It has been reported that Senarath Panawatta, the former curator of the Kandy National Museum has been able to locate and identify the original civil standard of the Kandyan Dynasty which had been last used by King Sri Wikrama Rajasinghe in 1815.
 Royal Flag |
This flag had been in possession of a certain doctor in Colombo, and after his sudden death in June, 1990 his wife, a Swiss lady, left the island for permanent settlement in switzerland taking the flag with her.
Panawatta says, depending on a series of photographs sent to him by the owner, that it represents almost a carbon copy of the sketch of the Kandyan Royal Flag which E.W. Perera reproduces in plate No. 100 in his well-known monograph, Sinhalese Banners and Standards published in 1916.
It had been taken away by Capt. William Pollock picked up from the battle ground at Hanwella Fort in 1803, when Sri Wikrama Rajasinghe had to retreat fighting the British. At the time E.W. Perera discovered this flag along with two other Sinhalese flags in 1908 at the Chelsia Military Hospital in London, it was already in a very bad state of preservation and unsuitable for photography.
Therefore, he had to first renovate it and prepare a sketch for publication. Since this was already a hundred years ago, it may have by now perished to dust. The sketch which E.W. Perera prepared and published in his monograph is without colours.
But the flag identified by Mr. Panawatta, though in a poor state due to age, being an original, its colours and is the only flag of a king of Sri Lanka so far known to exist.
Panawatta identifies this flag as the civil standard of the kings of the Kandyan Dynasty which Sri Wikrama Rajasinghe continued to use and says, this is different to the Sinhalese Royal Flag, the Great Flag of the Nation, which is now adopted as the National Flag with two stripes added.
Since the owners of the flag had already expressed their willingness to dispose of it he says that considering its uniqueness as a valuable cultural property, it is the duty of the Government to arrange to acquire it for the Colombo National Museum, where already the Regalia of Sri Wikrama Rajasinghe is exhibited.
http://archives.dailynews.lk/2008/08/06/art06.asp
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