An Exploration Into Ancient Jaffna

Mantri Manai - The surving remains of the minister's quarters of the Jaffna Kingdom that was reused by the Portuguese and Dutch colonials


When we reached Jaffna, the German students were gazing at the surroundings of the Jaffna city. My mind went far back when looking at those war-ravaged buildings to the times where the Naga Kingdom was flourishing in various parts of the Jaffna Peninsula.


But the Jaffna Peninsula since then had a hazardous time for long periods as history tells us.


It is said that Lord Buddha visited Jaffna to resolve a crisis over a jewel between the Naga Chieftains and introduced Buddhism to them. Archeological findings in Kantharodai, Nagadeepa, and Vallipuram areas in the Jaffna Peninsula are evidences to prove the existence of Buddhism. Long before Buddhism crept into some areas of the Jaffna peninsula the Nagas who lived in Jaffna were worshiping Lord Shiva. The Nagas were good sea traders and Ptolemy who lived between 85 A.D. and165 A.D. and travelled around the Island observed that one of the oldest seaports of Sri Lanka was in the Northern part of the Jaffna Peninsula and was used since 6th century B.C.


Though the Nagas ruled the North of the Island, a formal Jaffna Kingdom came into being by the ambitions of two chieftains, one Kalinga Magha from Orissa, India and Chandrabhanu from Malacca in the Malay Straits region of Malaysia.












A collection of stupas and mounds, the remains of ancient buildings in the vicinity of a grove of palm trees. The base of each stupa is made of coral stone molded into four bands and the domes are made of coral rubble coated with plaster fashioned to look like blocks of stone. Archeological investigations done at Kantarodai in 1966-7 found that the site was inhabited from about the 2nd century BCE to about the 13th century CE. Kantarodai was probably a monastery for Tamil monks although some have argued against this. However, Buddhism was widespread in south India in ancient times and there is no reason to doubt that some Tamils living in Sri Lanka were Buddhists too. Certainly the stupas at Kantarodai are different from those found in other parts of Sri Lanka. (Source: Sacred Island)


In 1215 the aggressive Kalinga Maga conquered Sri Lanka with his powerful army from Kalinga. Kalinga was an ancient Indo - Aryan Kingdom of central-eastern India, in the province of Orissa. The kingdom had a formidable maritime empire with trading routes linking Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, Borneo, Bali, Sumatra and Java. Colonists from Kalinga settled in far away places such as Sri Lanka, Burma as well as the Indonesian archipelago. Even today Indians are referred to as Klings in Malaysia because of the early Indian invasions from Kalinga into Malaysia. Many Sri Lankan kings, both Sinhalese and Tamil, claimed to have descended from Kalinga dynasties.

TheYakkas and Nagas might have become the outcasts as bondsmen and slaves, after the Indo-Aryan immigrants conquered them and became the lords and aristocrats. And finally they might have assimilated within the dominant society.


What happened to Nagas and Yakkas in the Island points to the ultimate cause of the rise and fall of the civilizations are according to their racial homogeneity and nothing else - a nation can survive wars, defeats, natural catastrophes, but not racial dissolution.


Jaffna Peninsula under Kalinga Maga's rule was so controversial. His rule was the worst marauding regime that had existed in the Island according to historians.


In 1247 Chandrabhanu invaded the Island with the aid of Indian armies from the Malayan peninsula and inflicted heavy damages on the Kalinga Maga domain. Although Chandrabhanu's invasion was repulsed in 1263 he managed to capture the areas in the Jaffna Peninsula that were then under Kalinga Maga.


The Jaffna Kingdom was dominated by the South Indian Pandyan Empire, a dravidic empire in the 13th Century after they defeated Chadrabanu. The development of the Dravidic tribes in the past twenty centuries gave rise to states like Pallava, Pandy, Chola, Chera and Vijayanagar kingdoms in Southern India. From time to time one or the other of these Dravidian states reached pre-eminence but indubitably the greatest of these was the Chola Empire, which encompassed not only south India but the entire region up to the Ganges in Northern India, Sri Lanka and the Maldives to the south to Malaya and Sumathra in the east.


The political socio-economic and cultural impact and influence of this empire was very great. All these Dravidian kingdoms had a lasting political socio-economic and cultural impact and influence on Sri Lanka and in the region to a very great extent.


After lasting for over 400 years the Dravidian influenced Jaffna Kingdom finally lost its independence to the Portuguese in 1621. The Portuguese captured the King of Jaffna Sangili Kumaran and had taken him to Goa in India along with his sons. After trial, the Portuguese found him guilty of treason and hanged him along with his sons. With the Jaffna Kingdom's demise, the only indigenous independent political entity that was not Sinhalese and Buddhist in character came to an end in the Island.


While we were moving along the Jaffna streets, the repercussions of the fall of Jaffna Kingdom seemed to reverberate with a mysterious silence everywhere.

German Memories in Asia