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Sinhala and Tamil are the official languages of Sri Lanka, with English as the link language. Tamil is a South-Dravidian language, and Sinhala belongs to the Insular Indic family (along with Dhivehi of Maldives). Vedda is said to be the indigenous language of Sri Lanka before the arrival of the Indo-Aryans and Dravidians.
Sri Lanka's first King, to be mentioned in the ancient Pali chronicles, was alleged to have ancestors from the Vanga Kingdom located in modern Bangladesh. In Sri Lanka, several strands of hair gifted by the Buddhists of Bangladesh, identified as originated from Buddha, are venerated on Poya Day, a Buddhist public holiday in Sri Lanka. [2]
The Tamil language is spoken by native Sri Lankan Tamils and is also spoken by Indian Tamils of Sri Lanka and by most Sri Lankan Moors. Tamil speakers number around 4.8 million (29% of the population), making it the second largest language in Sri Lanka. There are more than 40,000 speakers of the Sri Lankan Malay language.
Dravidians form the predominant ethnolinguistic group in southern India, the northern and eastern regions of Sri Lanka and a small pocket of Pakistan. [12] The Iranic peoples also have a significant presence in South Asia, the large majority of whom are located in Afghanistan and the northwestern and western parts of Pakistan.
Genetic studies on the Sinhalese is part of population genetics investigating the origins of the Sinhalese population.. All studies agree that there is a significant relationship between the Sinhalese and the Bengalis and South Indian Tamils, and that there is a significant genetic relationship between Sri Lankan Tamils and Sinhalese.
Bengali, [a] also known by its endonym Bangla (বাংলা, Bāṅlā, ⓘ), is a classical Indo-Aryan language from the Indo-European language family native to the Bengal region of South Asia.
This can be observed with the supposed Vanga settlements in the island of Mahiladipaka in the Maldives and Prince Vijaya's conquests of Lanka. There has also been instances of Vanga settlements in Southeast Asia. Most notably in Champa , where a settlement was founded in Cochinchina. The settlement was named after a native Bengali name. [8]
Sri Lanka was the first Asian country known to have a female ruler: Anula of Anuradhapura (r. 47–42 BCE). [60] Sri Lankan monarchs undertook some remarkable construction projects such as Sigiriya, the so-called "Fortress in the Sky", built during the reign of Kashyapa I, who ruled between 477 and 495. The Sigiriya rock fortress is surrounded ...