The first Navy the nation raised

In the middle of the 10th Century, in the reign of Parakrama Bahu the Great, maritime trade between Sri Lanka and Ramanna (part of present day Myanmar) was thriving.

Sri Lankan merchants went to Myanmar frequently to exchange their products for elephants, probably for the large-scale construction work taking place in the country after King Parakrama Bahu united the Sri Lankan nation under one banner after decades of internal strife.

Ambassadors were exchanged either way, with costly gifts to maintain diplomatic relationships between the kingdoms, and movement of religious scholars was a regular feature in the interaction between two countries.

But a king of Ramanna for some reason suddenly became unfriendly towards Sri Lanka and started harassing envoys, traders, and religious scholars who visited his country from Sri Lanka.

He deprived Sri Lankan envoys who visited his country of the reciprocal maintenances that were formally granted and issued orders to his traders to not to sell elephants to the ships calling at his ports. Then he went even further and ordered trades in his country to increase the price of elephants from 1,000 silvers to 3,000 silvers. The custom of presenting an elephant as a gift to each ship that arrived with a commission from the King of Sri Lanka was done away with.

When envoys from King Parakrama Bahu took a message written on a gold leaf to the King of Ramanna, he accused them of taking that message to a king of a kingdom in Siam, perhaps an enemy of his, although the message was for him, and imprisoned them in a fortress in the mountains.

The envoy by the name of Tapassin was robbed of all his money, elephants, and his vessels, then chained to a block of wood and employed in sprinkling water in the prison. The King of Ramanna acted this way not only towards Sri Lankan envoys and merchants but to other envoys from the Indian subcontinent as well.

One day the King of Ramanna summoned the imprisoned Sri Lankan envoy and declared: “Henceforth no vessel from Sinhala country shall be sent to my kingdom. Give us now in writing the declaration that if messengers from Sri Lanka are sent to us again, if we slay the envoys that have come here, no blame of any kind will come to us. If you do not sign this declaration agreeing to our conditions, you shall not have the permission to return home.”

After forcing the envoy to put his signature on the declaration, the Ramanna King sent these envoys together with two scholars, Vegassara and Dammakiththi, in a leaky vessel to Sri Lanka.

The King’s insolence had no limits; in another instance, he took the money and cargo that were sent by King Parakrama Bahu in exchange for elephants, promising the merchant 14 elephants and the balance in silver currency. The promise was never fulfilled. Again he violated diplomatic norms by forcibly taking a princess who was being sent from Sri Lanka to Cambodia as a bride, to the Royal Court there.

When King Parakrama Bahu heard of all these incidents, he decided to launch a punitive expedition to country of Ramanna. When this matter was discussed at the Royal Court, a General by the name of Damila Adikari volunteered to lead the expedition. The King agreed and placed under him a group of subordinate military officers to manage the expedition.

The King also made arrangements to build a large number of ships along the coast for the expedition, and according to Chulawansa, the whole coast around Sri Lanka resembled one great shipyard. Within five months, the building of ships was completed and they were ready to sail at Pallawanka Port.

The ships were provisioned with one year’s supply of rice and other food items along with an abundant supply of weapons. A special mention is made of Gokannaka arrows against enemy elephants, medicine preserved in cow horns for healing of venomous wounds caused by poisoned arrows, remedies for curing sicknesses caused by bad drinking water, iron pincers for extracting arrow heads from wounds, skilful physicians, and female nurses.

The Chulawansa describes that the departing fleet resembled a ‘swimming island’ in the vast ocean. Of the great fleet, due to bad weather, few ships perished and several ships not being able to reach the destination landed in different countries.

One vessel had gone to an island called Crows Island and after a minor battle had come back to Sri Lanka with some prisoners from that island. Five vessels under Nagaragiri Kiththi entered the Port of Kusumi in the kingdom of Ramanna. The ships under Damila Adikari entered the port of Pupphalama, another Port in Ramanna.

No sooner the troops landed, the fighting began between the two armies. After a series of battles, the King of Ramanna was killed and invading troops took control of the country and a victory parade was held, in which the leaders of the Sri Lankan Army paraded in the streets, mounted on white elephants.

Since both countries were Buddhist countries, the Buddhist priest in Ramanna knowing that King Parakrama Bahu would listen to the bhikkus sent a message to their counterparts in Sri Lanka requesting them to intervene on their behalf. In that message, a tribute of any number of elephants for the King of Sri Lanka was also offered. King Parakrama Bahu, magnanimous in the victory, granted the people of Ramanna freedom and withdrew his forces back to Sri Lanka.

There is a living testimony of this invasion, in form of a rock inscription, which corroborates the vivid description in the Chulawansa, at Devanagala in Mawanalle. According to this inscription, Nagaragiri Kiththi was rewarded with a land grand for his service in the Ramanna invasion by King Parakrama Bahu in his 12th year in crown. Nagaragiri Kitti would have been a chieftain from this area and he would have spent his well-earned retirement in Mawanella.

Thus ended the expedition for which the Sri Lankan nation raised its first Navy 947 years ago to reach a far-away country to correct an impudent ruler who had unfairly insulted the Sri Lankan nation.

(The writer is Commander of the Southern Naval Area.)