The day earmarked for the destruction of the Kiribath Vehera was still long to come, over 300 years away. When the returning Lankbranaka regained their throne in 691 CE, there was much to put right in a country that had been wracked by decades of civil war, caused in large part by themselves but, in no less measure, by the tenacious ineptitude of the reigning regicidal Moriyan dynasty. The Lambakanna, revived and determined, were to rule the kingdom for 326 years, an innings only slightly shorter than the 370 years earlier when the dynasty had occupied the Anuradhapura throne between 66 CE and 436 CE.

Their first administration much resembled their second in its beginnings: throwing up a man who would grow into a great king, putting the country to rights. But thereafter the resemblances ended. The first Lambakannas had seen their power whittled away largely by an over-fondness for palace coups, botched successions, murder, and the occasional over-reliance on soldiers – sometimes mercenaries – of dubious loyalties.

During the administration of the second Lankbranaka, a period of unique regal Ahimsa reigned, as successor after a successor displayed such great reverence for the life of the then-reigning king that it ended naturally, not at an assassin's sword.

Of the twenty-six late Lambakanna kings, it is hard, indeed almost impossible, to find a whisper of malicious gossip about how they may have gained the throne. Neither ancient chronicles, nor pillar inscriptions, nor the testimonies of travellers, nor the study of coinage and buildings indicate any other than matchless manners in the matter of would-be homicide. Perhaps the wholesale slaughter of the preceding 228 years, when half the kings were murdered by the other half, had branded the kings to come with an appreciation of successional non-violence. Certainly, the returning Lambakannas, in the form of the new king, Manavanna, could not have failed to understand the awesome cost of such violence - to the state, still less to themselves.

Manavanna’s own father, Kassapa II, had won his throne by killing his predecessor, and his own death had triggered a final bout of civil war in which Tamil mercenaries, in shifting alliances with the Lambakannas and Moriyans, won and lost power in pirouettes of dizzying complexity. But Manavanna’s own path to power lay more ominously through the wharves and great temples of the ancient Pallava port city of Mamallapuram, north of Sri Lanka in what is now Tamil Nadu.

For over 600 years – until 897 CE - the Pallavas had been one of five dynasties that ruled over southern India, occupying their time, as dynasties like to do, brawling with other neighbouring dynasties for land and power. For hundreds of years, the Pallavas fought with the Tamil Cheras who ruled the Malabar coast; the Pandyans in Madurai; the Karnataka Chalukyas; and the Cholas, who, from their capital at Thanjavur, came to occupy most of Southern India, as well as much of Sri Lanka, parts of the Ganges and Sumatra. Sri Lanka’s late Lambakanna rule can only really be understood by first knowing a little of what was going on just north of the Palk Straits, in southern India, for the repercussions of these Indian wars were to have a transformative impact on the island.

Manavanna fled to India with his wife Samghamana shortly after the death of his father, King Kassapa II, in 659 CE, to escape the suicidal political instability that enveloped the island when Hatthadatha seized Anuradhapura and proclaimed himself King Dathopatissa II. Manavanna was to spend almost 20 years there, befriended by the Pallava King, Narasimhavarman I. Charismatic, so physically dominating he was known as “the great warrior”, determined, smart, expansive, as much a master of the arts and sciences as he was of war, he began his reign avenging his father’s death by sacking the Chalukyan capital at Vatapikonda and killing its king. He returned home with the almost-sacrosanct Vatapi Ganapati statue of Lord Ganesha, an adornment in keeping with his growing reputation for creating architectural masterpieces - for the shore temples, pavilions and shrines he commissioned in the shapes of temple chariots hewn from the granite rocks at Mahabalipuram are one of Asia’s greatest religious structures. Mahabalipuram was also expanded into a major port and naval base, helping the Pallavas dominate trade with Sri Lanka and part of the Indian Ocean trade routes.

With the ancient sources modest on details and the other historical evidence often baffling in terms of dates, it is hard to assess exactly what Manavanna did for Narasimhavarman I over those two decades, but, sword bearer as he was, it is unlikely that he was idle as the Pallava king scrapped his way through southern India, when not building his masterpieces. And ultimately, it was in Narasimhavarman’s best interests to have a compliant power in his far south in the form of a new king, Manavanna.

With the military help of Narasimhavarman, Mahavamsa’s first attempt to capture the island almost succeeded. The Anuradhapuran king, Dathopatissa II, fled, but the mercenary army ground to a halt when Manavamma fell ill. The aspiring insurgent returned to India for many years, securing victories against other South Indian states for his Pallava paymasters whilst also fathering three sons who would, in turn, become kings after him - Aggabodhi V, Kassapa III and Mahinda I. The Chronicles note that he lived in no discomfort, for the king put him "on an equal footing with himself regarding food and lodging and honour and equipage.” But a second invasion attempt, made with a larger mercenary force in 691 CE, did succeed, as both the Mahavamsa and the Kasakudi copper plates confirm.

In truth, his campaign was probably more like pushing on an open door, for by 691 CE, Anuradhapura was little more than a playground for Tamil merchants under Poththakutta and only loosely loyal to Hatthadatha - aka King Dathopatissa II. Much of the country was beyond the writ of any law as the hapless Poththakutta was soon to discover. Fleeing from the besieged capital after Hattadatha himself had been killed, the Tamil merchant leader was poisoned by a friend who, in a dither of mixed loyalties, chose to kill both himself and Poththakutta. From all who survived that day, it was a job well done. The Lambakanna had regained their erstwhile throne, Manavamma had got himself a kingdom, and the Pallavas had ousted rival Tamil power groups from the island, the better to keep it under their own influence.

Thirty-five years stretched beyond the new king, a length of rule few earlier kings had ever enjoyed - and none very recently. Given that he spent 20 years in India and would have gone there at around 10-15, he may have been around 35 when he took up his crown. He brought to the task qualities and a mindset that few others had offered over more than 1,000 years of island kingship. He was a tested and assured military commander. The son of an earlier king, he would have harboured no doubts about his own rightful destiny to rule. And over the decades in India, he would have seen at close hand the detailed functioning of one of Asia’s most successful states, for the Pallavas were not simply military masters. They also dominated trade, built influential relationships to control commerce with Java, Sumatra, Cambodia, and China, harnessed religion to their benefit, managed an economy that produced abundant rice, collected taxes efficiently, issued credible coinage, and ran a kingdom through a polished and proficient bureaucracy.

Manavanna would have had no doubt about what a successful state should look like. He began by giving himself the title Senaḍipati, the first island king to use the word. It indicated that he was king by right of military power. And as such, he re...