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Sri Lanka, historically known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, separated from the Indian peninsula by the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait. It shares a maritime border with the Maldives in the southwest and India in the northwest.
Ravana is a multi-headed rakshasa king of the island of Lanka, and the chief antagonist in the Hindu epic Ramayana. In the Ramayana, Ravana is described as the eldest son of sage Vishrava and Kaikasi. He abducted Prince Rama's wife, Sita, and took her to his kingdom of Lanka, where he held her in the Ashoka Vatika. Rama, with the support of vanara King Sugriva and his army of vanaras, launched an invasion against Ravana in Lanka. Ravana was subsequently slain, and Rama rescued his beloved wife Sita.
The Tamil people, also known as Tamilar, Tamilians, or simply Tamils, are an ethnolinguistic group who natively speak the Tamil language and trace their ancestry mainly to India's southern state of Tamil Nadu, to the union territory of Puducherry, and to Sri Lanka. The Tamil language is one of the world's longest-surviving classical languages, with over 2000 years of Tamil literature, including the Sangam poems, which were composed between 300 BCE and 300 CE. People who speak Tamil as their mother tongue and are born in Tamil clans are considered Tamils.
The Nallur Kandaswamy Kovil is a Hindu temple, located in Nallur, Northern Province, Sri Lanka. The presiding deity is Murugan (Kartikeya) in the form of the divine spear vel in the sanctum, the primary shrine, and in other forms, namely, Shanmugar, Muthukumaraswami, Valli Kanthar with consorts Valli and Deivayanai, and Dandayuddhapani, sans consorts in secondary shrines in the temple.
Vellalar is a group of castes in the Indian states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala and northeastern parts of Sri Lanka. The Vellalar are members of several endogamous castes such as the numerically strong Arunattu Vellalar, Chozhia Vellalar, Karkarthar Vellalar, Kongu Vellalar, Thuluva Vellalar and Sri Lankan Vellalar.
The Arya Chakravarti dynasty were kings of the Jaffna Kingdom in Sri Lanka. The earliest Sri Lankan sources, between 1277 and 1283, mention a military leader of this name as a minister in the services of the Pandyan Empire; he raided the western Sri Lankan coast and took the politically significant relic of the Buddha's tooth from the Sinhalese capital city of Yapahuwa. Political and military leaders of the same family name left a number of inscriptions in the modern-day Tamil Nadu state, with dates ranging from 1272 to 1305, during the late Pandyan Empire. According to contemporary native literature, such as Cekaracecekaramalai, the family also claimed lineage from the Tamil Brahmins of the prominent Hindu pilgrimage temple of Rameswaram in the modern Ramanathapuram District of India. They ruled the Jaffna kingdom from the 13th until the 17th century, when the last of the dynasty, Cankili II, was ousted by the Portuguese.
South Asian ethnic groups are an ethnolinguistic grouping of the diverse populations of South Asia, including the nations of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. While Afghanistan is variously considered to be a part of both Central Asia and South Asia, Afghans are generally not included among South Asians.
Pooja Gauthami Umashankar is an Indian-Sri Lankan actress who has primarily appeared in Indian Tamil and Sri Lankan Sinhala cinema.
Keerimalai Naguleswaram temple, historically known also as the Thirutambaleswaram Kovil of Keerimalai, is a famous Hindu temple in Keerimalai, located north of Jaffna, Northern Province, Sri Lanka in the suburb of Kankesanthurai. One of the oldest shrines of the region, it is the northernmost of the island's Pancha Ishwarams of Siva, venerated by Sri Lankan Tamil Hindus around the world from classical antiquity. Hindus believe its adjacent water tank, the Keerimalai Springs, to have curative properties, which irrigation studies attribute to high mineral content sourced from underground.
Tamil Brahmins are an ethnoreligious community of Tamil-speaking Hindu Brahmins, predominantly living in Tamil Nadu, though they number significantly in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Karnataka, in addition to other regions of India, as well as Sri Lanka. They can be broadly divided into two denominations: Iyengars, who are adherents of Sri Vaishnavism, and Iyers, who follow the Srauta and Smarta traditions.
Sinhalisation is a term, derived from Sinhala, that has number of meanings in Sri Lanka. it is mainly the assimilation into Sinhalese Culture in which the members of an ethno-cultural group are steadily integrated or "absorbed" into established Sinhalese culture.
Abhayagiri Vihāra was a major monastery site of Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism that was situated in Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka. It is one of the most extensive ruins in the world and one of the most sacred Buddhist pilgrimage cities in the nation. Historically it was a great monastic center as well as a royal capital, with magnificent monasteries rising to many stories, roofed with gilt bronze or tiles of burnt clay glazed in brilliant colours. To the north of the city, encircled by great walls and containing elaborate bathing ponds, carved balustrades and moonstones, stood "Abhayagiri", one of seventeen such religious units in Anuradhapura and the largest of its five major viharas. One of the focal points of the complex is an ancient stupa, the Abhayagiri Dagaba. Surrounding the humped dagaba, Abhayagiri Vihara was a seat of the Northern Monastery, or Uttara Vihara and the original custodian of the Tooth relic in the island.
Swami Vipulananda, also known as Vipulananda Adigal, was a Sri Lankan Tamil Hindu social reformer, literary critic, author, poet, teacher and ascetic from the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka. Vipulananda was an early pioneer associated with the Indian-based Ramakrishna Mission in Sri Lanka. Along with other reformers, Vipulananda was instrumental in the revival of the Hindu religion and native traditions in Sri Lanka after a long period of dormancy and decline during the previous 500 years of colonial rule by various European powers.
C. Iyothee Thass was an Indian anti-caste activist and a practitioner of Siddha medicine. He famously converted to Buddhism and called upon the Paraiyars to do the same, arguing that this was their original religion. He also founded the Panchamar Mahajana Sabha in 1891 along with Rettamalai Srinivasan. Panchamas are the ones who are outcastes.
Social class in Sri Lanka is often described as casteless, though caste is still found on the island in both a symbolic and a practical sense. Caste is also used in an analogous sense to refer to the new social class divisions that have appeared in recent decades. The combination of ethnic nationalist movements that saw caste as an island-wide dividing tool, strong emphasis on providing access to education and healthcare regardless of background, and historic lack of discrimination among the colonial civil service played a factor in eradicating the caste system in most sectors of the island's society. Although the Buddhist culture actively fought against all forms of class discrimination, many Buddhist organizations used caste as a method to extract surplus from temple property.
Valagamba, also known as the Great Black Lion, Wattagamani Abhaya and Valagambahu, was a king of the Anuradhapura Kingdom of Sri Lanka. Five months after becoming king, he was overthrown by a rebellion and an invasion from South India, but regained the throne by defeating the invaders fourteen years later. He is also known for the construction of the Abhayagiri Dagaba.
Malkar Mohamed born in Colombo, Sri Lanka, was a film producer of the Sri Lankan Tamil film industry and a businessman.
When to date the start of the history of the Jaffna kingdom is debated among historians.
Alfred Jeyaratnam Wilson was a Sri Lankan Tamil academic, historian and author. He began his academic career as a lecturer in economics and political science at the University of Ceylon and was the founding professor of political science at the University of Ceylon (1969-72). Later he moved to Canada and was professor of political science at the University of New Brunswick. University of New Brunswick.
Aggabodhi VI was King of Anuradhapura in the 8th century, whose reign lasted from 741 to 781. He succeeded his uncle Mahinda I as King of Anuradhapura and was succeeded by his cousin Aggabodhi VII.