Before Vijaya Rethinking the Origins of the Sinhala People
Most Sri Lankans learn, early and unquestioningly, that their genesis begins with a prince: Vijaya, exiled from India, arriving on island shores around 500 BCE. Accompanied by 700 men, he tames the land, marries a local princess, and becomes the fountainhead of the Sinhala people. This myth, immortalised in the 5th-century Mahāvaṃsa, is retold with the cadence of gospel. It offers kings a pedigree, the island a first sovereign, and a people their
The Empire’s Most Wanted Outlaws, Rebels, and Bandits in Sri Lanka’s Colonial Shadows
In the canon of Sri Lankan nationalism, resistance wears the cloth of kings and monks. But beyond the palace and the temple, in the forests and backroads, another kind of defiance festered, raw, romanticised,
In the Presence of Kings Inside the Medieval Royal Court of Sri Lanka
When we think of kingship in premodern Lanka, it is tempting to imagine solitary monarchs, relics at their side, issuing decrees from lotus-strewn palaces or riding elephants into war. Yet behind the aura of
