Sri Lankan monarchs undertook some remarkable construction projects such as Sigiriya, the so-called "Fortress in the Sky", built during the reign of Kashyapa I of Anuradhapura, who ruled between 477 and 495.
The Sigiriya rock fortress is surrounded by an extensive network of ramparts and moats.
The medieval period of Sri Lanka begins with the fall of Anuradhapura Kingdom.
In AD 993, the invasion of Chola emperor Rajaraja I forced the then Sri Lankan ruler Mahinda V to flee to the southern part of Sri Lanka.
In antiquity, Sri Lanka was known to travellers by a variety of names.The next invasion came immediately in 205 BC by a Chola king named Ellalan, who overthrew Asela and ruled the country for 44 years.Dutugemunu, the eldest son of the southern regional sub-king, Kavan Tissa, defeated Elara in the Battle of Vijithapura.The council was held in response to a year in which the harvests in Sri Lanka were particularly poor and many Buddhist monks subsequently died of starvation.Because the Pāli Canon was at that time oral literature maintained in several recensions by dhammabhāṇakas (dharma reciters), the surviving monks recognized the danger of not writing it down so that even if some of the monks whose duty it was to study and remember parts of the Canon for later generations died, the teachings would not be lost.