The Sri Lanka Reader

by Holt, John Clifford

• ISBN13: 9780822349822
• ISBN10: 0822349825
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-04-13
• Publisher: Duke Univ Pr

Summary

The Sri Lanka Readeris a sweeping introduction to the epic history of the island nation located just off the southern tip of India. The islandrs"s recorded history of more than two and a half millennia encompasses waves of immigration from the South Asian subcontinent; the formation of Sinhala Buddhist and Tamil Hindu civilizations; the arrival of Arab Muslim traders; and European colonization by the Portuguese, and then the Dutch, and finally the British. Selected texts depict perceptions of the countryrs"s multiple linguistic and religious communities, as well as its political travails after independence in 1948, especially the ethnic violence that recurred from the 1950s until 2009, when the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam were defeated by the Sri Lankan governmentrs"s armed forces. This wide-ranging anthology covers the aboriginal Veddhas, the earliest known inhabitants of the island; the Kings of Kandy, Sri Lankars"s last indigenous dynasty; twenty-first-century women who leave the island to work as housemaids in the Middle East; the 40,000 Sri Lankans killed by the tsunami in December 2004, and, through cutting-edge journalism and heart-wrenching poetry, the protracted violence that has scarred the country's contemporary political history. Along with fifty-four images of paintings, sculptures, and architecture,The Sri Lanka Readerincludes more than ninety classic and contemporary texts written by Sri Lankans and foreigners.

Author Biography

John Clifford Holt is William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of the Humanities in Religion and Asian Studies at Bowdoin College.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. xiii
Acknowledgments	p. xv
Introduction	p. 1
From Ancient to Early Modern	p. 9
Buddhist Visions of a Primordial Past, Anonymous, comp	p. 13
A Tamil Hindu Vijaya: Yalpana Vaipava Malai, Anonymous	p. 26
The Saga of Dutugemunu	p. 30
Sirisamghabodhi and the Ideals of Buddhist Kingship, Anonymous, comp	p. 42
Anuradhapura: Fifth-Century Observations by a Chinese Buddhist Monk	p. 44
Path of Purification	p. 50
A Hydraulic Civilization	p. 53
Sigiri Graffiti, Anonymous	p. 57
Set in Stone, Mahinda IV and Anonymous	p. 60
Anuradhapura: A Photographic Essay	p. 64
Tamil Identity in Ancient Sri Lanka	p. 69
The Indigenous Veddhas	p. 75
Tamilnadus in Rajarata	p. 79
Promulgations of a Polonnaruva King	p. 87
Buddhist Sculpture at Polonnaruva: A Photographic Essay	p. 96
The Abdication of King Parakramabahu II	p. 98
Dambadeni Asna, Anonymous	p. 101
Alakeshvara Yuddhaya, Anonymous	p. 107
The Observations of Ibn Battuta	p. 111
Saelalihini Sandesaya (The Starling's Message)	p. 119
The Colonial Encounter	p. 133
Sri Lanka: National Identity and the Impact of Colonialism	p. 135
The Portuguese: An Introduction	p. 152
An Early Observer	p. 154
Visions from the Mid-Sixteenth Century: The Economist, the Viceroy, and the Missionary	p. 159
The Spin Doctors at Work: The Island as ôNew Portugal,ö	p. 166
Kandy in the 1630s: Through the Eyes of a Soldier-Poet and a Soldier-Ethnographer, Anonymous and Constantino de Sá de Miranda	p. 170
The Final Dreamers	p. 176
The Catholics' Last Sigh: Oratorian Missionaries in Eighteenth-Century Kandy	p. 182
The Dutch: An Introduction	p. 189
A Dutch Prelude	p. 191
Jaffna and Kandy through Eyes of a Dutch Reformed Predikant	p. 201
The Price of Good Cinnamon	p. 210
How the Dutch Ruled	p. 219
Dutch Policy towards Buddhism in Sri Lanka	p. 225
The British: An Introduction	p. 230
A British Description of Colombo, 1807	p. 232
The Final Tragedy of the Kandyan Kingdom	p. 245
The Rebellion of 1818 and Consolidation of British Rule	p. 252
The 1848 Rebellion	p. 258
Leonard Woolf's Ceylon	p. 269
The Establishment of the Tea Industry in Ceylon	p. 279
Kandyan Culture in the Colonial Era: An Introduction	p. 295
Vimaladharmasurya: The First Kandyan King, Anonymous	p. 297
Concerning Their Religions …	p. 299
Poetry and Proclamations in the Kandyan Kingdom, Anonymous	p. 308
An Open Letter to the Kandyan Chiefs	p. 320
Colonial Postscript: The Other Eden	p. 328
Emerging Identities	p. 331
Buddhist Identities: An Introduction	p. 334
Old Diary Leaves	p. 335
The Western Invasion and the Decline of Buddhism	p. 350
Ape Gama (Our Village)	p. 356
Ten-Precept Mothers in the Buddhist Revival in Sri Lanka	p. 364
Sarvodaya in a Buddhist Society	p. 376
Politically Engaged Militant Monks	p. 380
Politics of the Jathika Hela Urumaya: Buddhism and Ethnicity	p. 383
A Buddha Now and Then: Images of a Sri Lankan Culture Hero	p. 395
Losing the Way Home	p. 407
Muslim Identities: An Introduction	p. 409
Origins of the Sri Lankan Muslims and Varieties of the Muslim Identity	p. 410
The Ethnology of the ôMoorsö of Ceylon	p. 420
A Criticism of Mr. Ramanathan's ôEthnology of the Moors of Ceylon,ö	p. 424
Who Are the Moors of Ceylon?	p. 429
The Bawas of Ceylon	p. 435
The Fight for the Fez	p. 441
The Purdah's Lament	p. 446
Sri Lankan Malays	p. 453
Tamil Identities: An Introduction	p. 458
Language, Poetry, Culture, and Tamil Nationalism	p. 459
The Dance of the Turkey Cock-The Jaffna Boycott of 1931	p. 471
Language and the Rise of Tamil Separatism in Sri Lanka	p. 491
The Militarisation of Tamil Youth	p. 503
Womanhood and the Tamil Refugee	p. 523
Translating Remembering	p. 542
Nallur	p. 557
Christians and Burghers: An Introduction	p. 559
Christians in a Buddhist Majority	p. 560
On the Meaning of ôParangiö and ôBurgherö: Symbolic Discourse of Subordination	p. 567
Emergent Perspectives in Modern Art: The '43 Group-Formation of a Sri Lankan Avant-Garde	p. 574
Independence, Insurrections, and Social Change	p. 589
Sri Lanka in 1948	p. 591
The Bandaranaike Legend	p. 599
After Forty-Five Years	p. 607
The Ceylon Insurrection of 1971	p. 618
The Colombo Riots of 1983	p. 641
ôIn the Month of Julyö and ôVoyagers,ö	p. 648
Patriotic TV	p. 650
Search My Mind	p. 656
The Great Divide	p. 664
A Land Divided	p. 667
Neither Sinhala nor Tamil-On Being a South Asian in Sri Lanka	p. 680
Female Labor Migration from Sri Lanka to the Middle East	p. 687
Juki Girls: Gender, Globalization, and the Stigma of Garment Factory Work	p. 695
A Place with No Room	p. 706
The Wave, Ramya Chamalie Jirasinghe	p. 708
Political Epilogue	p. 713
And Then They Came for Me	p. 715
Checkmate!, The Island	p. 721
Our Holocaust, The Tamil Guardian	p. 723
Moderation the Only Way	p. 726
Kingship-in-the-Making	p. 731
Acknowledgment of Copyrights and Sources	p. 735
Suggestions for Further Reading	p. 745
Index	p. 755
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