By P.K.Balachandran/Ceylon Today By the adoption of a variety of tactics, tailored to suit the power-equation at any given point of time, Lankan Buddhists kept blunting the attack and managed to preserve Buddhism as the dominant religion of the island. Sri Lankan Buddhists came under a sustained and frontal assault by Christian missionaries during Portuguese […]

By Asiff Hussein/Roar.lk Courtesy NewsIn.Asia Names reflect beliefs and attitudes and give an insight into the manifold influences a people have been subjected to in the past, says Asiff Hussein, in his article in Roar.lk. Little do we realise that names are the foundation of all knowledge. Naming people and things makes it easier for […]

YAKK Production https://youtu.be/BGdwAQUb-mw

Courtesy Adaderana Four new members have been appointed to the Presidential Task Force for Archaeological Heritage Management in the Eastern Province. The 12-member Task Force was established on the 1st of June under the directives of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, exercising the powers vested in him by Article 33 of the Constitution. However, the following four […]

By P.K.Balachandran/Daily Express The Hindu epic provides rallying points for Hindutva in India as well as Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism in Sri Lanka The Hindu epic Ramayana has had the unusual function of providing rallying points for two contradictory and clashing nationalisms, namely, Hindu-Indian nationalism in India, and Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism in Sri Lanka. While the Hindutvic […]

By-Dr.Sripali Vaiamon  On the 25th of July(2020) President had held a meeting with MAHA SANGA and also with the new Director General of the Department of Archaeology. According to news papers very important matters have been discussed. Results could be expected without much delay. In view of this other responsible  officers will furnish more detailed […]

Courtesy Firstpost Indians are supposed to accept without compelling scientific proof the existence of Jesus or Mohammed, but a Ram or a Krishna cannot break the glass ceiling of mythology Irony had a hearty laugh last week, skipping across the chain of shoals that links India with Sri Lanka. Embracing Ramayan, the epic that binds […]

Raza Hamdani Courtesy Independent Idol was uncovered in building works near historic religious site Police in Pakistan have arrested four people in connection with the destruction of a third-century life-sized Buddha statue. Four people were detained on Saturday under antiquities law for allegedly destroying the centuries-old statue, police in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the northwestern province of Pakistan, told The Independent. The rare […]

By.Dr.Sripali Vaiamon Hon. Gotabaya Rajapaksa is a very religious conscious kind personality.I saw recently He has gone to UDAMALUWA OF SRI MAHA BODHIYA, ANURADHAPURA and keeping askance of his face on the Bo brach with leaning his head on it in most sentimental devotion. I fully realized he is ideally matching the great Indian King […]

By P.K.Balachandran Courtesy NewsIn.Asia Absence of war and expansion of civil, especially, police administration from 1833 onward, led to the Malays giving up soldiering as their dominant occupation Sri Lanka’s tiny community of Malays (40,189 as per the 2012 census) had an overwhelmingly dominant position in the island’s military and police in the colonial period, […]

Macquarie University http://www.mq.edu.au/ “Visions of an Island” is an autobiographical account of Sir Christopher Ondaatje’ romance with Sri Lanka drawing on several of his books. Sir Christopher is writer in residence from 28 March till 14 April 2011, he was born in Ceylon, educated in London and immigrated to Canada in 1956. He has worked […]

Courtesy Adaderana At a jungle-covered cave site in southwestern Sri Lanka, archaeologists have found a remarkable collection of ancient objects, including tools that they believe are among the oldest survival gear humans used in rainforests. The artifacts range in age from 48,000 to 4,000 years old and include 130 bone arrow tips—the oldest arrow tips […]

iflscience.com The earliest human inhabitants of Asia’s tropical rainforests were packing some serious heat, according to a new study in the journal Science Advances, which describes the discovery of 130 arrowheads dating back 48,000 years. Found in a cave in Sri Lanka, the bone projectiles are the oldest weapons of their kind to be found outside […]

Courtesy theconversation.com/ Archaeological excavations deep within the rainforests of Sri Lanka have unearthed the earliest evidence for hunting with bows and arrows outside Africa. At Fa-Hien Lena, a cave in the heart of Sri Lanka’s wet zone forests, we discovered numerous tools made of stone, bone, and tooth – including a number of small arrow points carved […]

By Sasanka Perera & Dev Nath Pathak Courtesy NewsIn.Asia The multi-lingual broadcasts over Radio Ceylon culturally united communities divided into nation states after decolonization. New Delhi, May 6 (newsin.asia): Radio, in our view is not merely a matter of technology through which music, entertainment, information, news and increasingly fake news and many other forms of […]

By P.K.Balachandran Courtesy NewsIn.Asia In the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic, 20,000 perished in Sri Lanka, 20 million in India and 50 to 100 million, the world over Colombo, April 17 (SAM): Exactly a 100 year ago, Sri Lanka had the experience of going through a horrendous pandemic the Spanish flu or influenza, which claimed nearly 20,000 […]

Malwatuoyasoya Media A Journey to the Heart of Civilization of Lanka Dedicated to the Children of the Irrigation Civilization https://youtu.be/bv8cCI_lLuw

By Mahendra (Speedy) Gonsalkorale. January 2019 Courtesy colombomedgrads1962.blogspot.com A Historical perspective of people who influenced it and of culture related to the song(I don’t claim this to be a scholarly treatise; it is based chiefly on internet resources)I discuss this subject in paragraphs and indicate the main subject in the sub-heading. You will see a […]

Professor Anthony Costello courtesy The Guadian (UK) Anthony Costello is professor of global health and sustainable development at University College London Data from east Asia shows testing, tracing and isolating people with coronavirus is the best way to tackle the pandemic When will the pandemic end? The future is uncertain, but it seems likely that […]

Centre for Indic Studies

Oshan Wedage, Patrick Roberts, Patrick Faulkner, Alison Crowther, Katerina Douka, Andrea Picin, James Blinkhorn, Siran Deraniyagala, Nicole Boivin, Michael Petraglia, Noel Amano courtesy MAX-PLANCK Institute for the Science of Human History Abstract Sri Lanka has produced the earliest clear evidence for Homo sapiens fossils in South Asia and research in the region has provided important insights into […]

Grammar Productions When British soldiers conquered Burma in 1885, they gave the last king hours to pack. Many of his treasures – heirlooms from a millennium of monarchy- were seized and sent to Britain. But the most precious, an enormous ruby, disappeared. Who took it, and where is it now? Read the full story here […]

By P.K.Balachandran/Daily Express Today, the Tamil-speaking Jaffna peninsula is a bastion of orthodox Saivism – a Hindu sect based on the worship of Lord Siva. But according to Prof. Tikiri Abeysinghe, in the 16th and the 17th centuries, under Portuguese sway, the peninsula was entirely Catholic, though only nominally so. In Jaffna under the Portuguese”, […]

Some of this information was obtained from a book titled Colonial Kollupitiya and its environs by H.M.M. Herath. There was a time when Kollupitiya was known as Baradeniya. It was a beautiful rustic village with coconut  gardens and cinnamon trees that grew wild and narrow cart-tracks which connected the few villas and homes here with […]

Colonial history Courtesy Scroll.IN A group of Indian and American researches simulated soil moisture content during major Indian famines to come to the conclusion. The 1943 Bengali famine was caused by then-British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s policies and not drought, a group of Indian and American researchers have found in a study published in the […]

Courtesy The Daily Mirror November 26 marks the day when Maha Adikaram Keppetipola and Maha Nilame of the Uva Madugalle were executed on the banks of Bogambara Wewa on the orders of the British Governor. It was left to Dr Henry Marshall, a friend of Maha Adikaram Keppetipola to take away the head of Keppetipola […]

By Gary Brecher You see some pretty sick stuff when you do my job, but I just read something sicker than any Congo cannibal buffet.   It’s an article by a posh little Limey named Jeremy Brown condemning the Sri Lankan Government for being too messy in putting down the LTTE, and demanding that we stop […]

By Nikhil Sonnad/The Quartz Courtesy NewsIn.Asia With a few minor exceptions, there are really only two ways to say tea” in the world. One is like the English term—té in Spanish and tee in Afrikaans are two examples. The other is some variation of cha, like chay in Hindi. Both versions come from China. How […]

Courtesy BBC The skulls of nine members of a Sri Lankan tribe have been returned to their descendents by the University of Edinburgh. Experts say the bones are the ancestral remains of the Vedda people and may be more than 200 years old. They have been part of the university’s anatomical collection since being acquired […]

Courtesy Adaderana The skulls of nine members of a Sri Lankan tribe have been returned to their descendents by the University of Edinburgh. Experts say the bones are the ancestral remains of the Vedda people and may be more than 200 years old. They have been part of the university’s anatomical collection since being acquired […]