Sri Lanka ( /
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/;[8][9] local pronunciation: [ˌɕriːˈlaŋkaː]; Sinhala Sinhala and also known as Helabasa is the native language of the island Sri Lanka, and the language of the Sinhalese, who make up the largest ethnic group of Sri Lanka. It belongs to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages: ශ්රී ලංකා, Tamil Tamil (தமிழ் tamiḻ; [t̪ɐmɨɻ] ) is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Puducherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore. It is one of the twenty-two scheduled: இலங்கை), officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka and known as Ceylon ( /
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/) before 1972, is an island country An island country is a country whose primary territory consists of one or more islands or parts of islands[citation needed]. As of 2008, forty-seven (appoximately 25%) of the world's countries are island countries in South Asia South Asia, also known as Southern Asia, is the southern region of the Asian continent, which comprises the sub-Himalayan countries and, for some authorities , also includes the adjoining countries on the west and the east. Topographically, it is dominated by the Indian Plate, which rises above sea level as the Indian subcontinent south of the, located about 31 kilometres (19.3 mi) off the southern coast of India.
As a result of its location in the path of major sea routes, Sri Lanka is a strategic naval link between West Asia Western Asia, West Asia, Southwest Asia or Southwestern Asia are terms that describe the westernmost portion of Asia. The terms are partly coterminous with the Middle East - which describes geographical position in relation to Western Europe rather than location within Asia. Due to this perceived Eurocentrism, international organizations such as and South East Asia Southeast Asia is a subregion of Asia, consisting of the countries that are geographically south of China, east of India and north of Australia. The region lies on the intersection of geological plates, with heavy seismic and volcanic activity.[citation needed] It has also been a center of the Buddhist Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th centuries BCE. He is recognized by adherents as an religion and culture from ancient times and is one of the few remaining abodes of Buddhism Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th centuries BCE. He is recognized by adherents as an in South Asia South Asia, also known as Southern Asia, is the southern region of the Asian continent, which comprises the sub-Himalayan countries and, for some authorities , also includes the adjoining countries on the west and the east. Topographically, it is dominated by the Indian Plate, which rises above sea level as the Indian subcontinent south of the, including Ladakh Ladakh is a region of Jammu and Kashmir, the northernmost state of the Republic of India. It lies between the Kunlun mountain range in the north and the main Great Himalayas to the south, inhabited by people of Indo-Aryan and Tibetan descent. It is one of the most sparsely populated regions in Kashmir, Bhutan Coordinates: 27°25′01″N 90°26′06″E / 27.417°N 90.435°E The Kingdom of Bhutan (Hindi: भूटान), is a landlocked country in South Asia, located at the eastern end of the Himalaya Mountains and bordered to the south, east and west by the Republic of India and to the north by the Tibet Autonomous Region . Bhutan is separated and the Chittagong Hill Tracts, as well as being a bastion of Hinduism Hinduism is the predominant and indigenous religious tradition of the Indian subcontinent. Hinduism is often referred to as Sanātana Dharma by its adherents. Generic "types" of Hinduism that attempt to accommodate a variety of complex views span folk and Vedic Hinduism to bhakti tradition, as in Vaishnavism. Hinduism also includes yogic.[10] The Sinhalese Sri Lankan people,Sri Lankan Tamil,South Indian Tamil, Indo-Aryans, Bengali people community forms the majority of the population; Tamils Tamil people , also called Tamils or Tamilians, are a linguistic and ethnic group native to Tamil Nadu, a state in India and the north-eastern region of Sri Lanka. They speak Tamil (தமிழ்), with a recorded history going back two millennia. Emigrant communities are found across the world, notably Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa, Canada,, who are concentrated in the north and east of the island, form the largest ethnic minority A minority is a sociological group that does not constitute a politically dominant voting majority of the total population of a given society. A sociological minority is not necessarily a numerical minority — it may include any group that is subnormal with respect to a dominant group in terms of social status, education, employment, wealth and. Other communities include Moors The Sri Lankan Moors are the third largest ethnic group in Sri Lanka comprising 8% of the country's total population (approx. 2 million people in 2005). They are predominantly followers of Islam. The Moors trace their ancestry to Arab traders who settled in Sri Lanka some time between the eighth and fifteenth centuries. The Arabic language brought, Burghers The Burghers are a Eurasian ethnic group, historically from Sri Lanka, consisting for the most part of male-line descendants of European colonists from the 16th to 20th centuries and local women, with some minorities of Swedish, Norwegian, French and Irish, Kaffirs The Sri Lankan Kaffirs are an ethnic group in Sri Lanka who are partially descended from 16th century Portuguese traders and the African slaves who were brought by them to work as labourers and soldiers to fight against the Sri Lankan kings. They are very similar to the African populations in Iraq, Iran and Kuwait, and are known in Pakistan as, Malays Sunni Islam and the indigenous Vedda people The Wanniyala-Aetto, or "forest people", more commonly known as Veddas or Veddahs (transliteration of Sinhala වැද්දා , are an indigenous people of Sri Lanka, an island nation in the Indian Ocean; they were never numerous and are now few in number.
The country is famous for the production and export of tea, coffee Coffee is a brewed drink prepared from roasted seeds, commonly called coffee beans, of the coffee plant. They are seeds of coffee cherries that grow on trees in over 70 countries. Green unroasted coffee is one of the most traded agricultural commodities in the world. Due to its caffeine content, coffee can have a stimulating effect in humans, coconuts The coconut is an important member of the family Arecaceae (palm family). It is the only accepted species in the genus Cocos, and is a large palm, growing up to 30 m tall, with pinnate leaves 4–6 m long, and pinnae 60–90 cm long; old leaves break away cleanly, leaving the trunk smooth. The term coconut can refer to the entire coconut palm, the, rubber Natural rubber is an elastomer that was originally derived from latex, a milky colloid found in the sap of some plants. The plants would be ‘tapped’, that is, an incision made into the bark of the tree and the latex sap collected and refined into a usable rubber. The purified form of natural rubber is the chemical polyisoprene, which can also and cinnamon Cinnamon is a spice obtained from the inner bark of several trees from the genus Cinnamomum which includes all species of Evergreen trees which can be used in both sweet and savoury foods. Cinnamon trees are native to South East Asia, and its origin was mysterious in Europe until the sixteenth century - which is native to the country.[11] The natural beauty of Sri Lanka's tropical The tropics is a region of the Earth by the Equator. It is limited in latitude by the Tropic of Cancer in the northern hemisphere at approximately 23° 26′ 16″ N and the Tropic of Capricorn in the southern hemisphere at 23° 26′ 16″ ( or 23.438° ) S. The tropics are also referred to as the tropical zone and the torrid zone (see forests, beaches and landscape. The island also boasts the first female Prime Minister in the modern world, Sirimavo Bandaranaike Sirimavo Ratwatte Dias Bandaranaike was a Sri Lankan politician and the first female Prime Minister in the world. She served as Prime Minister of Ceylon and Sri Lanka three times, from 1960 to 1965, 1970 to 1977 and 1994 to 2000 and was long time leader of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party.[12]
After over two thousand years of rule by local and Tamil kingdoms from India, parts of Sri Lanka were colonised by Portugal and the Netherlands beginning in the 16th century, before control of the entire country was ceded to the British Empire The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom, that had originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height it was the largest empire in history and, for over a in 1815.[citation needed] During World War II, Sri Lanka served as an important base for Allied forces The Allies of World War II were the countries that opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War . The Allies became involved in World War II either because they had already been invaded or were directly threatened with invasion by the Axis or because they were concerned that the Axis powers would come to control the world. The anti-German in the fight against the Japanese Empire The Empire of Japan was a Japanese political entity that existed during the period from the Meiji Restoration in 1868 until its defeat in World War II in 1945.[13] A nationalist political movement The Sri Lankan independence movement was a peaceful political movement which aimed at achieving independence & self rule for Ceylon from the British Empire. It was initiated around the turn of the 20th century lead mostly by the educated middle class and ultimately was successful when February 4, 1948 Ceylon was granted independence as the arose in the country in the early 20th century with the aim of obtaining political independence, which was eventually granted by the British after peaceful negotiations in 1948.
Name
Main article: Names of Sri Lanka Sri Lanka is an island country that has been known by many names. The existence of the island has been known to the Indic, Chinese, Arabic, and Western civilisations for many millennia and the various names ascribed to the island over time reflect this See also: List of country name etymologies This list covers English language country names with their etymologies. Some of these include notes on indigenous names and their etymologies. Countries in italics no longer exist as sovereign political entitiesIn ancient times, Sri Lanka was known by a variety of names: ancient Greek geographers called it Taprobane[14] ( / t ə ˈ p r ɒ b ən iː /) and Arabs Arab people or Arabs (العرب al-ʿarab) are an ethnic group whose members identify as such on one or more of linguistic, cultural, political, or genealogical grounds. Those self-identifying as Arab, however, rarely do so with it as their sole identity. Most hold multiple identities, with a more localized prioritized national identity — such referred to it as Serendib (the origin of the word "serendipity Serendipity is a propensity for making fortunate discoveries while looking for something unrelated. The word has been voted as one of the ten English words that were hardest to translate in June 2004 by a British translation company. However, due to its sociological use, the word has been imported into many other languages").[15] Ceilão was the name given to Sri Lanka by the Portuguese Portuguese Ceylon refers to a former Portuguese territory in Sri Lanka (Ceylon), representing a period in Sri Lankan history from 1505–1658 and its rule by the Portuguese. The Portuguese first encountered the Ceylonese kingdom of Kotte, with whom they signed a treaty. Portuguese Ceylon was established through the occupation of Kotte and the when they arrived in 1505,[16] which was transliterated into English as Ceylon.[17] As a British colony, the island was known as Ceylon The Batavian government was more popular among the Dutch population than was the prince of Orange. This was apparent during the British-Russian invasion of 1799, and achieved independence under the name Dominion of Ceylon The Dominion of Ceylon, today known as Sri Lanka, was a dominion in the British Commonwealth between 1948 and 1972 in 1948.
In 1972, the official name of the country was changed to "Free, Sovereign and Independent Republic of Sri Lanka" (in Sinhala Sinhala and also known as Helabasa is the native language of the island Sri Lanka, and the language of the Sinhalese, who make up the largest ethnic group of Sri Lanka. It belongs to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages ශ්රී ලංකා śrī laṃkā, IPA: [ˌʃɾiːˈlaŋkaː]; whereas the island itself is referred to as ලංකාව laṃkāva, IPA: [laŋˈkaːʋə], in Tamil Tamil (தமிழ் tamiḻ; [t̪ɐmɨɻ] ) is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Puducherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore. It is one of the twenty-two scheduled இலங்கை ilaṅkai, iˈlaŋɡai). In 1978 it was changed to "Democratic Socialist Democratic socialism is a description used by various socialist movements and organizations, to emphasize the democratic character of their political orientation. The term is sometimes used synonymously with 'social democracy', but many self-identified democratic socialists oppose social democracy, seeing it as capitalist Republic of Sri Lanka".[18] The current name is derived from the Sanskrit Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism and Buddhism[note 1]. Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand श्री लंका (śrī lankā) with the word lankā Lanka is the name given in Hindu mythology to the island fortress capital of the legendary king Ravana in the great Hindu epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. The fortress was situated on a plateau between three mountain peaks known as the Trikuta Mountains. The ancient capital city of Lanka is thought to have been burnt down by Lord Hanuman, meaning "island",[19] also being the name of the island as described in the ancient Indian epics Mahabharata The Mahabharata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India, the other being the Rāmāyaṇa. The epic is part of the Hindu itihāsa (or "history") and the Ramayana The Ramayana is an ancient Sanskrit epic. It is ascribed to the Hindu sage Valmiki and forms an important part of the Hindu canon (smṛti). The Ramayana is one of the two great epics of India, the other being the Mahabharata. It depicts the duties of relationships, portraying ideal characters like the ideal servant, the ideal brother, the ideal. The word śrī is a Sanskrit title meaning "venerable".
Geography and climate
Main article: Geography of Sri Lanka Sri Lanka, also sometimes called Ceylon, is an island nation in the Indian Ocean, located in Southern Asia, southeast of India, in a strategic location near major Indian Ocean sea lanes. It has a total area of 65,610 km², with 64,740 km² of land and 870 km² of water. Its coastline is 1,340 km long. Sri Lanka's climate includes tropical monsoons: Topographic map of Sri Lanka.The island of Sri Lanka lies in the Indian Ocean, to the southwest of the Bay of Bengal The Bay of Bengal IPA:ˈbɒŋɡopoʃɑːˈgoɽ), the largest bay in the world, forms the northeastern part of the Indian Ocean. It resembles a triangle in shape, and is bordered by Bangladesh (land of Bengal, where the name of the Bay originates from) and the Indian state of West Bengal to the north India and Sri Lanka to the west and Burma (. It is separated from the Indian subcontinent The Indian subcontinent, also Indian Subcontinent and other terms, is a region of the Asian continent on the Indian tectonic plate south of the Himalayas, forming a land mass which extends southward into the Indian Ocean by the Gulf of Mannar The Gulf of Mannar is a large shallow bay that is an arm of the Laccadive Sea in the Indian Ocean. It lies between the southeastern tip of India and the west coast of Sri Lanka with widths between 160 and 200 km . A chain of low islands and reefs known as Adam's Bridge, also called Ramsethu, separates the Gulf of Mannar from the Palk Bay, which and the Palk Strait Palk Straight is a strait that lies between the Tamil Nadu state of India and the island nation of Sri Lanka. It connects the Palk Bay to the northeast with the Gulf of Mannar to the south. The strait is 40 to 85 miles (64 to 140 km) wide. Several rivers flow into it, including the Vaigai River of Tamil Nadu. The strait is named after Robert Palk,. According to Hindu mythology Hindu mythology is the large body of traditional narratives related to Hinduism, notably as contained in Sanskrit literature, such as the Sanskrit epics and the Puranas. As such, it is a subset of Indian mythology, a land bridge to the Indian mainland, known as Rama's Bridge, was constructed during the time of Rama by the vanara architect Nala. Often referred to as Adam's Bridge, it now amounts to only a chain of limestone shoals remaining above sea level.[20]
According to colonial British reports, this is a natural causeway which was formerly complete, but was breached by a violent storm in 1480.[21] The island consists mostly of flat-to-rolling coastal plains, with mountains rising only in the south-central part. Amongst these is the highest point Pidurutalagala, reaching 2,524 metres (8,281 ft) above sea level.
The climate of Sri Lanka can be described as tropical and warm. Its position between 5 and 10 north latitude endows the country with a warm climate moderated by ocean winds and considerable moisture. The mean temperature ranges from about 16 °C (60.8 °F) in the Central Highlands, where frost may occur for several days in the winter, to a maximum of approximately 33 °C (91.4 °F) in other low-altitude areas. The average yearly temperature ranges from 28 °C (82.4 °F) to nearly 31 °C (87.8 °F). Day and night temperatures may vary by 4 °C (7.20 °F) to 7 °C (12.60 °F). During the coldest days of January, many people wear coats and sweaters in the highlands and elsewhere.
May, the hottest period, precedes the summer monsoon rains. The rainfall pattern is influenced by monsoon winds from the Indian Ocean and Bay of Bengal: as the winds encounter the mountain slopes of the Central Highlands, they unload heavy rains on the slopes and the southwestern areas of the island. Some of the windward slopes receive up to 2,500 millimetres (98.4 in) of rain each month, but the leeward slopes in the east and northeast receive little rain. Periodic squalls occur and sometimes tropical cyclones bring overcast skies and rains to the southwest, northeast, and eastern parts of the island.
Between December and March, monsoon winds come from the northeast, bringing moisture from the Bay of Bengal. Humidity is typically higher in the southwest and mountainous areas and depends on the seasonal patterns of rainfall, and places like Colombo experience daytime humidity above 70% all year round, rising to almost 90% during the monsoon season in June. Anuradhapura experiences a daytime low of 60% during the monsoon month of March, but a high of 79% during the November and December rains. In the highlands, Kandy's daytime humidity usually ranges between 70% and 79%.
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Tue, 17 Aug 2010 17:22:51 GMT+00:00
FOXNews An elephant destoys a minibus after throwing its rider and going on a rampage in Galle, Sri Lanka , in this 2007 photo. More than 200 elephants and 50 humans ... Sri Lanka wildlife vets on strike BBC News Sri Lanka vets go on strike over elephants AFP
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During the way to our hotel we visit the Indipendence Square with a monument built to the memory that recalls the Council room of Polannaruwa
Sat, 23 Jan 2010 02:02:41 PST
Sri Lanka's political opposition is warning of possible vote-rigging and violence ahead of next week's presidential election. And as both ... youtube.com.
