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Over the years, our performance has acquired a reputation for offering effectively designed travel products geared to provide an unique insight into the ‘resplendent isle’, Sri Lanka. Our service oriented customer service team has the knowledge and professionalism to assist the discerning traveler in all travel arrangements which ranges from customized package tours to special interest tours. |
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| Contact Us |
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Hemtours (Pte) Ltd |
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Address 6th Floor, Hemas House, |
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75, Braybrooke Place, |
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Colombo 02, |
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Sri Lanka. |
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Tel : +94.11. 2313131, +94.11.4704600 |
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Fax : +94.11. 2300003, +94.11.2300004 |
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Email: wyomi.hemtours@hemas.com |
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| History of Sri Lanka | Ecology | Economy | Demographics | People |
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| The Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka (known as Ceylon before 1972) is a tropical island nation off the southeast coast of the Indian subcontinent. The island was known in ancient times as Lanka, Lankadeepa (Sanskrit for "resplendent land"), Simoundou, Taprobane (from the Sanskrit Tamaraparni), Serendib (from the Sanskrit Sinhala-dweepa), and Selan. During colonization, the island became known as Ceylon, a name still used on occasion. Its unique shape and proximity to the Indian mainland have led some to refer to the island as India's teardrop. |
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| History of Sri Lanka |
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The History of Sri Lanka is usually taken to begin in the 6th century BC, when the Sinhalese people migrated into the island from India. Before the Sinhalese invasion the island was occupied by a people now known as Vedda,who are believed to be of Malay orgin. Some Vedda people still live in eastern Sri Lanka.
The Sinhalese chronicle the Mahavamsa relates the landing of Vijaya, the first Sinhalese king, in 543 BC. The Sinhalese people are believed to have migrated from somewhere in northern India: they are not Dravidian like the peoples of neighbouring south India. The Sinhala language is related to Sanskrit, as is Hindi. The first Sri Lankan kingdom had its capital at Anuradhapura. In the third century BC the Sinhalese converted to Buddhism, and the island became a centre of Buddhist scholarship and missionary work. This set Sri Lanka apart from the Hindu culture of south India.
Anuradhapura remained Sri Lanka's royal capital until the 8th century AD, when it was replaced by Polonnaruwa.Tamil people from India began to arrive in Sri Lanka as early as the 3rd century BC, and there were repeated wars between the Sinhalese and Indian invaders, and for much of the first millennium AD the island was controlled by various Tamil princes. The "golden age" of the Sri Lankan kingdom was in the 12th century, when the Sinhalese King Prakrama Bahu defeated the Tamils, united the whole island under his rule, and even invaded India and Burma. In the 15th century the island was attacked by China, and for 30 years the kings paid tribute to the Chinese emperor.
Sri Lanka was known to the Greeks and to the Romans, who called it Taprobane. After the Arab conquest of the Middle East Arab traders frequently visited the island, and there has been an Arab community in Sri Lanka since the 10th century.The first Europeans to visit Sri Lanka in modern times were the Portuguese. The Portuguese founded Colombo in 1517 and gradually extended their control over the coastal areas. In 1592 the Sinhalese moved their capital to the inland city of Kandy,
In 1602 the Dutch captain Joris Spilberg landed and the king at Kandy appealed to him for help in order to be released from Portuguese Rule.But it was not until 1638 that the Dutch attacked in earnest, and not until 1656 that Colombo fell. By 1660 the Dutch controlled the whole island except the kingdom of Kandy. A mixed Dutch-Sinhalese people known as Burghers are a legacy of Dutch rule.
During the Napoleonic Wars the United Kingdom, fearing that French control of the Netherlands might deliver Sri Lanka to the French, occupied the island (which they called Ceylon) with little difficulty in 1796. In 1802 the island was formally ceded to Britain, and became a crown colony. In 1815 Kandy was occupied, finally ending Sri Lankan independence. A treaty in 1818 preserved the Kandyan monarchy as a British dependency.
The British found that the uplands of Sri Lanka were very suited to tea, coffee and rubber cultivation, and by the mid 19th century Ceylon tea had become a staple of the British market, bringing great wealth to a small class of white tea planters. |
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| Ecology |
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Sri Lanka is the country with the highest species richness in the world and home to several forest ecoregions, whose flora and fauna is related to that of southern India. The southwest portion of the island, where the influence of the moisture-bearing southwest monsoon is strongest, is home to the Sri Lanka lowland rain forests. At higher elevations they transition to the Sri Lanka montane rain forests. Both these tropical moist forest ecoregions bear strong affinities to those of India's Western Ghats.
The northern and eastern portions of the island are considerably drier, lying in the rain shadow of the central highlands.The Sri Lanka dry-zone dry evergreen forests are a tropical dry broadleaf forest ecoregion, which, like the neighboring East Deccan dry evergreen forests of India's Coromandel Coast, is characterized by evergreen trees, rather than the dry-season deciduous trees that predominate in most other tropical dry broadleaf forests.
These forests have been largely cleared for agriculture, timber or grazing, and many of the dry evergreen forests have been degraded to thorn scrub, savanna, or thickets. Several preserves have been established to protect some of Sri Lanka's remaining natural areas. The island has three biosphere reserves, Hurulu (established 1977), Sinharaja (established 1978), and Kanneliya-Dediyagala-Nakiyadeniya (KDN) (established 2004). Sri Lanka is a centre of bird endemism. |
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| Economy |
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| Sri Lanka is historically famous for its cinnamon and tea (introduced by the British in the 19th century). From independence, till 1977, it was a strongly socialist economy but since then it has been increasingly pursuing privatization, market-oriented policies and export-oriented trade. While tea and rubber are still important, the most dynamic sectors are now food processing, textiles and apparel, food and beverages, telecommunications, insurance and banking. By 1996, plantation crops made up only 20 percent of exports (compared with 93 percent in 1970), while textiles and garments accounted for 63 percent. |
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| Demographics |
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About 75 percent of the population belongs to the Sinhalese majority, which is predominantly Buddhist, mostly following the Theravada tradition. The other major group on the island is the Tamils, who constitute 18 percent of the population. They are predominantly Hindu, and live mostly in the north and east. The Tamil population comprises two communities, one composed of Native Tamils and another composed of more recent immigrants from India.
Both Sinhala and Tamil languages have enjoyed official status since the Indo-Lanka accord in 1989. English, the link language in the present constitution, is the mother tongue of roughly 10 percent of the population, and is spoken and understood widely. All three languages are used in education and administration.
Smaller minorities include the (mostly Sunni) Muslims (7%), mostly of Arab and Malay descent , the Burghers of mixed European descent (1%) and the Wanniyala-Aetto or Veddahs, the few remaining descendants of earlier cultures. Buddhism (70%) and Hinduism (15%) are the dominant religions. Christians represent 7% of the population, including 6% Catholics and 1% Protestant |
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| People |
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According to Hindu legend, the greater part of Sri Lanka was conquered in prehistoric times by Ramachandra, the seventh incarnation of the supreme deity Vishnu. The written history of the country begins with the chronicle known as the Mahavamsa. This work was started in the 6th century AD and provides a virtually unbroken narrative up to 1815. The Mahavamsa was compiled by a succession of Buddhist monks.
Sinhalese society, although Buddhist, is stratified along caste lines. About 74 percent of the population of Sri Lanka is of Sinhalese descent. The largest minority groups are the Sri Lankan Tamils and the Indian Tamils, which together account for about 18 percent of the population. |
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