KOTTE

town, southwestern Sri Lanka, southeast of Colombo, of which it is a suburb. An urban council governs Kotte and the neighbouring town of Nugegoda. Despite the town's urban character, it contains a number of rice paddies and plantations. Kotte was the capital of the Sinhalese kings from 1415 to 1565, largely owing to the lagoons, rivers, and swamps that still encircle it and provide a natural defense. Its partition at the beginning of the 16th century culminated in Portuguese domination of Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka). When the first Portuguese envoys were taken from Colombo to Kotte in 1505, the Sinhalese led them on a circuitous three-day trip to conceal the capital's location. To go to Kotte thus became a Sinhalese synonym for a roundabout route. With Colombo's overcrowding, Kotte has accommodated the overflow for several years. Since the early 1980s the legislative and judicial capital of Sri Lanka has been Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte; Colombo remained the administrative capital. Pop. (1988 est.) 107,000. Sinhala Kotte Sinhalese kingdom that flourished in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) during the 15th century. Its king, Parakramabahu VI (141267), was the last native sovereign to unify all of Ceylon under one rule. By 1450, Parakramabahu VI had, with his conquest of the kingdom of Jaffna in northern Ceylon, unified all of Ceylon. By 1477, however, 10 years after the death of Parakramabahu VI, both Jaffna and the other powerful kingdom, Kandy, had thrown off the suzerainty of Kotte. In 1505, with the arrival of the Portuguese, the king of Kotte agreed to pay tribute to Portugal, thus becoming the first Sinhalese king to accept the suzerainty of a European king. The kingdom of Kotte continued to exist nominally until 1597, whenwith the death of its last ruler, Don Juan Dharmapalasovereignty officially passed to the king of Portugal, by a written agreement between Portuguese officials and native Sinhalese chiefs at the Convention of Malvana.