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Buddhist monks given training to ensure peaceful co-existence in Sri Lanka
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Muru
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 4 Aug 2006 15:24:35 GMT Report for Abuse
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What has been proved instead is that the Balangoda Man resembled a *COMMON ANCESTOR* for Veddas and certain Sinhala groups. If this is the case, then it is likely he is also a common ancestor to certain SL Tamil groups as well, after all, SL Tamils and Sinhala people share a common gene pool. BTW the Sinhala 'nation' also consists of full-blooded Veddas who have been Sinhalised, so maybe these are the groups they talk of. I am using Gama's 'warped' logic as an example, because he said himself that if there was a older culture on the Island that preceded any other it should be given prominence. Can you prove that Sinhala or even 'Hela' culture is as old as the Vedda culture on the island - which has stood the test of time for over 18,000 years or more? So what if the Sinhala people have some ancestory to the Balangoda man, it clearly isn't major, they only have around 5% of Vedda genes according to some studies. To me that shows that the Vedda people have been on the Island longer than the other groups and their isolation from other groups have saved their identity to this point from extinction.
As for NO Sinhalese (including Bikku Mahanama, the author of Mahavansa) believe(d) that we are *genetically* pure Aryans That is NOT true. I have seen many Sinhala people claiming that they are of pure Aryan descent (even some jolly people in this forum.)
there are some prominent Eelamists who argue in these lines. Fair enough, you will always get people claiming things that cannot be proven, just as the Aryan idea is so prominent among certain Sinhala groups.
With his innocent mind, he thinks a every race is entitled to a homeland even when they did not have an indepdent kingdom, provided they can show an area where the given race is a majority. No, the existence of a Jaffna Kingdom is irrelevant to a CERTAIN extent, however, what it does show is just how much autonomy Tamils have had in the past. The fact is some Tamils had an independent kingdom in the past, whether that was 'illegal' in the eyes of people who did NOT live there is again irrelevant (though i doubt very much that the Sinhala masses at the time wanted to overun the 'illegal' Jaffna kingdom). What I do agree is that there never was a Tamil kingdom that stretched across the whole of the East and Northern provinces. I am not confused at all. What I do say and stand by is that SL Tamils (in whatever kingdom they resided in - jaffna, Kandyan, kotte etc) had much more autonomy and degree of self-rule then they do now. Self-determination for the Tamils is a right in my books as they satisfy every criteria for it.
As for Dr KI, I am not rubbishing his credentials or even his thesis, i agree with the archaeological findings such as the Buddhist remains in Jaffna etc - i believe he is an unbiased historian, people of his caliber are hard to find in SL. But I do rubbish the idea of SL Tamil = Dravidian and Sinhala = Aryan. He himself probably thought that SL Tamils were pure South Indian invaders/recent migrants because of the colonial history that was being taught at the time (1965), just as YOU have probably thought that for most of your lifetime. And that is RUBBISH. If you can prove to me that SL Tamils are not as native as the Sinhala people, in terms of ancestory, then i would love to see your arguments.
Hope you have experienced some feelings you have never had in your life, while reading this No machan not yet, but keep trying.
Edited By - Muru - 5 Aug 2006 11:58:14 GMT |
LuLa
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 4 Aug 2006 17:57:17 GMT Report for Abuse
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In case of Tamil culture, it is clear where it came from. In fact, almost all the cultural aspects of modern day SL Tamils can be seen at varying degrees among Tamilnadu Tamils.
NONSENSE!
Sinhala is not an imported culture but a culture, home-grown. Some aspects of Sinhala Culture cannot be related to any other Indian culture but to the Hela Culture which is said to have existed on the island at the arrival of Vijaya.
NO, Cannot Believe!
please request, if you want examples to this effect.
Yes, Please!
Edited By - LuLa - 4 Aug 2006 17:59:19 GMT |
LuLa
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4 Aug 2006 20:21:27 GMT Report for Abuse
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It is not my intention to disrupt the serene joy of the Sinhala Buddhist chuvinists who have built up a strong love and affection towards Prof. K. Indrapala and his 1965 PhD thesis. My apologies if I cause any psycho somatic problems.
This is what Prof K. Indrapala says about his 1965 thesis:
I was planning my postgraduate research, the late Prof. W.J.F. LaBrooy, my revered teacher and, at that time, Head of the department of History at the University, advised me to research into the early history of the Tamils of Sri Lanka for my doctoral dissertation, as he considered this aspect to be a serious gap in the known history of the Island.
The thesis was completed with the material that was available in the early 1960s.
As long as excavation work remains undone, I pointed out, much that is relevant to our study will be wanting... Even the inscriptions and literary works that we have used have proved to be inadequate in the reconstruction of a satisfactory history of the settlements and in the solution of many important problems.
The thesis was presented as the first major attempt to bring together all available evidence on the subject. THE FACT THAT IT WAS IN NO WAY A COMPLETE STUDY WAS ADMITTED. In view of these limitations and difficulties, while we may claim to have added something to our knowledge of the history of the Tamils of Ceylon, the account presented here is inevitably incomplete and not always definite. We have often been led to state our conclusions in hypothetical terms.
NEEDLESS TO SAY, THAT DISSERTATION IS NOW COMPLETELY OUT OF DATE. MY OWN PERSPECTIVES AND INTERPRETATIONS HAVE CHANGED SINCE ITS COMPLETION.
More importantly, significant developments, both in terms of archaeological research and changing historical perspectives, have taken place in the last four decades.
Edited By - LuLa - 5 Aug 2006 07:59:46 GMT |
Kulakottan
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 5 Aug 2006 02:35:59 GMT Report for Abuse
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Lula,
Very appropraite quote from Prof. Indrapala.
In fact he himself has admitted that he does not even have a copy of the Ph.D. dissertation with him as he thought it had become so obsolete.
Let me add one more from his conslusion:
The evolution of the two identities as Sinhalese and Tamil, assimilated many small social and cultural groups, reached completion by 1200, although further assimilation, developement and changed would continue in the later centuries. From about this time, there is a marked geographic division between the two identities
But, we may not be able to stop someone even misinterpreting this either. He is not talking about one identity as some claims but both.
Kula
Edited By - Kulakottan - 5 Aug 2006 03:43:48 GMT |
LuLa
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5 Aug 2006 07:58:56 GMT Report for Abuse
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Kula,
Thanks Kula for your addition.
Yes, from the very beginning, the Island was multi-ethnic, and kings from many different ethnic groups ruled the Island from time to time.
For example, the Tamil Kings Sena and Guttika were natives(not invaders), there were also Naga Kings.
It was only after the 12CAD that, the people were clearly and separately identified culturally and geographically as 'Sinhala Buddhists' and 'Tamil Hindus'.
As you said, it is pointless wasting our precious time in arguing with those who only believe and repeat the words of the new breed of charlatans and pseudo-historians who abuse the history of the country.
See you all after some time.
Edited By - LuLa - 5 Aug 2006 08:58:46 GMT |
Muru
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5 Aug 2006 10:17:27 GMT Report for Abuse
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| It appears that until 1824 Sinhalese and Tamils were perceived not as clear-cut ethnic groups but first and foremost as members of a number of caste groups of various sizes. At the same time, categorical confusion and indeterminacy in the pre-1871 censuses also reflect the absence of a modern scientific, race-based system of classification. When juxtaposed with the later scientific censuses, they tell a story of how the colonial racial
imagination was developed and articulated with local categories. For, by the 1881 census, there was a clear consolidation of race-based communal differences.
There were only seven 'races' left, namely, Europeans, Sinhalese, Tamils, Moormen, Malays, Veddas, and Others. From then on 'races' rather than castes became the main category of classification, and identity was more or less fixed territorially as well. As I have argued elsewhere (Rajasingham-Senanayake 1992), race conceptions of ethnic difference functioned as a deep and invisible time-line for positing internal or genotypal sameness in the face of phenotypal changes, mixing or miscegenation or hybridity.
Edited By - Muru - 5 Aug 2006 10:38:11 GMT |
Muru
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5 Aug 2006 10:20:57 GMT Report for Abuse
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The first people in Lanka to ask for Federalism and Autonomy:
Notably, the structure of the colonial census reveals an absence of significant
Sinhala-Tamil geopolitical polarization during the early part of British colonial rule. Rather, it indicates that regional differences between groups speaking the same language - as for instance, between the low-country Sinhalas and upcountry Kandyans - were more salient than those between the coastal Tamil
and Sinhala groups. The dominant group in the South was the Sinhalas; in the
central hills, the Kandyans; and in the north the Tamils. Indeed it is arguable that the Kandyans considered themselves to be a distinct ethnic group from the lowcountry Sinhalas even as late as 1925, when the Kandyan National Assembly
(KNA) asked for regional AUTONOMY for the Kandyan provinces within a FEDERAL
state. It is hence also that Tamil politicians had not considered themselves a
minority, since low-country Sinhalas and up-country Kandyans were considered
to be and seemed to consider themselves two separate and distinct groups. The
salient geopolitical borders, albeit colonially engineered, were then not always
ethno-national, or between north and south, as has been posited by modern
nationalist historians who quote the Pali-Vamsas as evidence of perennial conflict between Sinhalas and Tamils. Rather, the border between coastal regions and the hill country was the main geopolitical, rather than ethnoracial divide in the island for many centuries, ironically at precisely the time that ethno-racial categories and discourses on identity were being consolidated.
Edited By - Muru - 5 Aug 2006 10:23:07 GMT |
Muru
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5 Aug 2006 10:26:49 GMT Report for Abuse
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In Ceylon the consolidation of ethnoracial identity entailed the slow eclipse
of caste in official classification. There was no equivalent term among any of
the local languages for the European concept of 'race.' The closest Sinhala term
for race, 'jathi/jathiya' connotes various types of linguistic, religious and cultural differences, and most often connotes caste difference. The term 'jathiya' was and still is used to connote 'race,' 'ethnic' and 'nation,' not to mention caste. The translation of 'race' to 'jathi' enabled and enables a semantic slippage, which permitted mapping religious, linguistic and cultural differences along a single overarching frame of race. In other words, the term 'jathi' collapses nonequivalent types of difference. Religious, linguistic, cultural, phenotypal markers coalesce in the contemporary concept of ethnicity via racial categories. The connotational slippages encapsulated in the term 'jathi' mask the fact that race serves as an anchor for otherwise disparate classificatory frames - that is, linguistic, religious, caste classification - in an overarching hierarchical and unipolar system of, and for, understanding differences.
Edited By - Muru - 5 Aug 2006 10:29:39 GMT |
Muru
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5 Aug 2006 10:34:04 GMT Report for Abuse
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Etymological clues: 'The Vaedda dialect as probably did the old Sinhala approaches far closer to Tamil than modern Sinhala in its pronunciation'. (Hugh Neville. p.88.) The Vedda dialect, their spoken language is identical with Elu which was the spoken language of ancient Sri Lanka, which is semi-Tamil; as to the grammatical structure it is essentially Dravidian and simple (Emaneau, M.B 1961). Now Mucha before you shoot me down, I am not claiming the people who spoke Elu are Tamils! I am just posting up an interesting viewpoint. Do you believe that there were no people of Dravidian origin (not settlements, but PEOPLE) in Lanka prior to Vijaya coming, (and presumably they only came to the Island when Vijaya brought them in himself). Finally, you agree that Sri Lanka is a Sinhala Buddhist country and not a multi-ethnic one, am I right?
Edited By - Muru - 5 Aug 2006 12:02:58 GMT |
KURAL
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5 Aug 2006 11:47:49 GMT Report for Abuse
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Pffffff. Lies and lies.
I saw yesterday an army of Buddhist monks blessing SLA soldiers.
These monks are not peaceful but evil minded ! |
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