Sri Lanka has a population of approximately 22 million and is home to many cultures, languages and ethnicities. The Sinhalese people form the majority of the population, followed by the Sri Lankan Tamils, who are the largest minority group and are concentrated in northern Sri Lanka; both groups have played an influential role in the island's history. Other long-established groups include the Moors, Indian Tamils, Burghers, Malays, Chinese, and Vedda.
Sri Lanka's documented history goes back 3,000 years, with evidence of prehistoric human settlements dating back 125,000 years. The earliest known Buddhist writings of Sri Lanka, known collectively as the Pāli canon, date to the fourth Buddhist council, which took place in 29 BCE. Also called the Pearl of the Indian Ocean, or the Granary of the East, Sri Lanka's geographic location and deep harbours have made it of great strategic importance, from the earliest days of the ancient Silk Road trade route to today's so-called maritime Silk Road. Because its location made it a major trading hub, it was already known to both East Asians and Europeans as long ago as the Anuradhapura period. During a period of great political crisis in the Kingdom of Kotte, the Portuguese arrived in Sri Lanka and sought to control its maritime trade, with a part of Sri Lanka subsequently becoming a Portuguese possession. After the Sinhalese-Portuguese war, the Dutch Empire and the Kingdom of Kandy took control of those areas. The Dutch possessions were then taken by the British, who later extended their control over the whole island, colonising it from 1815 to 1948. A national movement for political independence arose in the early 20th century, and in 1948, Ceylon became a dominion. It was succeeded by the republic of Sri Lanka in 1972. Sri Lanka's more recent history was marred by a 26-year civil war, which began in 1983 and ended in 2009, when the Sri Lanka Armed Forces defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. (Full article...)
The Arya Chakravarti dynasty (Tamil: ஆரியச் சக்கரவர்த்திகள் வம்சம், Sinhalese: ආර්ය චක්රවර්තී රාජවංශය) were kings of the Jaffna Kingdom in Sri Lanka. The earliest Sri Lankan sources, between 1277 and 1283, mention a military leader of this name as a minister in the services of the Pandyan Empire; he raided the western Sri Lankan coast and took the politically significant relic of the Buddha's tooth from the Sinhalese capital city of Yapahuwa. Political and military leaders of the same family name left a number of inscriptions in the modern-day Tamil Nadu state, with dates ranging from 1272 to 1305, during the late Pandyan Empire. According to contemporary native literature, such as Cekaracecekaramalai, the family also claimed lineage from the Tamil Brahmins of the prominent Hindupilgrimagetemple of Rameswaram in the modern Ramanathapuram District of India. They ruled the Jaffna kingdom from the 13th until the 17th century, when the last of the dynasty, Cankili II, was ousted by the Portuguese. (Full article...)
Image 8The Sigiriya ("Lion Rock"), a rock fortress and city, built by King Kashyapa (477–495 CE) as a new more defensible capital. It was also used as a Buddhist monastery after the capital was moved back to Anuradhapura. (from Sri Lanka)
Image 9The Supreme Court of Sri Lanka, Colombo (from Sri Lanka)
Image 23Topographic map of Sri Lanka (from Sri Lanka)
Image 24J. R. Jayewardene was the most influential political figure of Sri Lanka in the 1970s. (from Sri Lanka)
Image 25Sri Lanka's most widely known export, Ceylon tea, which ISO considers the cleanest tea in the world in terms of pesticide residues. Sri Lanka is also the world's 2nd largest exporter of tea. (from Sri Lanka)
Image 26Sri Lanka's population, (1871–2001) (from Sri Lanka)
Sirima Ratwatte Dias Bandaranaike (Sinhala: සිරිමා රත්වත්තේ ඩයස් බණ්ඩාරනායක; Tamil: சிறிமா ரத்வத்தே டயஸ் பண்டாரநாயக்கே; 17 April 1916 – 10 October 2000), commonly known as Sirimavo Bandaranaike, was a Sri Lankan politician. She was the world's first female prime minister when she became Prime Minister of Sri Lanka (then the Dominion of Ceylon) in 1960. She chaired the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) from 1960 to 1994 and served three terms as prime minister, two times as the chief executive, from 1960 to 1965 and from 1970 to 1977, and once again in a presidential system from 1994 to 2000, governing under the presidency of her daughter Chandrika Kumaratunga.
Born into a Sinhalese Kandyan aristocratic family, Bandaranaike was educated in Catholic, English-medium schools, but remained a Buddhist and spoke Sinhala as well as English. On graduating from secondary school, she worked for various social programmes before marrying and raising a family. Playing hostess to her husband S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike, who founded the socialist SLFP in 1951 and became prime minister in 1956, she gained his trust as an informal advisor. Her social work focused on improving the lives of women and girls in rural areas of Sri Lanka. (Full article...)
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