Historic Balana Kadawatha Kos Gasa

The Balana pass, on the Alagalla range about 20 km west of Kandy, guarded one of the principal mountain approaches to the Kandyan kingdom along the old Colombo-Kandy road. King Vimaladharmasuriya I built a fort here in the 1590s, and the pass saw repeated fighting over the following century, including the Portuguese retreat of 1603 and the Battle of Gannoruwa in 1638. The Department of Archaeology has been excavating the fort site since 2017.

This record identifies a jack tree standing in the area, known locally as the Kadawatha Kos Gasa. No published source ties the tree itself to a date, a builder, or any of the events fought over this pass — its individual history is undocumented and should remain unexpanded until a reliable inscription, gazette, or local archival source surfaces.