Adigar, who, having allied himself with the royal family by marrying the widow of the great Prakrama, contrived to place her on the throne, under the title of Queen Leela-Wattee, A.D. 1197.  Within less than three years she was deposed by an usurper, and he being speedily put to flight, another queen, Kalyana-Wattee, was placed at the head of the kingdom.  The next ill-fated sovereign, a baby of three months old, was speedily set aside by means of a hired force, and the first queen, Leela-Wattee, restored to the throne.  But the same band who had effected a revolution in her favour were prompt to repeat the exploit; she was a second time deposed, and a third time recalled by the intervention of foreign mercenaries.[3]

[Footnote 1:  Wijayo Bahu II., killed by Mihindo, A.D. 1187.]

[Footnote 2:  Kirti Nissanga, brought from Calinga, A.D. 1192.]

[Footnote 3:  Of the very rare examples now extant of Singhalese coins, one of the most remarkable bears the name of Leela-Wattee.—­Numismatic Chronicle, 1853.  Papers on some Coins of Ceylon, by W.S.W.  Vaux, Esq., p. 126.]

[Sidenote:  A.D. 1211.]

Within thirty years from the decease of Prakrama Bahu, the kingdom was reduced to such an extremity of weakness by contentions amongst the royal family, and by the excesses of their partisans, that the vigilant Malabars seized the opportunity to land with an army of 24,000 men, reconquered the whole of the island, and Magha, their leader, became king of Ceylon A.D. 1211.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Rajavali, p. 256.]

The adventurers who invaded Ceylon on this occasion came not from Chola or Pandya, as before, but from Calinga, that portion of the Dekkan which now forms the Northern Circars.  Their domination was marked by more than ordinary cruelty, and the Mahawanso and Rajaratnacari describe with painful elaboration the extinction of Buddhism, the overthrow of temples, the ruin of dagobas, the expulsion of priests, and the occupation of their dwellings by Damilos, the outrage of castes, the violation of property, and the torture of its possessors to extract the disclosure of their treasures, “till the whole island resembled a dwelling in flames or a house darkened by funeral rites."[1]

[Footnote 1:  Mahawanso, ch. lxxix.; Rajaratnacari, p. 93; Rajavali, p. 256.]

[Illustration]

[Sidenote:  A.D. 1211.]

On all former occasions Rohuna and the South had been comparatively free from the actual presence of the enemy, but in this instance they established themselves at Mahagam[1], and thence to Jaffnapatam, every province in the island was brought under subjection to their rule.

[Footnote 1:  Rajavali, 257.]

The peninsula of Jaffna and the extremity of the island north of Adam’s Bridge, owing to its proximity to the Indian coast, was at all times the district most infested by the Malabars.  Jambukola, the modern Colombogam, is the port which is rendered memorable in the Mahawanso by the departure of embassies and the arrival of relics from the Buddhist countries, and Mantotte, to the north of Manaar, was the landing place of the innumerable expeditions which sailed from Chola and Pandya for the subjugation of Ceylon.