Place · medieval Sinhala capital · Sri Lanka
Polonnaruwa
Also known as Mummudi-chola-mandalam, Jananathamangalam, Chola province
The second Sinhala capital, 100 kilometres southeast of Anuradhapura, functioning as capital of Sri Lanka from the 11th to the 13th century after Rajaraja Chola I's 993 CE invasion made Anuradhapura untenable. The Gal Vihara rock cuts — four massive Buddha images carved from a single granite outcrop under Parakramabahu I in the 12th century — are the island's masterpieces of Buddhist sculpture. Chola-period Shiva Devales (Hindu shrines) in the same city record a seventy-six-year occupation and the ongoing presence of Tamil elites after reconquest. The Parakrama Samudra, a 2,400-hectare irrigation tank, remains in daily use. UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1982.
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Tradition
- Sri Lankan chronicles; Chola inscriptions
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 7.940, 81.019
Worth knowing
Five Shiva temples of the Chola occupation still stand at Polonnaruwa, the oldest stone buildings in the city, with Tamil inscriptions and bronze Nataraja images indistinguishable from Kaveri delta work. Vijayabahu I drove the Cholas out in 1070 and kept their capital, so Sri Lanka's medieval centre of gravity was moved south by an invasion and then stayed there.
Connections (5)
- PatronageParākramabāhu I
Parākramabāhu I rebuilt Polonnaruwa after the Chola occupation, restored the dry zone's reservoir system and dug the Parākrama Samudra, and forced the three monastic fraternities into one ordination lineage. The Gal Vihāra Buddhas and the city's whole surviving plan date from his thirty-three years. The saying attributed to him, that not one drop of rain should reach the sea without serving people first, is the clearest statement of what the dry zone's hydraulic civilisation was for.
- CampaignThanjavur Brihadishvara
Rājarāja and Rājendra Chola took Anurādhapura and held Polonnaruwa as a provincial capital for some seventy years, building Śiva temples there whose bronzes are among the finest surviving. Thanjavur's empire is why the island's second capital has Hindu shrines in the middle of it. The Chola bronzes cast at Polonnaruwa during the occupation are indistinguishable in technique from those made at Thanjavur, because the same workshops supplied both.
- Succession in timeSigiriya
Sigiriya was a capital for eighteen years in the 470s and Polonnaruwa for about two centuries from 1070; between them Anurādhapura held the centre for a millennium. Sri Lanka's capitals move south and east through the dry zone as invasion from south India pushes them, and each move leaves a city behind.
- CampaignAnantavarman Choḍaganga
Chodaganga's dynasty came from the Ganga line that had ruled Kalinga from Kalinganagara and had married into the Cholas — his own name records it, and his mother was a Chola princess. He then fought the Cholas over Vengi and the Godavari delta for decades. Sri Lanka's Polonnaruwa, which the Cholas had held as a province a century earlier, and the Kalinga coast were the two edges of the same Chola maritime reach, and the Gangas are the power that pushed one of them back.
- Successor capital ofAnurādhapura
Anuradhapura had been continuously occupied for more than a thousand years when the Cholas sacked it about 993 and moved the administration south-east to Polonnaruwa, which was easier to hold and closer to the ports. It never recovered, and when Vijayabahu drove the Cholas out in 1070 he kept their capital rather than returning to his own — so Sri Lanka's medieval centre was placed by an invader and left there by the man who expelled him.
On these journeys
Sources
Polonnaruwa — UNESCO
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