sri-lanka-13-full-pdf-ebook.pdf

out from huge billboards and signs on the sides of buildings, in countless publications and more. It’s a cult of personality tha ...

Prehistory & Early Arrivals Sri Lanka’s history is a source of great pride to both Sinhalese and Tam- ils, the country’s two ...

with striking similarities to the South Indian cultures of that time. Also during this Early Iron Age, Anuradhapura grew as a po ...

develop agriculture. The system was not banished from the island until 1832, when the British passed laws banning slavery. The B ...

Polonnaruwa The next capital, at Polonnaruwa, survived for over two centuries and produced two more notable rulers. Parakramabah ...

royal library. Portugal eventually took over the entire west coast, then the east, but the Kandyan kingdom in the central highla ...

The Road to Independence Growing Nationalism The dawning of the 20th century was an important time for the grass- roots Sri Lank ...

Tamils became capable English speakers and were overrepresented in universities and public-service jobs, which created Sinhalese ...

Land). They included Vellupillai Prabhakaran, a founder of the Libera- tion Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), often referred to as t ...

It soon became clear the deal suited no one. The LTTE complied in- itially but ended up in battle with the IPKF when it refused ...

2003 the US listed the LTTE as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. Some believed this to be a positive move; others saw it as an a ...

August the fighting in the northeast was the most intense since the 2002 ceasefire, and peace talks in Geneva failed again. The ...

by claims of control throughout the Vanni, and by February, the LTTE had lost 99% of the territory it had controlled just 12 mon ...

Pear-shaped Treasure Looking a lot like a plump pear, the island country of Sri Lanka dangles into the Indian Ocean off the sout ...

In terms of animals, it’s not just elephants – although they are awe- some; Sri Lanka has a huge range of animals for such a sma ...

Meanwhile, elephants, which need about 5 sq km of land each to sup- port their 200kg-per-day appetites, no longer seem to have s ...

is not good: after the 2004 tsunami, laws were put in place that banned construction of hotels and restaurants within 100m of th ...

Tradition & Ethnicity Traditional Sri Lankan life was centred on the gamma (village), a high- ly organised hub of activity, ...

Moors The island’s Muslims – called Sri Lankan Moors – are descendants of Arab or Indian traders who arrived around 1000 years a ...

by centuries of conflict between the Sinhalese (mainly Buddhist) and Tamils (mainly Hindu). For some Sinhalese, Mahayana Buddhis ...