CYIL vol. 16 (2025)

PUNSARA AMARASINGHE of natural circular fortification’, which allowed the Kandyans to defy European modes of warfare for three centuries. 4 Gutted by the constant invasions of Portuguese from 1594, Kandy’s economy was waning, and it still dwelt in the old feudal order wherein the king personified the fullest divine command as the ultimate guardian of the people. 5 It should be noted that the notion of freedom of thought and basic liberties that Europe began to enjoy during Age of Reason had not waved at the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Kandy as a result of its despotic nature where as people involved in an existential struggle by handing over their destinies to the King and native aristocrats around him. Despite the sense of vulnerability that surrounded Kandy during its challenging times before the Western invasions, its cosmic significance remained unchanged. The kingdom of Kandy served as the last bastion separating the ravaged coastal regions under European colonizers from the Sinhalese people. Consequently, its structure seemed more celestial than merely a political entity, with the concept of sovereignty resting in the hands of the king. The king of Kandy was regarded as the ruler of what is known as the Tri Sinhala, which includes the Rajarata, Ruhunu, and Maya regions. Although it was an unrealistic aspiration, the Kandyan kings, from the onset of European invasions, were reluctant to accept the legitimacy of the Western invaders regarding the territories they had conquered. 6 Treaties such as the one between Dharmapala and the Portuguese, which led to the complete subjugation of the Kotte kingdom to King Philip of Habsburg in 1580 A.D., had little impact on the later kings of Kandy. They did not feel bound by the treaties made by the Portuguese with the Sinhalese kings. Overall, the Sinhalese monarchs in the Kandyan kingdom were unfamiliar with the whole concept of “ Pacta Sunt Servanda ,” which is closely associated with the early development of international law in Western thought. When the earliest seeds of international law sprang within the Salamanca school of thought pioneered by stalwarts such as Vittoria and Suarez who conceived the idea of international law through topological lenses, Sri Lankan monarchs dwelled in the cosmic idea of kingship. 7 Cosmic idea of kingship pervaded in Sri Lankan history had solid basis from Buddhist cosmology, which was by all means hierarchical in character with the Buddha standing at its apex, while below the Buddha is the world of the gods headed by the four guardian deities of the island namely, Natha, Vishnu, Kataragama and Saman. Beneath this plane of deities lies the world of other powerful deities, and finally there is the world of the demonic, inhabited by disordering spirits and ghosts. Mahavamsa and Chulawamsa , the chronicles elucidating the history of Sri Lanka from the earliest time to the advent of the European invaders project the duty of righteous king as the main defender of Buddhism from foreign invaders. This historiography is a typical depiction of clash between good and evil, in which the Buddhist cosmological authority had been vested within King. 4 SKINNER, T. Fifty Years of Ceylon , Caves: Colombo, 1891. 5 DEWARAJA, L. The Kandyan Kingdom: Secret of its Survival, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Sri Lanka , 1986, Vol. 30:1, p. 120. 6 OBEYASEKERA, G. The Doomed King: A Requiem for Sri Vickrama Rajasinghe , Colombo: PereraHussain, 2017. 7 AMARASINGHE, P. Buddhist Cosmological Narratives: Hybrid Statehood in Sri Lanka and Myanmar, Indian Yearbook of Comparative Law , Vol. 12, 2023.

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