Sri Lanka News Updates with Discussions

Another claymore attack on SL rapist coolie forces at SinnaCheddikulam,in Vavuniya. killed 3 coolies there.

Massages offered in Thai Massage Parlors

An eighteen-year-old pregnant mother

What history books are you reading dude? What bloody occupation? this has always been like that.

his (i.e. Mutasiva) son Devanam piya Tissa, that Buddhism was first introduced this island

One of the kings that ruled Ceylon was Ellalan. He ruled the entire island from 161 BC ­ 117 BC.

The Mahavamsa has, especially in modern Sri Lanka, acquired a significance as a document with a political message. The British historian Jane Russell has recounted how a process of 'Mahavamsa Bashing' began in the 1930s, especially from within the Tamil Nationalist movement. The Mahavamsa, being a history of the Sinhala Buddhists, presented itself to the Tamil Nationalists and the Sinhala Nationalists as the hegemonic epic of the Sinhala people. This was attacked by G. G. Ponnambalam, the leader of the Nationalist Tamils in the 1930s. He claimed that most of the Sinhala kings, including Vijaya, Kasypa, Parakramabahu etc., were Tamils. An inflammatory speech attacking the Sinhalese and the Mahavamsa by G. G. Ponnambalam in 1939, in Navalapitiya lead to the first Sinhala-Tamil riots engulfing Navalapitiya, Passara, Maskeliya and even Jaffna,. The riots were rapidly put down by the British colonial government and did not lead to the terrible ampleur of the post-indepenent conflicts.

Various writers have called into question the morality of the account given in the Mahavamsa, where Dutugamunu regrets his actions in killing the Chola king Elara and his troops. The Mahavamsa equates the killing of the invaders as being on par with the killing of 'sinners and wild beasts', and the King's sorrow and regret are assuaged. This is considered by some critics as an ethical error. However, Buddhism does recoginze a hierarchy of sinful actions. Thus the killing of an Arhant (a saint) is more sinful than the killing of a less worthy being. Buddhists would assert that killing an elephant is a bigger sin (bad karma) than killing an ant. The same type of thinking is enshrined in the Hindu law of Manu where harming a 'Brahamin' and a 'chandala' have vastly different consequences, and animal sacrifices are allowed in Hindu ritual. Thus the Mahavamsa is true to the Buddhist ethics of its time. The important thing to note is that Dutugamunu regreted his act, and this was also required by the Buddhist example of Asoka who became a pacifist after a series of bloody military campaigns.

An eminent historian who has come to the defence of the Mahavamsa is Karthigesu Indrapala. He has argued that the popular presentation of the Mahavamsa as a work of Sinhala Buddhist Chauvinism is incorrect, and that the Mahavamsa writer was singularly fair in his presentation. However, the Mahavamsa will continue to be used and misused by Sri Lanka's political zelots for their own narrow purposes.

An eminent historian who has come to the defence of the Mahavamsa is Karthigesu Indrapala. He has argued that the popular presentation of the Mahavamsa as a work of Sinhala Buddhist Chauvinism is incorrect, and that the Mahavamsa writer was singularly fair in his presentation. However, the Mahavamsa will continue to be used and misused by Sri Lanka's political zelots for their own narrow purposes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahavamsa

I am confused. Help me here. Legal age in Sri Lanka to marry is 18 for a girl. How is she pregnant at 18? Statutory rape rampant in Vanni, while the Diaspora Apologists are worried about whats going on elsewhere in SL?