A history of Sri Lanka: ancient kingdoms to independence

The chronicle and the first kingdom

Sri Lanka has an unusually long written history thanks to the Mahavamsa, the “Great Chronicle”, compiled in the Pali language by the monk Mahanama around the 5th or 6th century CE and extended by later writers. It opens with legend: Prince Vijaya sailing from northern India and landing on the island, by tradition in 543 BCE, the year the chronicle gives for the Buddha’s passing. Historians treat that story as a founding myth. Firmer ground comes with King Pandukabhaya, who according to the chronicle made Anuradhapura his capital in 437 BCE. It stayed the capital for some 1,400 years.

Buddhism and the water kings

In the 3rd century BCE (by tradition 247 BCE), the monk Mahinda, son of the Indian emperor Ashoka, met King Devanampiya Tissa at Mihintale and introduced Buddhism. A cutting of the Bodhi tree followed, planted in Anuradhapura in 288 BCE according to the traditional dating, and it still grows there.

The early kings were engineers as much as rulers. The dry north-centre gets most of its rain in a few months, so they built tanks: reservoirs held back by long earth embankments, linked by canals, that stored monsoon water for rice through the dry season. In the 12th century Parakramabahu I, ruling from Polonnaruwa, built the Parakrama Samudra, about 30 km² of water behind an embankment 14 km long. Many of these tanks still irrigate farms today. See the sites in our Cultural Triangle guide.

Kandy and the kingdoms of the hills

After Polonnaruwa, power shifted south-west, through several capitals, towards Kotte near Colombo and, in the central hills, Kandy, which held out longest of all. Its kings kept the Tooth Relic, the island’s most sacred Buddhist object and the symbol of the right to rule.

The Portuguese (1505–1658)

A Portuguese fleet under Lourenço de Almeida arrived in 1505 and made a trade agreement with the king of Kotte for cinnamon, which grew wild along the south-west coast and was worth a fortune in Europe. Over the next century the Portuguese built forts at Colombo and Galle and came to control much of the coast. Their legacy is still visible: many Sri Lankan surnames such as Perera, Fernando and de Silva, the Catholic churches of the west coast, and Portuguese words in Sinhala.

The Dutch (1640–1796)

The Dutch East India Company (the VOC), allied by a 1638 treaty with King Rajasinghe II of Kandy, took Galle in 1640, Colombo in 1656 and Jaffna in 1658, ending Portuguese rule. The VOC ran the coast as a business, with a monopoly on cinnamon. It rebuilt Galle Fort, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the best place on the island to see colonial streets. It also left canals along the west coast, the Burgher community of Dutch descent, and Roman-Dutch law, which still forms part of Sri Lanka’s legal system.

The British (1796–1948)

The British took the Dutch territories in 1796 and made them a crown colony in 1802. In 1815 the Kandyan Convention, signed on 2 March, brought the Kandyan kingdom under the British crown, and for the first time one foreign power ruled the whole island. The British cleared the hills for coffee and opened the first railway, Colombo to Ambepussa, in 1864, to carry it to the port. Then from 1869 a fungus, coffee rust, destroyed the crop. Planters switched to tea, following the Scot James Taylor, who had planted the first tea field at Loolecondera in 1867. “Ceylon tea” became world famous, and the plantations brought Tamil workers from southern India, whose descendants still live and work in the hill country.

In 1931 the Donoughmore Constitution gave every adult the vote, men and women alike. That made Ceylon one of the first places in Asia with universal adult suffrage.

Ceylon to Sri Lanka

Ceylon became independent on 4 February 1948, still Independence Day. On 22 May 1972 a new constitution made it a republic and changed the name to Sri Lanka. Ceylon lives on in tea packets. The phrase “the resplendent island” is a common translation of the name.

Next: how to visit the temples and sites respectfully, in our culture and etiquette guide.