KINGS OF KANDY -

Vimaladarmasuriya the First

Vimaladharmasuriya I, also known as Konappu Bandara before Coronation and Dom Joan of Austria was a king of Sri Lanka who ruled the country from 1590 to 1604 was a late 16th century–early 17th century King of the Kandyan Kingdom, located in the central hills of the present-day island nation of Sri Lanka. His influence was considerably diminished by the intrusions of the Portuguese.

 King Vimaladharmasuriya is regarded by some historians as the Kandyan Kingdom's second founder, responsible for its revival. Born Konnappu Bandara, he was baptized under the Portuguese name of Don João da Austria. In 1594 he married Princess Kusmasana Devi who, as Dona Catherina, was put forward by the Portuguese as the rightful claimant to the throne and became king. After renouncing Christianity and embracing Buddhism, Vimaladharmasuriya constructed a two-tiered shrine close to his palace in order to sanctify his capital Kandy and accommodate the politically important relic known as Buddha’s Tooth. 

The Dutch explorer Joris van Spilbergen offered an alliance to fight off the Portuguese. Following these negotiations, Sebald de Weert was sent officially by Admiral Wybrand van Warwijck to mount a joint counter-attack against the Portuguese. The alliance ended in disaster however during a drinking party, where the Dutch became rowdy, insulted the king, with the consequence that they were all killed. An alliance would not be possible again until 1612, when a new Dutch envoy, Marcellus de Boschouwer, established a treaty with King Senarat, ultimately leading to the eviction of the Portuguese from the island, and about one century of Dutch rule, until the British in turn took the island.

Vimaladharmasuriya is depicted in Western sources meeting with the Dutch explorer Joris van Spilbergen in 1602.

Rajasimha the Second

Rajasimha II, also known as Rajasingha II (pre coronation, Prince Mahastana), was a Sinhalese king, reigned 1629 – 6 December 1687; third king of the kingdom of Kandy in Sri Lanka. Rajasingha requested Dutch aid to help expel the Portuguese from the island, which they successfully did in 1656. By this time however it had become clear to the Kandyans that the Dutch not only intended to expel the Portuguese but to replaced them as the major colonial power on the island, and from 1645 onwards Rajasingha was engaged in sporadic warfare with his erstwhile allies.

Rajasingha was the son of Senarat (Senarath), the second ruler of the kingdom of Kandy, based at the city of Senkadagala (modern Kandy) in Sri Lanka's mountainous interior. Since the Portuguese annexation of much of Sri Lanka's coastal areas the kingdom had represented the sole independent native polity on the island. Near incessant warfare had significantly embittered the Kandyans towards the Portuguese; furthermore the brief success of the warlike kingdom of Sitawaka a century earlier had convinced many in the kingdom that the total expulsion of the colonial power was a distinct possibility.

As a young man Rajasingha participated in the 1612 counter-offensive that routed a Portuguese invasion into Kandyan territory.

Rajasingha succeeded his father to the throne in 1634 (1629 in some sources)

Rajasingha's father had long courted the Dutch as a potential ally against the Portuguese. A treaty had been signed between Kandy and Dutch envoy Marcelis Boschouwer but had not amounted to much. Soon after Rajasingha's accession however the Dutch, now firmly established in Batavia, put Portuguese Goa under a blockade. On 28 March 1638, Rajasingha led his army to victory against the Portuguese forces at Gannoruwa. Soon after this, Rajasingha sent a request for aid to the admiral Adam Westerwolt and by 23 May 1638 had signed an extensive military and trade treaty with them [1][2]. The Dutch seized Batticaloa on 18 May 1639 and a joint Kandyan-Dutch campaign began to make inroads into Portugal's lowland territories. The alliance was however deeply unpopular with the inhabitants of Kandy[3].

The rugged terrain of the Kandyan kingdom, an area now largely within the modern Central Province

Tensions soon arose between the two parties. Batticaloa was the traditional port of the Kandyan kingdom (Trincomalee had long been lost, first to the Jaffna Kingdom and then to the Portuguese), and Rajasingha was eager to acquire it as soon as possible. The Dutch, however, demurred, demanding full payment for their assistance in displacing the Portuguese. Despite a rising suspicion that the Dutch were not in Sri Lanka to expel the Portuguese, so much as to replace them, the alliance was one that was too valuable for Rajasingha to simply cancel, and joint Dutch-Kandyan efforts resulted in the seizure of Galle on 13 March 1640[4] and the restriction of Portuguese power to the west coast of Sri Lanka by 1641.

The slow end of the Eighty Year's War however soon resulted in a truce being called between Dutch and Portuguese forces in Sri Lanka (the crowns of Spain and Portugal were united between 1580-1640) sometime between 1641 and 1645. Rajasinga, and many of his advisers, furiously concluded that the Dutch intended to carve Sri Lanka up with the Portuguese, to the detriment of native power. The alliance of 1638 came to an abrupt end and Kandy launched into what was to be a hundred years of intermittent warfare with the Dutch[5].

The period between 1645 and 1649 saw the Kandyan adopting a scorched earth policy in eastern Sri Lanka. Capturing and annexing Dutch held territory was out of the question for the Kandyans who could muster neither the fire power nor the man power for an occupation. Nevertheless Rajasingha's policy of intentionally burning crops and depopulation villages drove the Dutch to the negotiating table and in 1649 and the Kandyan-Dutch alliance was resurrected, albeit on slightly different terms.

Despite the resurrection of the treaty tensions remained between the Dutch and the Kandyans. The Treaty of Munster had secured Dutch independence in Europe in 1648 and they could now pursue colonial and mercantile expansion without fighting a ruinous war on their doorstep simultaneously. In contrast the kingdom of Kandy was exhausted by constant war, and still without access to Batticaloa, Trincomalee, and the lowlands. Furthermore it had limited resources, and was increasingly wracked by internal instability.

Nevertheless from 1652 joint Kandyan-Dutch forces waged an increasingly brutal war against Portuguese strongholds along the coast. During this time Rajasingha had to request support from the sub-king — Patabanda — of Koggala, which suggests that the Kandyan kingdom had by this time become very decentralised, and that local leaders held considerable power.

The landlocked Kandyans were successful in the inland area of the Korales and Sabaragamuwa but relied heavily on Dutch sea power. Accordingly in August 1655 a large Dutch fleet commanded by Gerard Hulft arrived and the war entered its final phase with the siege by land and sea of the Portuguese colonial capital Colombo. By this point Rajasingha did not trust the Dutch at all and insisted that the city should be ceded to the Kandyan the moment it fell. When this happened in 1656, however, the Dutch shut the gates and left the Kandyans in the hinterlands. Faced with what he saw as yet another example of Dutch perfidy, Rajasingha repeated his devastations of the mid-1640s in the hinterlands of Colombo and withdrew to Kandy. The Dutch in the meanwhile secured power over the kingdom of Jaffna in 1658 and essentially replaced the Portuguese as Kandy's natural enemy on the island.

Safe in his mountain fastness Rajasingha now adopted the same tactics he had deployed against the Portuguese to harass the Dutch. In 1660 his army is known to have been in the vicinity of Dutch-held Trincomalee, and seized the Englishman Robert Knox. Knox subsequently moved to Senkadagala and lived there until the 1680s; his writings provide one of the best sources on the Kandyan kingdom in the 17th century. Rajasingha may also have considered involving the French in Sri Lankan politics in an attempt to get yet another European power to displace the Dutch 

In Kandy, Rajasingha faced discontented nobles and a populace who had always been opposed to the alliance with the Dutch. The internal situation became so unstable that for a while Rajasingha was forced to abandon the palace and allow rebels to seize control of Sengkadagala, and even suspended the annual Perahara. In 1664, he faced open rebellion from a noble known as Ambanwela Rala, and, unable in his fury to think of a suitable punishment, sent him to the Dutch, assuming they would execute him as a Kandyan noble. It was a mistake — Ambanwela Rala traded his knowledge of the workings of Kandy for a large coconut estate in Dutch territory and died a rich man 

Despite this the king managed to retain control of the crown and expanded the sacred precinct of Kandy, the Dalada Maligawa, adding an extra storey to the central building[10].

The single most important trend of Rajasingha's long reign was the replacement of the Portuguese by the Dutch. The strategy of bringing in one European power to help fend off another had backfired spectacularly, and the Kandyan kingdom found itself in much the same position as it had been with the Portuguese. Despite the Dutch being less determined to convert the mass populace and impose their cultural dominance, Europeans increasingly came to be seen as rapacious adventurers who were simply incapable of honouring their deals.

The situation inside the Kandyan kingdom became increasingly unstable and during Rajasingha's reign many of the powerful families that came to dominate Kandyan politics in the 18th century acquired greater power. It is interesting to note that attempts on Rajasingha's life appear to have been rather commonplace[11]. Rajasingha's reign also saw a gradual diminution of the Kandyan's dreams of reuniting Sri Lanka under a single, native, crown.

Vimaladarmasuriya the Second

Vimaladharmasurya II (1687-1707) was a king of Kandy who succeeded his father, Rajasinghe II. He allowed Joseph Vaz to settle in his kingdom and allowed him to preach the Christian faith.

Sri Weera Parakarama Naredrasingha

Vira Parakrama Narendra Sinha (1707-1739 AD) was a king of Sri Lanka of the kingdom of Kandy. Vira Parakrama Narendra Sinha was the son of Vimaladharmasurya II. He came to the throne when he was seventeen years old and reigned for 32 years.

Vira Parakrama Narendra Sinha is known as a very pious monarch, and like his Predecessor, he lived at peace with the Dutch invaders and devoted himself to the furtherance of literature and religion.

Sri Vijaya Rajasinghe

Vijaya Rajasinha (reigned 1739-1747) was a member of the Madurai Nayak Dynasty and succeeded his brother-in-law Vira Narendra Sinha as the King of Kandy.

Keerthi Sri Rajasingha

Kirti Sri Raja Singha was the second Nayaka king of Kandy. He was a prince from the Madurai Nayak Dynasty and the brother-in-law of Sri Vijaya Raja Singha. He succeeded his brother-in-law to the throne in 1751.

He devoted the first few years of his reign to the advancement of literature and religion. The king, later with Dutch assistance learned from Bhikkus from Siam (Thailand) for the purpose of advancing Buddhism in Sri Lanka, also building the Raja Maha Vihara (Gangarama) was built at Kandy. Kirti Sri built the existing inner temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic, and caused the Mahavansa chronicle to be continued from the time of Parakrama Bahu IV down to his own reign.

In 1761 King Keerthi Sri Rajasinha attacked the Dutch garrisons and forts at Matara, Katuwana, Tangalle, Marakade and Urubokke, completely destroying them, and killing Dutch while some surrendered and ended up as prisoners.

In order to revenge the humiliation, the new Dutch governor Van Eck had immediate plans to attack Kandy, but the weakness in fortification and garrison forbade the Dutch. Later they did attack in 1764 and in 1765. Hence, in the early part of 1763 the Dutch were only consolidating their positions and gradually expelling Kandyans from the territories taken over from Dutch. Throughout 1763 the King continually sought peace and sent his envoys to discuss terms. The Governor wished the King to cede the three four and seven Korales and Puttlam and hand over the entire coastline of island to the Dutch. The king was not agreeable to any demand that diminished his sovereignty and was deliberately delaying a settlement hoping for help from the English in Madras after his discussion and negotiations with John Pybus 1762.


The King in mid 1762 sought help from George Pigot, Governor of Fort St George Madras for assistance. The British eager to obtain the monopoly of trading in cinnamon, pepper, betel nut (puwak) from the Kandyan Kings also wanted to expel the Dutch from the coasts. A reason to call on the British for assistance by the Kandyan King in 1762 was that after the treaty of Paris, the Dutch poured troops into Sri Lanka. They were bent on capturing Kandy from six directions (1764). Anticipating such a scenario the King sent an envoy to the English Governor of Madras to assist him in expelling the Dutch. This envoy, a junior Kandyan Official in the military made a clandestine trip to Madras Fort, and the English responded by sending their councilor Mr Pybus.

John Pybus, a writer of the British East India Company, sailed to Kandy with a backup of five ships and about 200 armed men. A British vessel brought Pybus to Trincomalee on 5 May 1762. The Dutch knew of the arrival of Pybus through their spies and they were kept informed of his movements. Pybus took an exhausting covert trip to meet the King on 24 May 1762. After several talks without any conclusive decisions Pybus left after a month. The King gave him a ring, sword, a gold chain with breast jewels and left the country crossing the river at Puttalam pass while the The Dissawa who accompanied Pybus presented the ships commander Samuel Cornish a gold chain and a ring in the name of King "Keerthi Sri Rajasinha ".

John Pybus in his notes described the King as a man of tolerable stature, reddish in complexion and very brisk in his movements. Pybus was amazed as to how the kandyans had managed to fight a war with Dutch and had captured Matara Dutch Fort. He wrote that "They had put every European to the sword except two officers who are now prisoners of the country."

He married the daughter of one Nadukattu Sami Nayakkar in 1749. He further married three more Nayakkar queens from Madurai, but had no children, but had six daughters and two sons by his favorite Sinhala lady (Yakada Doli), daughter of the late Dissave (Headman) of Bintenna, granddaughter of the blind and aged Mampitiya Dissave. Both his sons survived the king and his daughters’ married Nayakkar relatives of the king. Mampitiya’s sons claim for the throne was overlooked and the choice fell on the king’s brother who was living in court.

The king died on January 2, 1782, of the injuries caused two months before by a fall from his horse after a reign of 35 years which the people saw as a great religious revival, and had a sentimental attachment to the King.

Rajadhi Rajasinghe

Sri Rajadhi Rajasinha (reigned 1782-1798) was a member of the Madurai royal family and succeeded his brother, Kirti Sri Rajasinha as King of Kandy in 1782.

Sri Vickrama Rajasinghe

Sri Vikrama Rajasinha (1780 - January 30, 1832) was the last king of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and the last of four kings from the Nayakar dynasty. He was eventually deposed by the British under the terms of the Kandyan Convention.

Prior to his coronation, Sri Vikrama Rajasinha was known as Prince Kannasamy. He was a member of the Madurai royal family and the nephew of Sri Rajadhi Rajasinha. He succeed his uncle as the King of Kandy in 1798 at the age of eighteen.

There was a rival claimant to succeed Sri Rajadhi Rajasinha, the brother of Queen Upendramma, who had a stronger claim. However, Pilimatalawe, the first Adigar (Prime Minister) chose Prince Kannasamy, reportedly with deep seated plans to usurp the throne to set up a dynasty of his own. Sri Vikrama Rajasinha was faced with numerous conspiracies to overthrow him and reigned through one of the most turbulent periods in Sri Lanka's history.

During his time, the British who had succeeded the Dutch in the Maritime Provinces had not interfered in the politics of the Kandy. But Pilimatalava, the first Adigar of the king, started covert operations with the British to provoke the King into acts of aggression, which would give the British an excuse to seize the Kingdom. The Adigar manipulated the king into beginning a military conflict with the British, who had gained a strong position in the coastal provinces. War was declared and on March 22, 1803 the British entered Kandy with no resistance, Sri Vikrama Rajasinha having fled. The adigar massacred the British garrison in Kandy in June and restored the king to the throne. Pilimitalava plotted to overthrow the king and seize the crown for himself, but his plot was discovered, and, having been pardoned on two previous occasions, he was executed.

The disgraced adigar was replaced by his nephew, Ehelepola, who soon came under suspicion of following his uncle in plotting the overthrow of Sri Vikrama Rajasinha. A rebellion instigated by Ehalepola was suppressed, after which he then fled to Colombo and joined the British. After failing to surrender (after 3 weeks of notice), the exasperated king dismissed Ehelepola, confiscated his lands, and ordered the imprisonment and execution of his wife and children. A propagandised account of the execution was widely circulated by sympathisers.

Ehelepola fled to British-controlled territory, where he persuaded the British that Sri Vikrama Rajasinha's tyranny deserved a military intervention. The pretext was provided by the seizure of a number of British merchants, who were detained on suspicion of spying and were tortured, killing several of them. An invasion was duly mounted and advanced to Kandy without resistance, reaching the city on February 10, 1815. On March 2, the kingdom was ceded to the British under a treaty called the Kandyan Convention. Sri Vikrama Rajasinha was captured and taken as a royal prisoner by the British to Vellore Fort in southern India. He lived on a small allowance given to him and his queens by the British Government. He died of dropsy on January 30, 1832 aged 52 years.

Regarding the King's reign, the historian L.E. Blaze states that "He was not as ardent a patriot as his immediate successors; nor did he show those mental and moral qualities which enabled former kings to hold their own against rebellion and invasion. To say he was cruel does not mean much, for cruel kings and nobles were not rare in those days; and it is questionable whether all the cruel deeds attributed to Sri Vickrema Rajasinghe were of his own devising or done by his authority. It might be more fair to regard him as a weak tool in the hands of designing chiefs than as the monster of cruelty, which it is an idle fashion with some writers to call him. And it should not be forgotten that he did a good deal to beautify his capital. The lake and the Octagon in Kandy have always been considered the work of the king."

On March 2, the kingdom was ceded to the British and Sri Vikrama Rajasinha was deposed and taken as a royal prisoner by the British to Vellore Fort in southern India. He lived on a small allowance given to him and his two queens by the British Government. He died of dropsy on January 30, 1832 aged 52 years.

The current flag of Sri Lanka incorporates Sri Vikrama Rajasinha's Royal Standard. In September 1945 it was proposed in an address to the State Council that the flag be adopted as Sri Lanka's national flag:

"This House is of opinion that the Royal Standard of King Sri Vikrama Rajasinha depicting a yellow lion passant holding a sword in its right paw on a red background, which was removed to England after the Convention of 1815, should once again be adopted as the official flag of Free Lanka."

In 2008, the ‘Sri Lanka Janatha Urumayan Surekeeme Jathika Vyaparaya’ in a written representation to President Mahinda Rajapaksa has said that it has been discovered that the royal standard of the Kandyan Kingdom, last used by King Sri Vikrama Rajasinha, is now in the possession of a British national. The discovery has been made by a former curator of the Kandy National Museum Senarath Panawatte, the letter addressed to the President by Ven. Medagama Dhammananda Thero and S. Liyanage, President and Secretary respectively of the organisation has said. The organisation also made representations to the Chief Minister, Central Province Sarath Ekanayake regarding the importance of the recovery of the flag.

Kandy Lake, an artificial lake overlooking the palace in Kandy was commissioned by Sri Vikrama Rajasinha.

During Sri Vikrama Rajasinha's time as a royal prisoner in Vellore Fort he received a privy purse, which his descendants continued to received from the Government of Sri Lanka until it was abolished in 1965