Sri Lanka News Updates with Discussions

No, the Tamil identity also existed, as per KI?s book(page 4):

However, if this land was already occupied by a nation prior to the arrival of a new 'group of people', any attempts of the new group to establish autonomy/self-rule will be considered as a Foreign Invasion.

There were indigenous tribal people (the yaksha, nagas etc - who may or may not be related to the Tamils) who lived long before Vijaya arrived. Indeed archeological records confirm the existence of humans in Sri Lanka, long before Vijaya.

The Sinhala identity emerged by the assimilation of various tribal, linguistic and ethnic communities about five to six centuries Before the Common Era (BCE).

However, even then the fact that SL Tamils evolved in SL after the 12 CAD and have been in Lanka as a separate identity in a separate land, had their own independent kingdom mean that they too have the same right to call the land they lived as their home, just as the Sinhalese can call Sri Lanka home.

I see Kula has discontinued further discussions with you because it is just a waste of time. It's like pouring water on duck's back.

If you analyze the history of Sri Lanka, it is generally believed that it has been a unified country under the unitary form of Government.

But recent researches conducted during the last quarter of a century have given a different picture.

Up to now, generally people thought that early inhabitant of Sri Lanka or the founders of Sri Lanka's civilization come from North India under the leadership of Prince Vijaya and founded the Anuradhapura kingdom. Kings of Anuradhapura ruled over the whole of Sri Lanka and the capital shifted from Anuradhapura to Polonaruwa and so forth.

Now by the study of early inscriptions source or portray a different picture.

Initial stages there were Chieftains and Chieftaincies all over Sri Lanka numbering to 269 and some of them had Tamil titles such as Vael, Aaiyh, Perumagan. Parumagan is the title name for the leader and leader was also the backbone of the local administration and besides that you come across other title names Uthi, Parathan, were there in the local administration. This shows that the chieftaincy was the norm of the day during the early State formation.

This is even clearly depicted in The Mahavamsa itself. The author of The Mahavanasa acknowledges that Dutagamunu (Dutthagamini) became the sovereign ruler of Sri Lanka after defeating 32 Tamil kings during the 2nd century BC.

Besides that, according to the archeological works done in Kanderodai -(Chunnakam), Anuradhapura, Manthai; (Tiruketheeswaeam) and Tissamaharama, they have clearly confirmed that the founders of Sri Lanka's civilization have come from South India and not from North India.

The main source of evidence is the archeological evidence which contradicts the mythological history found in The Mahavamsa.

The people who had come from South India brought the tradition, burying their deaths in large urns (Thali) and also in stone circles. After burying the deaths they put up stone circles, and also buried their deaths in stone cysts in the form of stone boxes.

This is the material evidence we have and they also brought the knowledge of iron, the technique pottery making known as black and red ware, tank irrigation and the rice cultivation.

This culture was known as Megalithic culture which is dated scientifically by E 14 method to 900 BC.

This culture is known as Megalithic culture because Mega is high and lithic means stone, because they put up memorials by using high stones, after burying the deaths as memorials.

This culture had four components: (1) Settlement, (2) burial, (3) Tanks and (4) Rice fields.

This is actually an extension of the South Indian Megalithic culture.

Even the skeletal remains recovered from the burials shows the genetical relationship with South India.

Even the genetical studies of both Sinhalese and Tamil groups shows that both Sinhalese and Tamil cultures emerged from this common culture base. So naturally in Sri Lanka besides Tamil there was another language was also spoken which is proto-Sinhalese. This language they identify as Elu. Naturally Elu and Tamil are the offshoots of the ancient Tamil linguistic family.

With the introduction of Buddhism, Elu with the mixture of the language of Buddhism namely Parakrit, Pali and Sanskrit, ELU TRANSFORMED INTO SINHALA LANGUAGE AROUND 700 AD.

As I had said earlier of the early state formation there were chieftains only. The Kingdom of Jaffna was one amongst such chieftaincies. So when you go into history of Sri Lanka, it is the history of regional kingdoms and very seldom the country was united and administered by a single ruler.

Even in The Mahavamsa and The Culavamsa, Pali Chronicles in the course of 2000 years of history only 4 rulers had CLAIMED to have ruled the whole of Sri Lanka. They are:

Dutthagamini (Dutugamunu) 161-137 BC

Vijayabahu I 1055-1110

Parakramabahu I 1153-1186

Parakramabahu VI 1411-1466

These all portrays that their over-lordship was nominal.

he could 'prove from KI's' work that there existed an Indepdent Tamil Kingdom.

However, if this land was already occupied by a nation prior to the arrival of a new 'group of people', any attempts of the new group to establish autonomy/self-rule will be considered as a Foreign Invasion.

'Sri Lanka - the Country will Never be Put Together Again'
Lee Kuan Yew, 1998

Now in his graying years - he is 74 now - the founding father of Singapore is regarded as virtually a national institution at home. In transforming a busy ramshackle port city on a resourceless island into a prosperous multi-lingual nation, he created a model for other developing countries. He left the premiership in 1990 and assumed the role of , senior minister, but wields as much prestige and influence today as he did while holding office, a distinction rarely earned by any politician in any other country.

In talking of Sri Lanka, this is what Lee Kuan Yew says: -

'We have got to live with the consequences of our actions and we are responsible for our own people and we take the right decisions for them. You look at the old Philippines. The old Ceylon. The old East Pakistan and several others. I have been to these countries and places. When 1 went to Colombo for the first time in 1956 it was a better city than Singapore because Singapore had three and a half years of Japanese occupation and Colombo was the centre or HQ of Mountbatten's Southeast Asia command.

And they had sterling reserves. They had two Universities. Before the war, a thick layer of educated talent So if you believe what American liberals or British liberals used to say, then it ought to have flourished. But it didn't.

One-man one-vote led to the domination of the Sinhalese majority over the minority Tamils who were the active and intelligent fellows who worked hard and got themselves penalised. And English was out. They were educated in English. Sinhalese was in. They got quotas in two universities and now they have become fanatical Tigers. And the country will never be put together again.

Somebody should have told them - change the system, loosen up, or break off. And looking back, I think the Tunku was wise. (The reference is to Tunku Abdul Rahman the Malaysian Prime Minister under whose rule Singapore separated from Malaysia). I offered a loosening up of the system. He said: 'Clean cut, go your way'. Had we stayed in, and I look at Colombo and Ceylon, I mean changing names, sometimes maybe you deceive the gods, but I don't think you are deceiving the people who live in them. !t makes no great difference to the tragedy that is being enacted. They failed because they had weak or wrong leaders '.

Until about the thirteenth century A.D. the history of Ceylon was the history of the Sinhalese people.

It has been claimed by certain writers on the history of Jaffna that the people of northern Ceylon at the time of the earliest Indo-Aryan settlements, called Nagas in the chronicles, were Tamils. ( S. Gnanapragasar, Ceylon originally a land of Dravidians) Some others have claimed that these Nagas were Tamil in culture and language, although ethnically they were not Dravidian.( S. Rasanayagam, Ancient Jaffna) These conclusions, as we shall see presently, are based on the legendary accounts of the Nagas in the Pali chronicles and the Tamil Buddhist epic Manimekalai as well as on the erroneous identification of some of the place-names mentioned in early Tamil literature. Gnanapragasar, a leading proponent of the theory that the Nagas of the Pali chronicles were Tamils, has put forward four main arguments in support of it.

In the first place , he has argued that the island of Ceylon as well as the language spoken there were known in ancient times as Ilam and that the name of the language was later corrupted to Elu. These factors, in his opinion , 'should lead one to conclude prima facie that , at the earliest times, Ilam was occupied , at least in the main, by a Tamil speaking people. This argument is far from logical. Presumably it rests on the fact Ilam is now used only in Tamil as a name for Ceylon. But the origin of this name , far from indicating that the island was occupied by Tamil speaking people in ancient times, shows that the people from whose name Ilam is derived were Sinhalese. The earliest occurrence of this name is in the Brahmi inscription of South India. In these inscriptions, from Tirupparankunram and Sittannavasal, occurs the Prakrit form of this name, namely Ila. Evidently it is from this Prakrit form that the Tamil Ilam is derived. It could be shown that Ila is derived from Sinhala through the Pali Sihala, or more probably through another Prakrit form Sihila???. Thus, Ilam could be derived from the name Sihala and would therefore, mean the land of the Sinhalese rather than indicate that Ceylon was originally settled by the Tamils. Gnanapragasar's arguments, on this score, will become groundless. The derivation of Ilam from Sinhala is accepted by leading Tamil scholars. ( S. Vaiyapuri Pillai, Madras Tamil Lexicon p 382 & S. Krishnaswamy Aiyangar in the Preface to S. Rasanayagam's Ancient Jaffna)

Secondly , Gnanapragasar has argued that the original inhabitants of Ceylon came from South India and that these pre-Aryan aborigines were Dravidians who seem to have spoken a Tamil dialect. He base this on the assumption that the pre Aryan inhabitants of India represent an earlier wave of immigrants from the Mediterranean area and that no trace of any language other than Tamil is found in India till the arrival of the Indo-Aryans. Although the pre-historic relations between India and Ceylon are undeniable, the rest of his arguments are based on mere assumptions. It is not true to say that all the non-Aryan inhabitants of India were necessarily Dravidian. There were others as well, chief among whom were the Munda speaking people. The chronology of the Dravidian migration to India is itself an unsettled question.

His third argument is that 'hundreds of Tamil place-names in Ceylon are pre-Sinhalese. He has given a few examples of elements of present-day Sinhalese place-names and what have been considered by him to be their Tamil origins. It is clear that this argument is based on superficial similarities and not on any historical study of the development or evolution of these names. This could be seen in the two sets of elements as well as from their phonological development. He has claimed, for instance, that the Sinhalese element dena, meaning 'low-lying land or valley', is derived from Tamil tinai, meanung corn. But dena and its more common variant deniya are derived from Sanskrit droni (=valley), through the Pali doni and medieval Sinhalese dona and deni.

The fourth argument that Sinhalese is based on Tamil and that, therefore, 'the original inhabitants of Ceylon' spoke Tamil is unconvincing. Gnanapragasar arrives at this conclusion by adopting unscientific methods in his linguistic research. One can only quote the views of Wilhelm Geiger on this matter:- 'Gnanapragasar's methods are not at all Indian; they are simply a relapse into the old practice of comparing two or more words of the most distant languages merely on the basis of similar sounds without any consideration for chronology, for phonological principles, or for the historical development of words and forms.