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 […]

Sripali Vaiamon  But it also tried to establish SINHALESE were descendants of a lion and a woman. How far we can believe that !Let that be there but let us address everyone living in Sri Lanka as SRILANKAN, besides their ethnic names. This could be implemented after the election of the new PRESIIDENT on the […]

Written by Yudhanjaya Wijeratne Courtesy The Indian Express The mists of mythology, history and conspiracy theories render him elusive. Yet, in Sri Lanka, the search for Ravana remains a quest for validation. A few months ago, I was picking my way through an obscure 1870s translation of the great Ramayana, notebook in one hand and […]

Courtesy The Daily Mirror Archaeological officers in Vavuniya have complained to the Omanthai police in October to carry out an inquiry about the building of a Kovil in the Maligai area in Omanthai, in Vavuniya by a certain group of people by bulldozing a place with archaeological memorials and ruins that belonged to Anuradhapura period. […]

Courtesy Adaderana Several stone weapons used by prehistoric man have been found in the area nearby Panikkan Kulam in Mankulam, Mullaitivu, says Professor Paramu Pushparatnam. Speaking to Ada Derana reporter, Prof. Pushparatnam stated that he had inspected the area after he was notified by the residents that artefacts belonging to the prehistoric times exist there. […]

Dr.Sripali Vaiamon  Canada But it also tried to establish SINHALESE were descendants of a lion and a woman. How far we can believe that! Let that be there but let us address everyone living in Sri Lanka AS SRILANKAN, after the election of the new President What a fascinating apology.  Rev. Mahanama of the Deegasanda […]

by Max Planck Society Courtesy phys.org Microliths—small stone tools—are often interpreted as being part of composite tools, including projectile weapons, and essential to efficient hunting strategies of Homo sapiens. In Europe and Africa, the earliest appearance of these lithic toolkits are linked to hunting medium and large-sized animals in grassland or woodland settings, or as adaptations to […]

By IAN RANDALL FOR MAILONLINE Archaeologists studied tiny, worked stone tools found in the Fa-Hein Lena Cave They believe they were made during the production of projectiles like spears Ancient humans likely used them to hunt tree-dwelling animals like monkeys These early tools overturn the idea that rainforests impeded humanity’s spread PUBLISHED: 19:00, 2 October 2019 | UPDATED: 19:00, 2 October […]

BY S VENKAT NARAYAN, Courtesy The Island NEW DELHI, September 7: A newly published archaeological study based on DNA analysis of skeletal remains at the Rakhigarhi site in Haryana in north India has claimed that inhabitants of the Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC) were a distinct indigenous people, and challenges the theory of an “Aryan invasion” ending […]

Courtesy News18 Civil Aviation Authority vice-chairman Shashi Danatunge said they had irrefutable facts to prove that Ravana was the pioneer and the first to fly using an aircraft. Bengaluru: The Sri Lankan government believes that King Ravana was the first aviator in the world and flew over 5,000 years ago and the country’s Civil Aviation Authority […]

Martin Brech Courtesy  The INSTITUTE FOR HISTORICAL REVIEW In October 1944, at age eighteen, I was drafted into the U.S. army. Largely because of the “Battle of the Bulge,” my training was cut short, my furlough was halved, and I was sent overseas immediately. Upon arrival in Le Havre, France, we were quickly loaded into […]

Japanese Agency Truth of Japan’s World War II Why did Japan have to fight? What did Japan fight for? Japan is the first Asian country that has amazingly modernized and defeated one of Great Western powers, Russian Empire. This brought huge hope to many Asian countries that were suffering from Western colonization. Who else in […]

By P.K.Balachandran/Daily Mirror Courtesy NewsIn.Asia The successful launching of the first Sri Lankan-designed satellite ‘Raavana-1’ on June 17, established the capabilities of two young Lankan engineers, Tharindu Dayaratne and Dulani Chamika. Tharindu Dayaratne is an electrical and electronics engineer of the University of Peradeniya and a research engineer at the Arthur C Clarke Institute for […]

Sri Lanka Raavana, the ancient Lankan monarch who is known to have excelled in technology, aviation, medicine, state craft and music. Ravana is considered to be a descendant of Yakka clan in ancient Sri Lanka and the ancient dynasty of  Sinhala people in Sri Lanka . Name “Yakka” believed to be derived from the Sinhala […]

Royal Asiatic Society of Sri Lanka (RASSL) Royal Asiatic Society of Sri Lanka (RASSL) Public Lecture  Did Japan contribute to Sri Lanka and India gaining independence from British colonial rule?”    by Senaka Weeraratna   On Monday 24th  June 2019 at 5.00 p.m. at the Gamini Dissanayake Auditorium No. 96, Ananda Coomaraswamy Mawatha, Colombo 07 ALL ARE WELCOME […]

Courtesy  Internationalist Communist Forum Introduction To the British public, Sri Lanka is probably best known for idyllic photos in package tour brochures describing it as the “Pearl of the Indian Ocean”. But for a large part of its population, the island is anything but idyllic. For half a century, it has been plagued by on-going […]

Dr. Daya Hewavitharana. Nalanda was the first residential university in the history of the world. The Nalanda campus was an exceptionally impressive place, which included many impressive chetiyas, temples, monasteries, hostels, lecture halls, meditation halls, libraries, even parkland with lakes. The three great libraries of Nalanda were: Ratnasagara, Ratnadadhi and Ratnaranjaka. Inscriptional evidence (Yasovarmadeva) reveals that […]

By Senaka Weeraratna  Royal Asiatic Society of Sri Lanka (RASSL) Public Lecture  Did Japan contribute to Sri Lanka and India gaining independence from British colonial rule?”   by Senaka Weeraratna   On Monday 29th April 2019 at 5.00 p.m. at the Gamini Dissanayake Auditorium No. 96, Ananda Coomaraswamy Mawatha, Colombo 07 ALL ARE WELCOME Abstract The time has come […]

PBS Hemachandra Lieutenant Commander (retired) Sri Lanka Navy Courtesy The Island Carbon dating of the bone samples collected from the Mannar Mass grave in Sri Lanka confirmed that bone samples belonged to the periods when Sri Lanka was ruled by European. Books written by Portuguese, Dutch and English historians recorded massacres of Singhalese people lived […]

by Shashi Tharoor Courtesy RT Screenshot from film Gandhi (1982); Director Richard Attenborough; International Film Investors; National Film Development Corporation of India (NFDC); Goldcrest Films International; Indo-British; Carolina Bank The centenary of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre is the right occasion for Britain to apologise for the evils of colonialism. Two years ago, on the UK […]

by P. WEERASEKERA Courtesy The Island The issue of mass graves in Mannar continues to remain an inconclusive hot topic, despite the radio carbon dating analysis report received from the Beta Analytic Testing Laboratory in Florida, USA., which cleared the Sri Lanka Army of responsibility, by declaring the skeletal remains referred to the Laboratory pre-dates […]

Harindra Dunuwille Much has been said and written about the Kandyan Convention of 1815 whereby the Kandyan Kingdom was ceded to the British. Historians and writers have over the years interpreted the events that led to the signing and the cessation of what was the last bastion of Sinhale”. The document itself, its drafting, its […]

by Senaka Weeraratna (This is an edited version of a paper read out at a Public Seminar on the ‘ Kandyan Convention of 1815’ held at the University of Peradeniya, Arts Theatre, on March 09, 2019) The Kandyan Convention (‘Ingrisy – Sinhale Givisuma’) must be examined in the context of British colonial policy seeking British supremacy […]