the island, seeking security primarily, but also some kind of new economic base to support the truncated state they controlled.

In the meantime Tamil settlers occupied the Jaffna peninsula and much of the land between Jaffna and Anuradhapura knew as the Vanni; they were joined by Tamil members of the invading armies, often mercenaries, who chose to settle in Sri Lanka rather than return to India with the rest of their compatriots. It would appear that by the thirteenth century the Tamils too withdrew from the Vanni, and thereafter their main settlements were confined almost entirely to the Jaffna peninsula and possibly also to several scattered settlements near the Eastern seaboard. By the thirteenth century, an independent Tamil kingdom had been established with the Jaffna peninsula as its base.

Foreign relations

At the beginning of this period the Colas was still the dominant power in South India, with the Pancjyas struggling to maintain themselves as a distinct political entity. As for Sri Lanka, the predominant South Indian state sought to assert its authority over the island, or at least to influence its politics, and Sri Lanka's rulers on their part endeavoured to support the rivals of the dominant power in order to protect their own interests—in brief, they attempted to maintain a balance of power in South India. Thus, for as long as Cola was the dominant power, Sri Lanka’s alliance with the PanJyas continued. The early rulers of Polonnaruva were far too preoccupied with the internal politics of the island to pursue a dynamic foreign policy. But the situation changed when Parakramabahu had consolidated his hold on the island's affairs. His first venture in foreign affairs, the participation in what is known as the ‘war of Panqlyan succession', was the inevitable result of Sri Lanka's alignment with Pantfya. This proved to be a long drawn out involvement, beginning as it did a little before his seventeenth regnal year and dragging on till the end of his reign. While there was some initial success, the Sri Lanka armies were eventually defeated. Nevertheless, they were able to sustain a determined and prolonged resistance against the Colas, despite the latter's military superiority. Parakramabahu often succeeded in negating a Coja victory, even an overwhelming one, by diplomatic intrigue, for Pan^yan rulers who secured their throne with Coja backing subsequently turned to Parakramabahu for assistance, thus rekindling the war which appeared to have died out, as the Colas reacted by seeking to replace such a ruler with a more reliable and pliant protege. Thus Parakramabahu achieved what he set out to do, to prevent the establishment of a Coja hegemony over South India. Had the Cojas been left unopposed, they could have been a greater threat to the security of Sri Lanka than they were, and may even have endangered Parakramabahu's own position by espousing the cause of Sri Vallabha, an aspirant to the Sri Lanka throne who was living in exile in the Coja country. As it was, when Sri Vallabha did organize an invasion, it proved to be a dismal failure.

If this prolonged entanglement in South Indian politics ended in military failure and severely strained the island's economy, it nevertheless contributed substantially to the impairment of Coja power. Thus while the successors of Parakramabahu inherited a legacy of Coja hostility to Sri Lanka, the Cojas were by then on the verge of being eclipsed by their rivals, the Pandyas. The last Sri Lanka ruler to intervene in the affairs of South India was Nishanka Malla, who despatched a Sri Lanka expeditionary force to the mainland and, unlike Parakramabahu, accompanied his troops on their mission. His activities there, about which he makes ex¬aggerated claims in his inscriptions, were no more successful mili¬tarily than those of Parakramabahu's generals. By the mid-thirteenth century, the most menacing threat to the enfeebled Sinhalese kingdom came from the Pandyas, their traditional allies against the Cojas. The prolonged crisis in the Sri Lanka polity naturally attracted the Colas, but not any longer with the same frequency or effectiveness as the Pandyas who, as the predominant power in South India, now sought to establish their influence if not domination over Sri Lanka. Pantfyan princes on the Polonnaruva throne, and Pandyan intervention during the period of Magha's rule on the island, bear testimony to the persistence of the traditional pattern of the dominant power in South India seeking to establish its influence on the governance of the island.

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