“Prof Seneviratna says that these rulers and peasants liked living in the Kandyan hills and adopted South Indian customs, some of which continue to be obvserved even today. This shows cultural assimilaltion of the Sinhalese and Dravidians during the 17th and 18th centuries. “Why is it not possible today?” asks Prof Senevirathna. Kantale is just one place in the North-Central province named and renamed by original Sinhalese peasantry, and then by Tamil occupation. In the process the two communities mixed and now they speak a Sinhala-Tamil dialect.”_________________________________________
by Elmo Leonard
(February 17, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) To the liberal minded person the entire earth is one family. These noninterventionist words were scripted in the Mahabharata over 5000 years ago in the afterglow of a war between two Indian factions of blood-cousins, intent on securing the authority of a throne. Over five millennia later, science has just established that man from his origin in Africa dispersed to the four corners of this planet (except Neanderthal man who died out in Europe 30,000 years ago). This spread of mankind can be represented by a family tree. Much earlier, the language tree of man was established.
Both in India and in Sri Lanka people have been racially grouped into Aryan and Dravidian. The majority of the North Indians are now being recognised as Aryan while people in South India are called Dravidian. In a reversal, the people of south Sri Lanka are referred to as the Aryans and the northerners, of today, as Dravidians.
Starting from Vijaya in the 6th century BC, many of the monarchs in Sri Lanka took brides from the subcontinent. This made our kings not just mixes of human genes but of culture, possibly, religion, which is a personal matter and of course architectural preference; evidence from Parakramabahu in Polonnaruwa. Our monarchy ended with the last king of Kandy being a South Indian prince.
Even in India
Not only royalty, but as noted by Fr Robert Caldwell in his Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South Indian Family of Languages (1856) and confirmed by G A Grieson in his Linguistic Survey of India (1906), Aryan and Dravidian tribes from time to time occupied both the hills and plains of India `like islets in the sea’. Dravidian dialects were spoken by small tribes in the central provinces and even up the banks of the Ganges at Rajmahal and in the far North-West in Baluchistan. Gradually these tribes were subjected to ever increasing Aryan settlements and superseded by Aryan speech. Similarly some Aryan tribes settled down in the South where “Dravida-basha” was spoken. They too were subjected to Tamil influence and adopted Tamil as their language thereby loosing their original ethnic identity.
Prof Anuradha Senevirathna in his book The Lions and Tigers says that the same phenomenon occurred in Sri Lanka with regard to certain sections of “Dravidas, Pandyans, and Cheras adopting Sinhala as their language and becoming ardent Sinhala-Buddhists as time went on.”
Prof Senerat Paranavithaana said that the Harijans living in the North were originally Sinhalese who had to adapt to Tamil occupation.
There is much more such evidence, by scholars. For the purpose of this article, a few instances might suffice.
Even today, stories are rife of Sinhalese wives living in the North, adopting dress and language of the Tamils following the “ethnic conflict” of 1983.
From recent history
King Wimaladharmasuriya’s son Narendrasinha was the last of the Sinhalese dynasty. After him during the Nayakkar dynasty until British rule in Kandy (1815), many thousands of Nayakkars settled down in Sri Lanka, spoke Telegu and were called Wadugas.
Prof Seneviratna says that these rulers and peasants liked living in the Kandyan hills and adopted South Indian customs, some of which continue to be obvserved even today. This shows cultural assimilaltion of the Sinhalese and Dravidians during the 17th and 18th centuries. “Why is it not possible today?” asks Prof Senevirathna. Kantale is just one place in the North-Central province named and renamed by original Sinhalese peasantry, and then by Tamil occupation. In the process the two communities mixed and now they speak a Sinhala-Tamil dialect. Prof Senevirathna says: “The spoken Sinhala dialect in some places in the North Central Province is certainly interesting in this regard for a student of dialectology for it shows ethnic socialisation.”
A large number of settlers until the 10th century in Sri Lanka were Malabars or Cheras and they were more numerous than the Tamils. Make no mistake, the kingdom of Jaffna was set up only in the 13th century and before that there was no Tamil kingdom in this island. During the British period many thousands of South Indians were brought here as labourers and their descendents have moved into plantations around Sri Lanka and into the cities. Their genes are everywhere. It is common in South Asia for the poor or the lesser castes among women to present themselves to the higher caste males.
Prof Senevirathna says: “As far as we can see from our historical records, the Sinhalese and Tamils in Sri Lanka are not pure by birth to be called as Sinhala and Tamil. We use these terms because we need an identity. Today the Sinhalese are a mixture of Veddas and Tamils in majority areas like in the North Central areas and Eastern and the Central highlands. “Tamils on the other hand are a mixture of Colas, Pandyas, Pallavas and Cheras in South India. They have got mixed up with the Sinhalese in the past and with the Muslims and Burghers recently. The majority of the Tamils in Sri Lanka as seen by our own history were Pandyans and Cheras (Keralas) who were not Tamils. Most of the people of Kerala origin in Sri Lanka claim Sinhala indentity today while some of the Sinhalese caste groups with their clear South Indian origins fight for Sinhala-Buddhist rights. “Most of the present day so-called Tamils originally entered the country as mercenaries fighting for Sinhala kings.
On the other hand, speaking of the Sinhalese, a large number of people belonging to some important castes especially in the coastal areas of the country will find their origins in South India. Therefore speaking about ethnicity in Sri Lanks is a controversaial as well as a sensitive issue. The only basis as far as we could see for the Sinhalese and Tamils is to live together safeguarding historical identity in a united country.”
All around the borders of Vavuniya the Sinhalese display distinct Dravidian features. How this is possible, only the untrained in such matters would ask. Physical anthropologists all over the world have long established that when two peoples, even warring factions lived close by, they passed on their genes both ways. The irony of it is that the Sinhalese the LTTE kill along their borders are far more like them in features and must be in blood, than the Sinhalese living in the deep South.
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