Talk:History of Sri Lanka

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

HISTORY is nothing but hearsay and literature.... let us find material proof and eivdence by arguement before we come to conclusions....

Sri Lanka is Called that name since of the late 2 centuries. The British called it Ceylon coz such name did not exist before. It was called heladiva (ref:subhashithaya)or siv helaya. people of siv helaya were called sivhelayo or sinhalayo. what we need to understand was the term Sinhala was used to identify a collection of groups and not a mere ethnic segment in the island. just take a look at sinhala people and you will find out how different individuals are in this uni-language community. My dear brothers and sisters, we are aurguying on facts of history which are on the surface. the facts to be revealed are yet to be dug out of the ground. most of the true Sri Lankan history is burried under the ground. the cities, structures, geography and the real names of the kings of the past, the different languages they used will be revealed in the years to come. lets hope it would clear all doubts of the people who are interested in preserving history. -daham






Contents

[edit] Doubts cleared

Dear jonasaurus,SriLanks was never a part of India.It always remained as a seperate country.But there were cultural invasions and that takes places between any neighbours.But there were some wars fought between two countries.And finally India itself was never a one whole country before its Independence,and moreover South of Deccan the Kings were either Feudatories or Independent.And Sri Lanka's nearest Neighbours,the Ramnad Kingdom and the Madurai Kingdom were Independent sovereigns till the Mughal Emperor Aurangazeb. I Hope some of your doubts have been cleared. Qiki



—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Qiki (talk • contribs) 16:00, 12 January 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Requests for Improvement

this article and a number of other articles that focus on aspects of Sri Lankan/Ceylon history need to be cleaned up. There is a current dispute as to whether Sri Lanka has ever been part of India, as this article states. Somebody with an amount of experience on Sri Lankan history is needed to help with this article. Sorry I couldn't help. --jonasaurus 06:53, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Please add major events in sri lankan history such 1971 JVP uprising and civil war 1987-89.

Thanks

[edit] 1971 Uprising

The leftist Sinhalese Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna drew worldwide attention when it launched an insurrection against the Bandaranaike government in April 1971. Although the insurgents were young, poorly armed, and inadequately trained, they succeeded in seizing and holding major areas in Southern and Central provinces before they were defeated by the security forces. Their attempt to seize power created a major crisis for the government and forced a fundamental reassessment of the nation's security needs.

The movement was started in the late 1960s by Rohana Wijeweera, the son of a businessman from the seaport of Tangalla, Hambantota District. An excellent student, Wijeweera had been forced to give up his studies for financial reasons. Through friends of his father, a member of the Ceylon Communist Party, Wijeweera successfully applied for a scholarship in the Soviet Union, and in 1960 at the age of seventeen, he went to Moscow to study medicine at Patrice Lumumba University. While in Moscow, he studied Marxist ideology but, because of his openly expressed sympathies for Maoist revolutionary theory, he was denied a visa to return to the Soviet Union after a brief trip home in 1964. Over the next several years, he participated in the pro-Beijing branch of the Ceylon Communist Party, but he was increasingly at odds with party leaders and impatient with its lack of revolutionary purpose. His success in working with youth groups and his popularity as a public speaker led him to organize his own movement in 1967. Initially identified simply as the New Left, this group drew on students and unemployed youths from rural areas, most of them in the sixteen-to-twenty-five-age- group. Many of these new recruits were members of lower castes (Karava and Durava) who felt that their economic interests had been neglected by the nation's leftist coalitions. The standard program of indoctrination, the so-called Five Lectures, included discussions of Indian imperialism, the growing economic crisis, the failure of the island's communist and socialist parties, and the need for a sudden, violent seizure of power.

Between 1967 and 1970, the group expanded rapidly, gaining control of the student socialist movement at a number of major university campuses and winning recruits and sympathizers within the armed forces. Some of these latter supporters actually provided sketches of police stations, airports, and military facilities that were important to the initial success of the revolt. In order to draw the newer members more tightly into the organization and to prepare them for a coming confrontation, Wijeweera opened "education camps" in several remote areas along the south and southwestern coasts. These camps provided training in Marxism-Leninism and in basic military skills.

While developing secret cells and regional commands, Wijeweera's group also began to take a more public role during the elections of 1970. His cadres campaigned openly for the United Front of Sirimavo R. D. Bandaranaike, but at the same time they distributed posters and pamphlets promising violent rebellion if Bandaranaike did not address the interests of the proletariat. In a manifesto issued during this period, the group used the name Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna for the first time. Because of the subversive tone of these publications, the United National Party government had Wijeweera detained during the elections, but the victorious Bandaranaike ordered his release in July 1970. In the politically tolerant atmosphere of the next few months, as the new government attempted to win over a wide variety of unorthodox leftist groups, the JVP intensified both the public campaign and the private preparations for a revolt. Although their group was relatively small, the members hoped to immobilize the government by selective kidnapping and sudden, simultaneous strikes against the security forces throughout the island. Some of the necessary weapons had been bought with funds supplied by the members. For the most part, however, they relied on raids against police stations and army camps to secure weapons, and they manufactured their own bombs.

The discovery of several JVP bomb factories gave the government its first evidence that the group's public threats were to be taken seriously. In March 1971, after an accidental explosion in one of these factories, the police found fifty-eight bombs in a hut in Nelundeniya, Kegalla District. Shortly afterward, Wijeweera was arrested and sent to Jaffna Prison, where he remained throughout the revolt. In response to his arrest and the growing pressure of police investigations, other JVP leaders decided to act immediately, and they agreed to begin the uprising at 11:00 P.M. on April 5.

The planning for the countrywide insurrection was hasty and poorly coordinated; some of the district leaders were not informed until the morning of the uprising. After one premature attack, security forces throughout the island were put on alert and a number of JVP leaders went into hiding without bothering to inform their subordinates of the changed circumstances. In spite of this confusion, rebel groups armed with shotguns, bombs, and Molotov cocktails launched simultaneous attacks against seventy- four police stations around the island and cut power to major urban areas. The attacks were most successful in the south. By April 10, the rebels had taken control of Matara District and the city of Ambalangoda in Galle District and came close to capturing the remaining areas of Southern Province.

The new government was ill prepared for the crisis that confronted it. Although there had been some warning that an attack was imminent, Bandaranaike was caught off guard by the scale of the uprising and was forced to call on India to provide basic security functions. Indian frigates patrolled the coast and Indian troops guarded Bandaranaike International Airport at Katunayaka while Indian Air Force helicopters assisted the counteroffensive. Sri Lanka's all-volunteer army had no combat experience since World War II and no training in counterinsurgency warfare. Although the police were able to defend some areas unassisted, in many places the government deployed personnel from all three services in a ground force capacity. Royal Ceylon Air Force helicopters delivered relief supplies to beleaguered police stations while combined service patrols drove the insurgents out of urban areas and into the countryside.

After two weeks of fighting, the government regained control of all but a few remote areas. In both human and political terms, the cost of the victory was high: an estimated 10,000 insurgents- -many of them in their teens--died in the conflict, and the army was widely perceived to have used excessive force. In order to win over an alienated population and to prevent a prolonged conflict, Bandaranaike offered amnesties in May and June 1971, and only the top leaders were actually imprisoned. Wijeweera, who was already in detention at the time of the uprising, was given a twenty-year sentence and the JVP was proscribed.

Under the six years of emergency rule that followed the uprising, the JVP remained dormant. After the victory of the United National Party in the 1977 elections, however, the new government attempted to broaden its mandate with a period of political tolerance. Wijeweera was freed, the ban was lifted, and the JVP entered the arena of legal political competition. As a candidate in the 1982 presidential elections, Wijeweera finished fourth, with more than 250,000 votes (as compared with Jayewardene's 3.2 million). During this period, and especially as the Tamil conflict to the north became more intense, there was a marked shift in the ideology and goals of the JVP. Initially Marxist in orientation, and claiming to represent the oppressed of both the Tamil and Sinhalese communities, the group emerged increasingly as a Sinhalese nationalist organization opposing any compromise with the Tamil insurgency. This new orientation became explicit in the anti-Tamil riots of July 1983. Because of its role in inciting violence, the JVP was once again banned and its leadership went underground.

The group's activities intensified in the second half of 1987 in the wake of the Indo-Sri Lankan Accord. The prospect of Tamil autonomy in the north together with the presence of Indian troops stirred up a wave of Sinhalese nationalism and a sudden growth of antigovernment violence. During 1987 a new group emerged that was an offshoot of the JVP--the Patriotic Liberation Organization (Deshapreni Janatha Viyaparaya--DJV). The DJV claimed responsibility for the August 1987 assassination attempts against the president and prime minister. In addition, the group launched a campaign of intimidation against the ruling party, killing more than seventy members of Parliament between July and November.

Along with the group's renewed violence came a renewed fear of infiltration of the armed forces. Following the successful raid of the Pallekelle army camp in May 1987, the government conducted an investigation that resulted in the discharge of thirty-seven soldiers suspected of having links with the JVP. In order to prevent a repetition of the 1971 uprising, the government considered lifting the ban on the JVP in early 1988 and permitting the group to participate again in the political arena. With Wijeweera still underground, however, the JVP had no clear leadership at the time, and it was uncertain whether it had the cohesion to mount any coordinated offensive, either military or political, against the government.

[edit] The 1978 Constitution

Sri Lanka has benefited from the traditions of the rule of law and constitutional government that emerged during 150 years of British colonial rule. At least until the early 1970s, these traditions fostered the development of a political system characterized by broad popular participation in the political process, generally strict observance of legal guarantees of human and civil rights, and an orderly succession of elected governments without the intervention, as has occurred in several neighboring states, of the military. By the early 1980s, however, many observers feared for the future of Sri Lanka's democratic institutions. Some observers contended that constitutional government, rather than curbing the arbitrary use of political power, seemed itself to be shaped by aggressively narrow sectarian interests whose manipulation of the constitutional amendment process excluded large numbers of persons from politics and contributed to ethnic polarization and violence.

Historical Perspective, 1802-1978

After the Dutch ceded the island's maritime provinces to the British in 1802, these areas became Britain's first crown colony. The conquest and subjugation of the inland Kingdom of Kandy in 1815-18 brought the entire island under British control. Crown colony status meant that the island's affairs were administered by the Colonial Office in London, rather than by the East India Company that governed India until 1857. Even after the Indian Empire--ruled by a viceroy appointed by the British monarch--was established following the Indian Mutiny of 1857, Ceylon (as Sri Lanka was then called) was not included within its authority. The principal features of government and administration during the first century of British rule were a strong executive--the colonial governor--and a council of official and unofficial members who first served in a solely advisory capacity but were gradually granted legislative powers. An institution of central importance was the Ceylon Civil Service. In the early years, it was staffed primarily by British and other European personnel but then, increasingly and almost exclusively, by Sri Lankans.

A major turning point in the island's political development was implementation in 1931 of comprehensive reforms recommended by a royal commission headed by the Earl of Donoughmore. The most salient feature of the so-called Donoughmore Constitution, which attempted to reconcile British colonial control of the executive with Sri Lankan aspirations for self-government, was adoption of universal adult suffrage. This was, at that time, a bold experiment in representative government. Before 1931, only 4 percent of the male population, defined by property and educational qualifications, could vote. When elections to the legislature were held in 1932, the colony became the first polity in Asia to recognize women's suffrage. (Japan had adult male suffrage in 1925, but universal adult suffrage came only after World War II. The Philippines, an United States colony, achieved it in 1938.)

Toward the close of World War II, a second royal commission, headed by Lord Soulbury, was sent to Sri Lanka in order to consult with local leaders on the drafting of a new constitution. In its general contours, the Soulbury Constitution, approved in 1946, became the basic document of Ceylon's government when the country achieved independence on February 4, 1948. It established a parliamentary system modelled on that of Britain and quite similar to the constitution adopted by India in 1949. Like Britain, unlike India with its federal arrangement of states, independent Ceylon was, and in the later 1980s remained, a unitary state. The constitution established a parliament headed by the British monarch (represented by the governor general) and two houses, the Senate and the House of Representatives. The latter, like the House of Commons in Britain, had the preponderant role in legislation. The majority party or party coalition in the popularly elected House of Representatives designated the prime minister. Executive power, formally vested in the monarch (in the person of his or her representative, the governor general), was in actuality exercised by the prime minister and his or her cabinet.

The second constitution, adopted in 1972, represented an attempt on the part of the SLFP-led United Front coalition, which had been elected in May 1970, to create new political institutions that allegedly reflected indigenous values more perfectly than the 1946 constitution. It abolished the Senate and established a unicameral National State Assembly. The assembly was defined as the embodiment of the power of the state, and provisions in the constitution denied the judiciary the authority to challenge its enactments. In addition, the constitution changed the formal name of the country from Dominion of Ceylon to Republic of Sri Lanka. In a controversial measure, the United Front-dominated assembly gave itself two additional years in power beyond its constitutionally defined five-year term (elections were originally scheduled for 1975). Judicial curbs on the executive were also greatly restricted. Through the exercise of a wide range of emergency and special powers, the government of Sirimavo Bandaranaike exercised strict control over the political system.

Aside from the issue of authoritarianism, two extremely controversial aspects of the 1972 constitution were the abandonment of the idea of a secular state, which had been incorporated into the 1946 constitution, and designation of Sinhala as the sole national language. Although the constitution did not make Sri Lanka a Buddhist state, it declared that "the Republic of Sri Lanka shall give to Buddhism the foremost place and accordingly it shall be the duty of the state to protect and foster Buddhism while assuring to all religions the rights secured by Section 18 (i)(d) [religious freedom]." Tamils, a predominately Hindu minority, resented the special status given to Buddhism and the nonrecognition of a role for their language in national life.

In the July 1977 general election, the UNP was swept into power. The new ruling party, led by Jayewardene, won 140 out of 168 seats in the assembly and thus was in a position to initiate substantial revisions of the 1972 constitution. This process it proceeded to undertake by passing the Second Amendment, which established the office of executive president in October 1977. Jayewardene assumed the presidency on February 4, 1978. In November 1977, the UNP and the major opposition parties, with the conspicuous absence of the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), convened a select committee to draft further revisions. After conducting a survey on the opinions of various Sri Lankan citizens, it concluded that changes embodied in the Second Amendment were not sufficient to promote substantial reform and recommended that a new constitution be drafted. The new document was adopted by the National State Assembly in mid-August 1978, and went into effect on September 7, 1978. Under its provisions, the legislature chosen in the July 1977 general election was designated the country's new Parliament.

[edit] Constitution of 1978

After coming to power, Jayewardene directed the rewriting of the constitution. The document that was produced, the new Constitution of 1978, drastically altered the nature of governance in Sri Lanka. It replaced the previous Westminsterstyle , parliamentary government with a new presidential system modeled after France, with a powerful chief executive. The president was to be elected by direct suffrage for a six-year term and was empowered to appoint, with parliamentary approval, the prime minister and to preside over cabinet meetings. Jayewardene became the first president under the new Constitution and assumed direct control of the government machinery and party.

The new regime ushered in an era that did not auger well for the SLFP. Jayewardene's UNP government accused former prime minister Bandaranaike of abusing her power while in office from 1970 to 1977. In October 1980, Bandaranaike's privilege to engage in politics was removed for a period of seven years, and the SLFP was forced to seek a new leader. After a long and divisive battle, the party chose her son, Anura. Anura Bandaranaike was soon thrust into the role of the keeper of his father's legacy, but he inherited a political party torn apart by factionalism and reduced to a minimal role in the Parliament.

The 1978 Constitution included substantial concessions to Tamil sensitivities. Although TULF did not participate in framing the Constitution, it continued to sit in Parliament in the hope of negotiating a settlement to the Tamil problem. TULF also agreed to Jayewardene's proposal of an all-party conference to resolve the island's ethnic problems. Jayewardene's UNP offered other concessions in a bid to secure peace. Sinhala remained the official language and the language of administration throughout Sri Lanka, but Tamil was given a new "national language" status. Tamil was to be used in a number of administrative and educational circumstances. Jayewardene also eliminated a major Tamil grievance by abrogating the "standardization" policy of the United Front government, which had made university admission criteria for Tamils more difficult. In addition, he offered many top-level positions, including that of minister of justice, to Tamil civil servants.

While TULF, in conjunction with the UNP, pressed for the allparty conference, the Tamil Tigers escalated their terrorist attacks, which provoked Sinhalese backlash against Tamils and generally precluded any successful accommodation. In reaction to the assassination of a Jaffna police inspector, the Jayewardene government declared an emergency and dispatched troops, who were given an unrealistic six months to eradicate the terrorist threat.

The government passed the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act in 1979. The act was enacted as a temporary measure, but it later became permanent legislation. The International Commission of Jurists, Amnesty International, and other human rights organizations condemned the act as being incompatible with democratic traditions. Despite the act, the number of terrorist acts increased. Guerrillas began to hit targets of high symbolic value such as post offices and police outposts, provoking government counterattacks. As an increasing number of civilians were caught in the fighting, Tamil support widened for the "boys," as the guerrillas began to be called. Other large, well-armed groups began to compete with LTTE. The better-known included the People's Liberation Organization of Tamil Eelam, Tamil Eelam Liberation Army, and the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization. Each of these groups had forces measured in the hundreds if not thousands. The government claimed that many of the terrorists were operating from training camps in India's Tamil Nadu State. The Indian government repeatedly denied this claim. With the level of violence mounting, the possibility of negotiation became increasingly distant.

[edit] Reverted Copyvios

I have reverted edits that appear to violate the copyrights of this site [1] and this one [2]. If these are not copyright violations, please state this and revert. Will => talk 11:59, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The deleted text appears to be from the Library of Congress Country Studies, which is public domain [3]. It can be reincorporated into the text if proper attribution is made. Tyronen 17:23, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cololinail period to short, needs to be expanded

I have placed links about history of SRi Lanka in SRi Lanka page, for more expansion. The UPrising of JVP needs to added, the current ethinic conflict. Overall I think this page needs a good overhaul. CooldogCongo 1 July 2005 01:23 (UTC)

[edit] TfD nomination of Template:2004Earthquake

Template:2004Earthquake has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion#Template:2004Earthquake. Thank you.

[edit] POV

This article is POV, For instance, "The British colonialists, following their usual practice, played off one ethnic group against the others." The whole tone is of the glorious rise of Ceylonese independence. Its as POV as as the opposite approach (white man's burden, bringing civilisation to a dark continent &c).

[edit] History

The History of Sri Lanka is usually taken to begin in the 6th century BCE, when the Sinhalese people migrated into the island from India.

Sri Lankan history began along time before 6th century BCE.. i shall change it once i have sometime and paint a accurate picture.

Also, the first homo sapiens appear about 195000 years ago, the claim that "Sri Lanka was settled probably by 300,000 BP and possibly by 500,000 BP or earlier" looks bogus.

reference: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/species.html#moderns

[edit] RE:

It's a very pro-Sinhala, Aryanist POV. Archaeological excavations have proven human settlement in Sri Lanka long before the Aryans. I'm going to remove it from the top of the page. It's certainly not something we want to start of Sri Lanka History with. Morquendi 18:08, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Early history

The early history looks very dodgy to me. It seems a bit "new age" and claims dates not really comparable with the rest of known human history. And isn't Lemuria a theosophist/mystical construction rather than a real place? I'm afraid I don't really know enough about early Sri Lanka to fix this, but if I can find a good book or two on the subject I may have a go at some point. Anyone else know better than me? Raygungothic 12:34, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

The section is definitely in need of attention. It was hard enough just to get the mismatched ref syntax parsed correctly. 72.244.206.157 11:06, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reply from Bodhi

Thanks for your helpful comments - indeed, I should have used the preview button! All references to websites are those maintained by Universities, university academics or those of a similar standing. The reason for using CAPITAL letters for names in the section "time line" was a last resort to save space, and satisfy the need to demarcate one king from another. So a reader doen't have to go through the whole thing to find a specific name. If you try to use Lower case bold, or anything else the kilobytes add up and the article cuts off. That means this has to be made into two articles (e.g., Early History and History since European Invasions). I have attempted to shorten the text.
The Vijaya legend stuff was too long but I did not put it, and I have moved it to Vijaya. Sorry for the typos. I don't know how to activate a spell checker inside the editing process.
The issue of Dravidian settlements is a hot topic of great interest to many readers, and I have merely brought in the work of the formost expert (Karthigesu Indrapala) who is a Tamil - so it is hardly a Sinhala POV. It is the snadrad position of the establihed academic community. Most current discussions about the Mahavamsa, the early history etc, and recent academic publications range on this issue (thus run a citation search in the academic journals- not google to avoid internet stuff - or even just confined to JSTOR and you will see what I mean; of course you can run a google search separately). Anyway hte space given to dravidian stuff is less than to kambodian stuff, so the criticism has no merit.
The hisorical names are given e.g, mahathitha (Mannar), Madhupathota (Illupaikadavi) etc., where the historical names, found in the chronicles, ancient inscriptions, are given together with a current name. This is a standard in historical writing, like giving Constantinopal(Alexandria). In the case of Madhupathota, the Elu name "Meepathota" is also used (even now), but we can't list every allonym.

Thanks again. Bodhi dhana 21:25, 15 April 2007 (UTC)Bodhi_DhanaBodhi dhana 21:25, 15 April 2007 (UTC) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Bodhi dhana (talk • contribs) 05:11, 15 April 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Edits by Bodhi dhana and state of this article

  • His way of editing is very confusing. Someone should tell him about the "Preview" function.
  • Some of the edits seem to be sensible shortenings of lengthy sections.
  • Several edits seem to be Sinhala POV in that the whole point of certain sections now is to state again and again that the Tamils came later than the Sinhalese. While that may be true, the schoolmasterish phrasing gives these sections a subjective, less credible touch.

As for a lot of the edits, I am not sure what purpose they serve. We really need some experts here, and I am not talking about self-declared experts ...

The whole article is a mess:

  • too much mythology not clearly divided from facts
  • erratic transcriptions of Sinhala and Tamil terms and proper names
  • plenty of typing errors
  • erratic formatting (what's with the capitalized names!?)
  • a lot of conjectures stated as if they were facts
  • external links to tendentious web pages.

I have no idea how this can be cleaned up. I think it might be a good idea to semi-protect this page, otherwise it won't do any good to edit it because people will keep coming in and make substantial changes without taking part in the discussions here.

What to do? Krankman 09:24, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Please, people, help! Look at the nonsense in the artcle, and they keep on adding and adding! Krankman 15:05, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
Ok, I will try my best. --♪♫ ĽąĦĩŘǔ ♫♪ walkie-talkie 22:18, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
I have added a vast number of references, and reorganized much of the material so that we now have a proper article. BD

[edit] State of this article - an example

Pre and Proto History

I quote:

These first inhabitants, i.e, prior to 10th centure BC, may have been Sumarian, Phoenician and Etruscan sea-faring settleres, as attested by the presence of place names in Sri Lanka containing Elu words which may be related to such languages(see below).

Having a statement like that in our supposedly serious Wikpedia is very sad. The careless editing put aside, this section seems to be original research by some "scholars" of questionable expertise at best.

  • Why prior to 10th century, when the presence of Aryans is attested from the 5th century only? What happened in between?

Reply: This is roughly the begining of the early iron age in this region. There are no "people" called "aryan", but certain linguistic families. But where did, say, Sanskrit come from? Bodhi dhana 03:43, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

  • No serious academic work has yet found any evidence for presence of Near Eastern peoples in Lanka before the Christian Era, except maybe as merchants who frequented the country but never resided there in significant numbers.

Reply from Bodhi: One may say that there is no strong evidence for the presenc of Tamils in Sri Lanka till the reference to the two horse traders given in the Mahavamsa. However, given the proximity of South India and the existence of trade, some Tamil settlements definitely existed from very ancient times, as discussed by Karthigesu Indrapala (2005). The evidence for sea links in the ancient world between the near-east and the eastern end of south asia is well established. The level of evidence we have for near-eastern and Kushan influence in "Kushmere", in the Hindukush, and in south India and Sri Lanka are comparable, and are topics that are being dealt with in current research conferences.Bodhi dhana 03:43, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

  • Plenty of place names contain "Elu", or better (Old) Sinhala elements, because they are Sinhalese place names. The structure and lexicon of Old Sinhala ("Elu") is almost completely traceable to Northern Indian Middle Indic languages. There is not the faintest clue of an affinity to Near Eastern languages. Likewise, theories linking Tamil to Sumerian etc. (see the gal/kal/(sa)gkal example in the "Pali Chronicles" section) are unproven and are not accepted by the scientific community.

Reply from BodhiD:Krankman in his profile claims that he is begining to learn Sinhala and Tamil. Once he takes off his training wheels, he will learn that the Sanskrit of the Rig Veda has a vast number of words which have come from languages which stemmed from Sumarian, Kushan and othe ur-languages. Over a thousand early-tamil words have now been linked to Sumarian sources. When Krankman says that "("Elu") is almost completely traceable to Northern Indian Middle Indic languages", he has forgotton the work of Sugathapala de Silva (York University) and Hettiarachchi who point out that even simple words like "bella=neck", "Kalava=Thigh", have no clear origins in the "middle indic languages". I too do not have time to explain all these. He can follow up more of this by looking up recent conference proceedings on South-Asian lingusitics. Bodhi dhana 03:43, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

It is irresponsible to sell these claims as facts to a large readership who trust Wikipedia. The only hope I have is that the overall poorness and faultyness of this formerly satisfactory article (concerning its grammar, formatting and copy-editing, bad phrasing, and structure, to name just a few areas) will serve as a warning sign to every reader who is unsuspectingly looking for accurate information.

I don't have much time, but if a considerable number of sensible editors (willing to go to through official WP processes to resist those--sorry--incompetent editors) join me, we can have a try at completely redoing this presently catastrophic "article" from scrap. Please excuse my frank words, but I have been watching what's been happening here, and it really frustrates me. Krankman 21:26, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

da hast Du Dich aber anscheißen lassen!Bodhi dhana 03:43, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Krankman, if you find such obvious nonsense, you should either silently remove it, or if you don't have the time, slap a {{cleanup}} template on the article. This is just run-of-the-mill inferior material that tends to accrete on Wikipedia, nothing that sitting down for 20 minutes couldn't fix. dab (𒁳) 16:03, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I did some minor cleanup. The article is in horrible shape. Are there no Sri Lankan editors prepared to invest some time in this? dab (𒁳) 16:33, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] War on terrorism

The use of the subtitle "war on terrorism" to describe the current conflict represents the Sinhalese POV. What is wrong with using the original, NPOV subtitle "Civil war"?

just fix it, there is a reason this article has a huge "please clean me up" boilerplate. dab (𒁳) 16:33, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

←