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The Jaffna kingdom (, ; 1215–1619 CE), also known as Kingdom of Aryachakravarti, was a historical kingdom of what today is northern Sri Lanka. It came into existence around the town of Jaffna on the Jaffna peninsula and was traditionally thought to have been established after the invasion of Kalinga Magha from Kalinga in India.Nadarajan, V. History of Ceylon Tamils, p. 72Indrapala, K. Early Tamil Settlements in Ceylon, p. 16 Established as a powerful force in the north, northeast and west of the island, it eventually became a tribute-paying feudatory of the Pandyan Empire in modern South India in 1258, gaining independence when the last Pandyan ruler of Madurai was defeated and expelled in 1323 by Malik Kafur, the army general of the Delhi Sultanate. The History of Sri Lanka by Patrick Peebles, p. 31 For a brief period in the early to mid-14th century it was an ascendant power in the island of Sri Lanka, to which all regional kingdoms accepted subordination. However, the kingdom was overpowered by the rival Kotte kingdom around 1450 when it was invaded by Prince Sapumal under the orders of Parakramabahu VI.Nadarajan, V. History of Ceylon Tamils, p. 72Indrapala, K. Early Tamil Settlements in Ceylon, p. 16
It gained independence from kingdom of Kotte control in 1467 after Kanakasooriya Cinkaiariyan and his two son's returned from Madurai with mercenaries to wrest the Jaffna Kingdom from Kotte's over lordship.Kunarasa K, The Jaffna Dynasty p.68-72Nadarajan V, History of Ceylon Tamils p.81Peebles, History of Sri Lanka, p. 34 and its subsequent rulers directed their energies towards consolidating its economic potential by maximising revenue from pearls, elephant exports and land revenue. It was less feudal than most of the other regional kingdoms on the island of Sri Lanka of the period. During this period, important local Tamil language literature was produced and Hindu temples were built, including an academy for language advancement. The Sinhalese Nampota dated in its present form to the 14th or 15th century CE suggests that the whole of the Jaffna kingdom, including parts of the modern Trincomalee District, was recognised as a Tamil region by the name Demala-pattanama (Tamil city).Indrapala, K – The Evolution of an Ethnic Identity: The Tamils in Sri Lanka C. 300 BCE to C. 1200 CE. Colombo: Vijitha Yapa. In this work, a number of villages that are now situated in the Jaffna district, Mullaitivu and Trincomalee districts are mentioned as places in Demala-pattanama.
The arrival of the Portuguese on the island of Sri Lanka in 1505, and its strategic location in the Palk Strait connecting all interior Sinhala kingdom to South India, created political problems. Many of its kings confronted and ultimately made peace with the Portuguese. In 1617, Cankili II, a usurper to the throne, confronted the Portuguese but was defeated, thus bringing the kingdom's independent existence to an end in 1619.Gnanaprakasar, S. A critical history of Jaffna, pp. 153–172 Although rebels like Migapulle Arachchi—with the help of the Thanjavur Nayak kingdom—tried to recover the kingdom, they were eventually defeated. An historical relation of the island Ceylon, Volume 1, by Robert Knox and JHO Paulusz, pp. 19–47. An historical relation of the island Ceylon, Volume 1, by Robert Knox and JHO Paulusz, p. 43. Nallur, a suburb of modern Jaffna town, was its capital.
After the conquest of Rajarata, he moved the capital to the Jaffna Peninsula which was more secured by heavy Vanni forest and ruled as a tribute-paying subordinate of the Chola empire of Tanjavur, in modern Tamil Nadu, India. During this period (1247), a Malay chieftain from Tambralinga in modern Thailand named Chandrabhanu invaded the politically fragmented island. Although King Parakramabahu II (1236–1270) from Dambadeniya was able to repulse the attack, Chandrabhanu moved north and secured the throne for himself around 1255 from Magha. Sadayavarman Sundara Pandyan I invaded Sri Lanka in the 13th century and defeated Chandrabhanu the usurper of the Jaffna kingdom in northern Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka and South-East Asia: Political, Religious and Cultural Relations by W.M. Sirisena, p. 57 Sadayavarman Sundara Pandyan I forced Chandrabhanu to submit to the Pandyan rule and to pay tributes to the Pandyan Dynasty. But later on when Chandrabhanu became powerful enough he again invaded the Singhalese kingdom but he was defeated by the brother of Sadayavarman Sundara Pandyan I called Veera Pandyan I and Chandrabhanu lost his life. Sri Lanka was invaded for the 3rd time by the Pandyan Dynasty under the leadership of Arya Cakravarti who established the Jaffna kingdom.
Politically, the dynasty was an expanding power in the 13th and 14th century with all regional kingdoms paying tribute to it. However, it met with simultaneous confrontations with the Vijayanagar empire that ruled from Vijayanagara, southern India, and a rebounding Kingdom of Kotte from the south of Sri Lanka. This led to the kingdom becoming a vassal of the Vijayanagar Empire as well as briefly losing its independence under the Kotte kingdom from 1450 to 1467. The kingdom was re-established when Kanakasooriya Cinkaiariyan and his two son's returned from Madurai with mercenaries to wrest the Jaffna Kingdom from Kotte's over lordship.Kunarasa K, The Jaffna Dynasty p.68-72Nadarajan V, History of Ceylon Tamils p.81 It maintained very close commercial and political relationships with the Thanjavur Nayaks kingdom in southern India as well as the Kandyan kingdom and segments of the Kotte kingdom. This period saw the building of Hindu temples and a flourishing of literature, both in Tamil and Sanskrit.de Silva, A History of Sri Lanka, pp. 132–133Kunarasa, K. The Jaffna Dynasty, pp. 73–75
Cankili II was supported by the Kandy rulers. After the fall of the Jaffna kingdom, the two unnamed princesses of Jaffna had been married to Senarat's stepsons, Kumarasingha and Vijayapala. Cankili II expectably received military aid from the Thanjavur Nayak Kingdom. On his part, Raghunatha Nayak of Thanjavur made attempts to recover the Jaffna kingdom for his protege, the Prince of Rameshwaram. However, all attempts to recover the Jaffna kingdom from the Portuguese met with failure.
By June 1619, there were two Portuguese expeditions: a naval expedition that was repulsed by the and another expedition by Filipe de Oliveira and his 5,000 strong land army which was able to inflict defeat on Cankili II. Cankili, along with every surviving member of the royal family were captured and taken to Goa, where he was hanged. The remaining captives were encouraged to become monks or nuns in the holy orders, and as most obliged, it avoided further claimants to the Jaffna throne. In 1620 Migapulle Arachchi, with a troop of Thanjavur soldiers, revolted against the Portuguese and was defeated. A second rebellion was led by a chieftain called Varunakulattan with the support of Raghunatha Nayak.
Maniyam was the chief of the parrus. He was assisted by mudaliyars who were in turn assisted by udaiyars, persons of authority over a village or a group of villages. They were the custodians of law and order and gave assistance to survey land and collect revenues in the area under their control. The village headman was called talaiyari, pattankaddi or adappanar and he assisted in the collection of taxes and was responsible for the maintenance of order in his territorial unit. The Adappanar were the headmen of the ports. The Pattankaddi and Adappanar were from the maritime Karaiyar and Paravar communities. In addition, each caste had a chief who supervised the performance of caste obligations and duties.Gunasingam, M. Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism, p. 58
Ibn Batuta, during his visit in 1344, observed that the kingdom of Jaffna was a major trading kingdom with extensive overseas contacts, who described that the kingdom had a "considerable forces by the sea", testifying to their strong reputed navy. He witnessed a hundred ships of varying sizes belonging to the Jaffna kingdom on the Malabar Coast. The kingdom's trades were oriented towards maritime South India, with which it developed a commercial interdependence. The non-agriculture tradition of the kingdom became strong as a result of large coastal fishing and boating population and growing opportunities for seaborne commerce. Influential commercial groups, drawn mainly from south Indian mercantile groups as well as other, resided in the royal capital, port, and market centers. Artisan settlements were also established and groups of skilled tradesmen—carpenters, stonemasons, wavers, dryers, gold and silver smiths—resided in urban centers. Thus, a pluralistic socio-economic tradition of agriculture marine activities, commerce and handicraft production was well established.Pfaffenberger, B . The Sri Lankan Tamils, pp. 30–31
Jaffna kingdom was less feudalized than other kingdoms in Sri Lanka, such as Kotte and Kandy. Its economy was based on more money transactions than transactions on land or its produce. The Jaffna defense forces were not feudal levies; soldiers in the kings service were paid in cash. The king's officials, namely Mudaliayars, were also paid in cash and the numerous Hindu temples seem not to have owned extensive properties, unlike the Buddhist establishments in the South. Temples and the administrators depended on the king and the worshippers for their upkeep. Royal and Army officials were thus a salaried class and these three institutions consumed over 60% of the revenues of the kingdom and 85% of the government expenditures. Much of the kingdom's revenues also came from cash except the Elephants from the Vanni feudatories. At the time of the conquest by the Portuguese in 1620, the kingdom which was truncated in size and restricted to the Jaffna peninsula had revenues of 11,700 pardaos of which 97% came from land or sources connected to the land. One was called land rent and another called paddy tax called arretane.
Apart from the land related taxes, there were other taxes, such as Garden tax from compounds where, among others, plantain, coconut and arecanut Areca catechu were grown and irrigated by water from the well. Tree tax on trees such as palmyrah, margosa and iluppai and Poll tax equivalent to a personal tax from each. Professional tax was collected from members of each caste or guild and commercial taxes consisting of, among others, stamp duty on clothes (clothes could not be sold privately and had to have official stamp), Taraku or levy on items of food, and Port and customs duties. Columbuthurai, which connected the Peninsula with the mainland at Poonakari with its boat services, was one of the chief port, and there were customs check posts at the sand passes of Pachilaippalai. Elephants from the southern Sinhalese kingdoms and the Vanni region were brought to Jaffna to be sold to foreign buyers. They were shipped abroad from a bay called Urukathurai, which is now called Kayts—a shortened form of Portuguese Caes dos elephantess (Bay of Elephants). Perhaps a peculiarity of Jaffna was the levy of license fee for the cremation of the dead.
Not all payments in kind were converted to cash, offerings of rice, bananas, milk, dried fish, game meat and curd persisted. Some inhabitants also had to render unpaid personal services called uliyam.Abeysinghe, T. Jaffna Under the Portuguese, pp. 29–30
The kings also issued many types of coins for circulation. Several types of coins categorized as Setu coins coins issued from 1284 to 1410 are found in large quantities in the northern part of Sri Lanka. The obverse of these coins have a human figure flanked by lamps and the reverse has the Nandi (bull) symbol, the legend Setu in Tamil language with a crescent moon above.
As the state religion, Hinduism enjoyed all the prerogatives of the establishment during the period of the Jaffna kingdom. The Aryacakravarti dynasty was very conscious of its duties as a patron towards Hinduism because of the patronage given by its ancestors to the Rameswaram temple, a well-known pilgrimage center of Indian Hinduism. As noted, one of the titles assumed by the kings was Setukavalan or protector of Setu another name for Rameswaram. Setu was used in their coins as well as in inscriptions as marker of the dynasty.Gunasingam, M. Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism, p. 63
Sapumal Kumaraya (also known as Chempaha Perumal in Tamil language), who ruled the Jaffna kingdom on behalf of the Kotte kingdom is credited with either building or renovating the Nallur Kandaswamy temple.Gnanaprakasar, S. A critical history of Jaffna, p. 103 Singai Pararasasegaram is credited with building the Sattanathar temple, the Vaikuntha Pillaiyar temple and the Veerakaliamman temple. He built a pond called Yamuneri and filled it with water from the Yamuna river of North India, which is considered holy by Hindus.Kunarasa, K. The Jaffna Dynasty, pp. 73–74 He was a frequent the visitor of the Koneswaram temple, as was his son and successor King Cankili I. King Jeyaveera Cinkaiariyan had the traditional history of the temple compiled as a chronicle in verse, entitled Dakshina Kailasa Puranam, known today as the Sthala Puranam of Koneshwaram Temple. Major temples were normally maintained by the kings and a salary was paid from the royal treasury to those who worked in the temple, unlike in India and rest of Sri Lanka, where religious establishments were autonomous entities with large endowments of land and related revenue.
Most accepted Shiva as the primary deity and the lingam, the universal symbol of Shiva, was consecrated in shrines dedicated to him. The other Hindu gods of the pantheon such as Murugan, Ganesha, Kali were also worshipped. At the village level, village deities were popular along with the worship of Kannaki whose veneration was common amongst the Sinhalese people in the south as well. Belief in charm and evil spirits existed, just as in the rest of South Asia.
There were many Hindu temples within the kingdom. Some were of great historic importance, such as the Koneswaram temple in Trincomalee, Ketheeswaram temple in Mannar, Naguleswaram temple in Keerimalai along with hundreds of other temples that were scattered over the region.Gunasingam, Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism, p. 65 The ceremonies and festivals were similar to those in modern South India, with some slight changes in emphasis. The Tevaram of Nayanmar was used in worship. The Hindu New Year falling on the middle of April was more elaborately celebrated and festivals, such as Navaratri, Deepavali, Maha Shivaratri, and Thai Pongal, along with marriages, deaths and coming of age ceremonies were part of the daily life.Gunasingam, Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism, p. 66
Until ca. 1550, when Cankili I expelled the Buddhists of Jaffna, who were all Sinhalese, and destroyed their many places of worship, Buddhism prevailed in the Jaffna kingdom, among the Sinhalese who had remained in the territory.Wilhelm Geiger Culture of Ceylon in mediaeval times, Edited by Heinz Bechert, p. 8C. Rasanayagam, Ancient Jaffna: being a research into the history of Jaffna, pp. 382–383De Silva, Chandra Richard Sri Lanka and the Maldive Islands, p. 128 Some important places of Buddhist worship in the Jaffna kingdom, which are mentioned in the Nampota are: Naga-divayina (Nagadipa, modern Nainativu), Telipola, Mallagama, Minuvangomu-viharaya and Kadurugoda (modern Kantharodai),Seneviratna, Anuradha Anusmrti: thoughts on Sinhala culture and civilization, Volume 2Indrapala, Karthigesu Evolution of an Ethnic Identity, (2005), p. 210 of these only the Buddhist temple at Nagadipa survive today.
The social organization of the people of the Jaffna kingdom was based on a caste system and a Matrilineality kudi (clan) system similar to the caste structure of South India. The Aryacakravarti kings and their immediate family claimed Brahma-Kshatriya status, meaning Brahmins who took to Kshatriya life.Gnanaprakasar, S. A critical history of Jaffna, p. 96 The Madapalli were the palace stewards and cooks, the Akampadayar
Nallur, the capital was built with four entrances with gates. There were two main roadways and four temples at the four gateways. The rebuilt temples that exist now do not match their original locations which instead are occupied by churches erected by the Portuguese. The center of the city was Muthirai Santhai (market place) and was surrounded by a square fortification around it. There were courtly buildings for the Kings, Brahmin priests, soldiers and other service providers. The old Nallur Kandaswamy temple functioned as a defensive fort with high walls. In general, the city was laid out like the traditional temple town according to Hindu traditions.
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