HISTORY OF THE SINHALESE PEOPLE<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The\nSinhalese people made up of four clans referred to as Sivu Hela are the\noriginal inhabitants of the island of HELADIVA later known as SRI LANKA, and\nthe Founding People of the nation. With\nthe arrival of Prince Vijaya of North West India accompanied by 700 members of\nthe Sinha clan and their merger with the Hela people in the 5th<\/sup>\nCentury BC resulted in the formation of the Sihala (Sinhala) people, who form\nnearly 75 percent of the island\u2019s population even today. Sri Lanka has a\nrecorded history dating back to over 2,500 years published in the Pali language\nas an epic poem called the Mahavamsa in the 4th<\/sup> Century CE, by the\nBuddhist monk Mahanama based on prior\nrecords in Dipavamsa and AththaKatha covering the period from 5 BC to 5 CE. The Mahavamsa concludes at Chapter 37\ncovering the reign of King Mahasena. Continuation is in the Culavamsa which ends\nwhen the Chieftains of the Kingdom of Kandy called Sinhale ceded power to the British in 1815. The Mahavamsa was later translated to German\nby Prof. Wilelm Geiger in 1908 and soon after into English as well. The contents\nhave been corroborated by records found in India and on over 3,000 rock inscriptions found in the island ,\nphotos of which are available in the archives of the Cambridge University in UK\nand in the journal Epigraphia Zelanica.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A complete\ntransformation of the life of the people took place over 2,300 years back when\nthe son of Emperor Asoka, Arahat Mahinda came to the island and imparted the\nTeachings of the Buddha which were accepted by King Devanampiyatissa the ruler\nand his subjects, which gave a fillip to\nthe attributes in art, architecture and innovative skills of the people. The\nSinhala people are heirs to the illustrious dagobas and other sacred monuments\nbuilt to honour the Spiritual Teacher seen in ancient cities dating to over two\nmillennia, and a unique hydraulic civilization comprising reservoirs and feeder\ncanals developed to harness every drop of rain water to grow food crops for the wellbeing of the people.\nThe philosophy that nurtured the culture and values of the people led to the\nancient kings demarcating 1\/16th<\/sup> of the land as Nature Parks called\nAbhaya Bhoomi, where the animals were free to roam unharmed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Our ancestors have waged over 1600 battles to save the land\nfrom Chola Tamil and Pandyan invaders who came from the southern parts of India\nto pillage and plunder. Great kings such as Dutugemunu, Gajabahu and Vijayabahu\ndefeated the enemy and rolled back the invasions. The Tamils first arrived as settlers around\nthe 11 Century and established a sub-kingdom called Jaffnapatam in the 13th<\/sup>\nCentury, comprising the Jaffna peninsula and a narrow strip extending to Mannar. The King of Kotte sent his forces under Prince\nSapumal to regain suzerainty over Jaffnapatam after a lapse of nearly 150\nyears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Portuguese drifted off course and reached our shores in\nthe year 1505. They falsely sought a trading post on the west coast and soon\nannexed the Kotte Kingdom. A new chapter\ndawned with partial subjugation of our territory to a Western European power.\nThey adopted oppressive ways to forcibly convert the subject people from their\ntraditional faith to Catholicism. Our nation too soon acquired an armory of\nlocally made firearms to outmaneuver the enemy in open territory to defeat the\nPortuguese in their attempts to lay siege to the capital of the Kandyan kingdom.\n With the help of the Dutch, we\nsuccessfully evicted the Portuguese in 1658 after 153 years. The Dutch replaced\nthe Portuguese on the west coast and also obtained rights to a narrow tract\nalong the east coast. The Buddhist King of Kandy gave refuge to the Arab Muslim\ntraders who were driven out by the Portuguese and the Catholics who were\npersecuted by the Protestant Dutch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1801, the British took possession of the Dutch controlled\nterritory in terms of the Treaty of Amiens. They made several attempts to\nmilitarily annex the Kandyan kingdom but\nfailed. They then resorted to deceptive means under the direction of the Sinhala\nspeaking British Civil Servant,\nJohn d\u2019Oyly whose duplicity and trickery\nhelped to isolate the unpopular king from his chieftains. The\nChieftains ceded power to the British in terms of the Kandyan Convention of\n1815, only to find that the Treaty was being violated especially in respect of\ngranting protection to Buddhism. <\/strong>These treaty violations gave rise to about\n12 rebellions which were put down by the British by brutal means with orders to\nshoot every male over 14 years of age and adopting a scorched earth policy. No\napology or compensation has been made by the British to the affected people up\nto date. The British soon after\nintroduced the \u2018Crown Lands Encroachment Ordinance No. 12 of 1840\u2019 to\nexpropriate private lands belonging to the Kandyans, and sell it to British\ncapitalists at a shilling an acre. The\nforest cover over 2.5 million acres of expropriated land was stripped and burnt\nto ashes causing wide scale damage to the ecology. By 1848, the British made a sport of shooting\nelephants resulting in the killing of 5,500 of these majestic animals within 5\nyears. The dispossessed Sinhala peasants were unwilling to work as labourers on\nthese lands taken from them without a penny in compensation. The Portuguese and the Dutch brought\nindentured South Indian labour to grow tobacco in the north and the east, even giving\nspecial land rights to these Malabars who came to reside in the Jaffna region. In 1805, Capt. Robert Perceival of the\nBritish Army stationed in Jaffna, in his book, \u201cAn account of the Island of\nCeylon\u201d said the majority in Jaffna made up of Moors and Malabars were foreigners.\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n The British started coffee plantations in the expropriated\nlands, and brought in migrant South\nIndian Tamil labour willing to work for a little food and a roof over their\nheads. In 1869, a disease struck the\ncoffee plantations causing the British to switch to a variety of tea from Assam.\nTea was harvested year round requiring a permanent labour force. Waves of Indian Tamils in excess of a million\nwere brought in as indentured labour and settled on the estates changing the\ndemography. The expansion of the tea plantations followed the passing of the\ninfamous Waste Lands Act of 1897 to confiscate the remaining lands of the\nSinhalese. Attempts to introduce the sale of opium did not flourish unlike in\nChina. They discriminated against the majority creating communal hostilities\nthrough their divide and rule policy. The\ndamage done to internal peace and harmony continues to hamper efforts at\nuniting the people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Sinhalese and the nation of Sri Lanka have never been\nmilitarily defeated since its inception. The Sinhalese have welcomed the Tamils\nof South India, Moors (Muslims), European descendants, Malays, Plantation Tamils,\nChettys and others of different religious persuasions as equal citizens. We must\nforge ahead in unity and equality and not get misled by invented histories by\nextremists that seek to carve out territory for a separate homeland. We have to have a sense of history as we\nproceed, so that we build this civilizational nation under one flag, into a\nland of equals with mutual respect for one and all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n MAHINDA GUNASEKERA Senior Advisor, SRI LANKA UNITED NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF CANADA (SLUNA)<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" HISTORY OF THE SINHALESE PEOPLE The Sinhalese people made up of four clans referred to as Sivu Hela are the original inhabitants of the island of HELADIVA later known as SRI LANKA, and the Founding People of the nation. With the arrival of Prince Vijaya of North West India accompanied by 700 members of the Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"parent":1821,"menu_order":10,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/slcaottawa.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1887"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/slcaottawa.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/slcaottawa.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slcaottawa.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slcaottawa.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1887"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/slcaottawa.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1887\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1897,"href":"https:\/\/slcaottawa.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1887\/revisions\/1897"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slcaottawa.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/slcaottawa.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}