That catastrophe did not immediately envelop the kingdom was due in part to the next king, Sena II, and his adept handling of the deadly new South Asian realpolitik that had drawn Sri Lanka into its magnetic field. From his accession in 866 CE, the Anduraupuran kingdom had barely 125 years left to live. Were it not for the phenomenal capabilities of Sena himself, who did much to arrest the decline of the previous decades, his 12 successors are unlikely to have had the opportunity to reign at all.

The Pandyan capture of Anduraupura under Sena I was no accident. The easy-going dominance of the Pallavas, which had protected the island since that dynasty had helped Manavamma gain his throne in 691 CE, was all but over. In their place was a steelier freeholder, one given to absolute conquest. Clinging on to what they had was all the Pallava kingdom could now do. In the four-sometimes-five-cornered fight across southern India between the Pallavas, Cheras, Pandyans, Chalukyas and the Cholas, it was the Cholas who were to emerge as the new superpower. Around 848 CE, they captured Tanjore and then focused on driving Pandyan and Pallava kings into ever-tighter corners. The Cholas were to eventually extend their boundaries from a kingdom to an empire of such political, military, and economic dynamism that the whole of Southern India, the Maldives, large parts of eastern India, Malaysia, and Indonesia fell under their influence. But the fight was messy, and at any given time, a different power seemed preeminent. In this stately spaghetti soup, today's allies were tomorrow’s enemies - in the blink of an eye. Keeping one step ahead of this was the greatest challenge the Anduraupuran kings would now face.

Depending on which chronometric school you follow, Sena II’s reign began in 866 or 853 CE and ended in 901 or 887 CE. Either way, he ruled for a colossal length – over 30 years or almost a third of the entire time it took these late and last Lambakanna kings to trek to their final fateful nemesis.

Although he inherited a defeated and shattered kingdom, he began his reign with several handy advantages. He was royal, the nephew of Sena I. He had few, if any, rivals, all of Sena’s brothers having died during the earlier Pandyan invasion. He had the army on his side, being the king’s general in chief. And he had a powerful local regional base of his own, coming as he did from the Ruhana side of the family, with a wife, Samgha, who was the eldest daughter of the late ruler of Rohana. The family politics that had eroded the effectiveness of previous kings lay dormant throughout his entire reign.

By any reckoning, he was a busy king, the sort of ruler who would multitask in his sleep. Repairing the trashed irrigation systems in his kingdom, especially in the dry zone, was an immediate priority if economic strength was to be restored, famines avoided, and taxes made available for payment. Many tanks, canals, and catchment areas were mended, including two of pivotal importance: the Sorabora Wewa – the Sea of Bintenna, a huge tank in Mahiyangana - and the Minipe Ela irrigation system, which included a massive canal that diverted the Mahaweli River to carry water from the wet zone towards the dry zone and nourish a vast area of the dry zone. The state’s bureaucracy was replenished with new hires, and, as two stone inscriptions made clear – the Mihintale plinth inscription and the Mamaduwa Wewa slab inscription - the small specifics that properly regulated a functioning state were put right – in this case, the prohibition of stealing fish from reservoirs and the collection of tax in gold from merchants.

He did his dutiful best, putting things right with the Theravada religious establishment. Many temples and monasteries were repaired. The gorgeous Brazen Palace – the Lohamahaprasada – was restored. A sacred golden Buddha image—looted during the Pandyan assault— was returned to the eminent Abhayagiri Monastery, and a hospital was built for the Mihintale Monastery. Lapsed Buddhist festivals were revived, including what is one that remains the country's paramount festival for the sacred Tooth Relic. And, in a move guaranteed to delight the orthodoxy, he stationed coastal guards in his ports to clamp down on heretical monks entering the land.

Most importantly, he repaired the county's defence, which had been so neglected that it enabled the Pandyan invasion during the reign of Sena I. The Culavamsa notes that “he made the Island hard to subdue by the foe and made it increase in wealth like the land of the Uttarakurus. Living beings on the Island who in the time of the former king had been in distress, felt themselves delivered in that they came to peace as from heat into the shade of clouds.”

But perhaps, most remarkably, and in what was probably a first for Sri Lankan kings at any time, he intervened militarily and effectively in the political struggles within the ascendant Pandyan state. The Culavamsa records that “at that time there arrived a son (thought to be Varaguna) of the Pandu King who, ill-treated by the king, had made the resolve to gain the kingship for himself. When the King saw him, he rejoiced greatly, treated him as was meet, betook Himself then to the seaport Mahatittha and while he sojourned there, collected a great force as well as all the appliances of war completely, like to a war-equipped army of the gods.”

The king went to war, after first making an alliance with the Pallava king Nrupatunga I. The plan was for a joint pincer operation against Srimara Srivallabha, the Pandyan king. A fleet crowded with soldiers crossed the Palk Strait, landing on the Pandyan coastline and marched inland to besiege the Pandyans at their capital of Madurai. The Pandyans were in no fit state to fight, having recently suffered a series of withering attacks by the Pallavas. Madurai was taken and sacked, and Srimara Srivallabha himself was killed in the action, leaving the throne open for a more Sri Lankan-friendly ruler - Varaguna. Sena concluded what amounted to a long-term friendship pact with the new king, a change of alliance that would come back to haunt his successors.

Among the plunder brought back to the island was much of what Srimara Srivallabha himself had stolen earlier, including the revered golden Buddha image, purloined from the Ratanapasada. High-ranking hostages were patriated to Anduraupura and Sena returned in triumph and ”restored all valuable property in the Island as it was heretofore, without partiality, and the golden images he set up in the places where they belonged,” concluded the Culavamsa happily. Or did he? Near contemporaneous Pandyan sources – such as the Sinnamanur Plates - argue quite the opposite – that the invasion was repulsed. But the Culavamsa account is corroborated by a further stone inscription- the Iluppakaniya pillar inscription – that records Sena II as the Madhura-dunu, the “Conqueror of Madhura.

What is certain is that Sri Lanka had gone to war, and although the fight may have been a terrible reversal of fortune for the Pandyans, in an obdurate way, Sri Lanka’s victory was also something of a prophetic disaster. Its new alliance with the Pandyan kingdom committed the country irrevocably to the hell of South Indian politics. As the Pallava, Pandyan, and Chola busied themselves trying to annihilate one another, there was no longer any get-out for Sri Lanka. Whether it liked it or not, it too was now part of the battle – and in time it would find itself locked grimly to the side of the eventual loser.

The great king spent the rest of his years kingdom-building and e...