The people placed in charge of what shape Theravāda monastic Buddhism in Sri Lanka would take were taken from the same monastery (Dim̌ bulāgala) that, a generation earlier, [Parākramabāhu’s aunt, the Great Lady Sundarā,] who had a unique interest in Pāli textuality, had patronized. […] I suspect that she was a far more influential figure than any of our extant sources allow us to really fully grasp.

I am attempting to reconstruct the history of Polonnaruwa from sources in the Polonnaruwa period itself, disregarding the evidence of the later texts. This was an experiment in some ways: can we write the history of Sri Lanka without just citing what the Mahāvaṁsa and its friends have to say?