The Sinhalese monarchy began with the settlement of North Indian Indo-Aryan speaking immigrants to the island of Sri Lanka.

The Landing of Vijaya (as described in the traditional early chronicles of the island, the Dipavamsa and Mahavamsa) recounts the date of the establishment of the first Sinhalese Kingdom in 543 BCE[N 2] when Indian prince Prince Vijaya (543–505 BCE) and 700 of his followers arrived in Sri Lanka, establishing the Kingdom of Tambapanni.

However, according to the story in the Divyavadana, the immigrants were probably not led by a scion of a royal house in India, as told in the romantic legend, but rather may have been groups of adventurous and pioneering merchants exploring new lands.

These are, in chronological order: the kingdoms of Tambapanni, Upatissa Nuwara, Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa, Dambadeniya, Gampola, Kotte, Sitawaka and Kandy.

[5][6][7][8] The last Sinhala Kingdom came to an end in 1815 with Sri Vikrama Rajasinha of Kandy after generations of European colonial influences and upheaval in the royal court.

[13] By the time of Kithsirimevan (304–332 CE), Sudatta, the subking of Kalinga and Hemamala brought the Tooth Relic of the Buddha to Sri Lanka due to unrest in the country.

[17] However, the earliest inscriptions dating from the 3rd to 2nd century BCE suggest that the island was divided into several regional principalities and chieftaincies until the first war of unification fought by King Dutugamunu.

[27] As Wilhelm Geiger pointed out, the Dipawamsa and Mahawansa are the primary sources for ancient South Asian chronology; they date the consecration (abhisheka) of Ashoka (268 BCE according to modern scholarship) to 218 years after the parinibbana.

[28] According to Geiger, the difference between the two reckonings seems to have occurred at sometime between the reigns of Udaya III (946–954 or 1007–1015) and Pârakkama Pandya (c. 1046–1048), when there was considerable unrest in the country.

[29] Furthermore, the traveller-monk Xuanzang, who attempted to visit Sri Lanka about 642, was told by Sri Lankan monks (possibly at Kanchipuram) that there was trouble in the kingdom, so he desisted;[30] this accords with the period of struggle for the throne between Aggabodhi III Sirisanghabo, Jettha Tissa III and Dathopa Tissa I Hatthadpath in 632–643.

The Mahavamsa was complied nearly a millennium after the purported date of Vijaya's arrival, and the traditional chronology and relationships of the earliest kings have been called into question by some scholars.

The historicity of one of these successors of Devanampiya Tissa, however, is proved by epigraphical records, and we have to conclude either that these rulers were contemporary, exercising authority in different regions of the Island, or that the relationship they bore to each other, as given in the chronicles, is wrong.