477–495
Kassapa I, also Kashyapa I / Kasyapa
Kassapa I · 斯里兰卡
5th-century king of the Anuradhapura Kingdom (reigned c. 477–495), builder of the Sigiriya rock palace.
Kassapa was the son of King Dhatusena, but as he was not born to the chief queen he was not the designated heir. According to the chronicle *Culavamsa*, he imprisoned and caused the death of his father and seized the throne, while his half-brother Moggallana fled to South India to raise an army. To guard against his brother's return, he abandoned the traditional capital Anuradhapura and built a palace fortress on the Sigiriya rock, about 200 metres high, with water gardens, reservoirs, and murals. In 495 Moggallana returned with an army and Kassapa was defeated and died (one account says by suicide; this detail belongs to the chronicle narrative, uncertain). Sigiriya thereafter became a Buddhist monastery and was inscribed as a World Heritage site in 1982.
People & stories
Places in their life
Place of activity and burial-related place Sigiriya (now central Sri Lanka, around Matale District); traditional capital Anuradhapura.
People
Cultural significance
The Sigiriya "Cloud Maidens" murals, the surviving giant lion paws of the Lion Gate, and the Mirror Wall poems are representative of ancient Sri Lankan art and hydraulic garden design; his usurpation story has also become a motif in later literature and folk narrative, and fact and legend must be kept separate: the palace and hydraulic remains are archaeological evidence, while the patricide detail appears only in the chronicle, marked "uncertain".