The earliest Sri Lankan sources, between 1277 and 1283, mention a military leader of this name as a minister in the services of the Pandyan Empire; he raided the western Sri Lankan coast and took the politically significant relic of the Buddha's tooth from the Sinhalese capital city of Yapahuwa.

Political and military leaders of the same family name left a number of inscriptions in the modern-day Tamil Nadu state, with dates ranging from 1272 to 1305, during the late Pandyan Empire.

According to contemporary native literature, such as Cekaracecekaramalai, the family also claimed lineage from the Tamil Brahmins of the prominent Hindu pilgrimage temple of Rameswaram in the modern Ramanathapuram District of India.

The origins of the Aryacakravarti are claimed in contemporary court chronicles; modern historians offer some competing theories.

It is believed that most of them belonged to one family of Tamil Brahmins in the modern Ramanathapuram District who had become prominent during the days of the Pandyan king Maravarman Kulasekaran.

[6][7] The Cekaracecekaramalai written during the Aryacakravarti rule in Jaffna asserts that the direct ancestors of the Kings belonged to a group of 512 Ariyar (a Brahmin priestly caste) of the Pasupata sect of the Rameswaram Hindu temple.

Pathmanathan believes that we cannot categorically link the Aryacakravarti dynasty with Eastern Gangas and can explain most of the similarities based on influence, even Western Ganga Dynasty descendants who had moved into Tamil lands after their defeat by the Chola Empire around the year 1000 and interpret them simply as reflecting a claim of origin from the Hindu holy city of Varanasi on the banks of the holiest river Ganges.

Nilakanta Sastry as having no credible evidence,[18] and other historians such as Louis Charles Damais (1911–1966), an expert on Indonesian studies,[19] Yutaka Iwamoto (1910–1988), a Buddhist scholar, and S. Pathmanathan.

Further he notes that the inscriptions that S. Paranavitana used to make his theory have not been deciphered by any other scholar to imply a Javaka connection to the Aryacakravartis.

But an astrological work, Cekarasacekara Malai, written during the rule of Cekarasacekaran V (1410–1440)[22] by Soma Sarman has verifiable historical information and has been used extensively by historians from Humphrey Coddrington to S. Pathmanathan to reconstruct the kingdom's early history.

Culavamsa mentions in detail the arrival and the conquest of the Sinhalese capital Yapahuwa by a minister named Aryacakravarti during the period 1277 to 1283.

[24] The Rajavaliya a primary source written during the 17th century refers to the fact that the Aryacakravartis collected taxes from Udarata and southern lowlands.

[25] The conquest by a certain Sapumal Kumaraya, a military leader sent by the Kotte king, seemed to have left an indelible impression on the Sinhalese literati.

[26]Parakramabahu V (1344–59) a king of Gampola who ruled from Dedigama retreated to the southeast of the island, to a place called Magul Maha Viharaya in the Ampara District after a confrontation with the Aryacakravarti.

[28] The Kotagama inscriptions found in Kegalle District are a record of victory left by the Aryacakravarti kings of the Jaffna Kingdom in western Sri Lanka.

[29][31] Jeyaveera Cinkaiariyan or his successor is credited with an inscription dated 1414 in the South Indian Hindu temple Rameswaram about renovating its sanctum sanctorum.

[36] Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Battuta was a Moroccan Berber[37] scholar and jurisprudent from the Maliki Islamic law, and at times a Qadi or judge.

[40] In his Temporal and Spiritual Conquest of Ceylon, Father Queroz records a tradition as In course of time, there came some Brahmanes, natives of Guzarata called Arus, who claiming royal descent; and with the favor of Nayque of Madura, they erected a pagoda at Ramancor, whence they began to have trade and friendship with the king of Jaffnapatae, and one of them married a daughter of the king; and finally her descendants became heirs to the Kingdom.

The Aryacakravarti dynasty came to power long before the ascendancy of the Madurai Nayaks as well as the Brahmins of Rameswaram had established a temple even longer before.

de Silva is that the Aryacakravartis were a Pandyan feudatory family that took power after the chaos created by the invasions of Kalinga Magha and Chandrabhanu.

It may have married into the family of Eastern Gangas or even for that matter the Chandrabanu's successors, but the direct undeniable evidence for it is lacking.