A few years ago, Sri Lanka, a small island nation with no conflict in the Indian Ocean, suddenly broke out a terrorist attack, hundreds of deaths, shocked the world, and for a while, people heated up the discussion about Sri Lanka.
This small island country next to the huge India still tenaciously retains the Buddhist faith, and even when the Buddhist faith in the entire Indian continent is annihilated, the Kandy on the island still retains the fire of Buddhism.
And this seemingly peaceful island nation has just ended decades of civil war, and the LTTE has just been wiped out.
So what is Sri Lanka's history, why does it persist in its Buddhist faith, and what is the affairs of the LTTE? Let's return to the magical ocean of the Indian Ocean and take you to enjoy the scenery of this South Asian Buddha country.
Sri Lanka, the ancient name is "Ceylon", which means "lion" in Arabic, and Singapore means lion, probably there were tigers on this island, which were mistaken for "lion", hence the name. Today the island calls itself the Sanskrit word "Lanka", which means "island".
The 65,000-square-kilometre island is home to 21.44 million people, and the whole island looks like a pear, like the island of Ireland in Europe, next to a country that is far more powerful than its own.
Sri Lanka and the southern tip of the Indian peninsula are separated by the Pak Strait, and the narrowest point is only 32 kilometers, even during dry periods for people to walk through. In India, the island chain called the dry period "Rama Bridge", but Sri Lankans do not like this name, but it also shows that Sri Lanka has been inextricably linked to India since ancient times.
Rama Bridge
Sri Lanka's topography is very special, with mountainous areas in the central and southern parts and plains in the north near India and coastal areas. In ancient times, the coastal plain had abundant rainfall, but there were many beasts, not suitable for human habitation, and the internal alpine areas had a cool and dry climate, especially the Sinhalese liked to dry the dry forest wood to build buildings, which was easier to do in the mountains, so most of the ancient Sri Lankans lived in the inner mountains.
Indian and Western documents have long recorded Ceylon, but there is no other record than the production of gemstones on the island, according to Indian records, there are very few indigenous people on the island, and the Aryans who migrated from North India gradually multiplied into the indigenous people of the Sri Lankan islands, that is, the Sinhalese.
Sri Lankan terrain
In the 4th century AD, Fa Xian, a famous monk during the Eastern Jin Dynasty of China, came to India to seek Buddhism, and accidentally came to Sri Lanka and recorded it in his "Records of the Kingdom of Buddha", Fa Xian wrote:
Its country has no people, only ghosts and gods and dragons dwelling, merchants from all countries share the market, and when the city changes, ghosts and gods do not appear on their own, but treasures show their value. Merchants take things according to value. Because the merchants came and went, the people of all countries heard of its local music and returned to it. So it became a big country.
Master Fa Xian
Fa Xian does not record the legends of the time, but it does record Sri Lanka's favorable geographical location and prosperous trade. Sri Lanka's own history books record that their country was first uninhabited, and a prince from India, Sinhala, came to this treasure island and found that the whole island was covered by banshee Rakshasas, and they turned Sinhalese and their attendants into husbands, ready to eat them.
When Sinhala fled back to India, Rakshasa turned into a woman with a baby, telling the inhabitants of the city that Sinhala had abandoned his wife and baby. Sinhala appealed to the king, who ordered him to marry a Rakshasa and raise a baby, and Sinhala pretended to agree.
The Rakshasa women found companions and prepared to eat everyone at the wedding, and later the residents discovered the conspiracy, elected Sinhalese as the king, went on an expedition to the treasure island, killed all the Rakshasa women (and married them all), and soon the whole island had inhabitants, and they called themselves "Sinhalese" in the name of Sinhalese.
The story reflects the early ethnic integration of Sri Lanka, where the Sinhalese were supposed to represent the white-skinned Aryans from the north, and as for those Rakshasas, probably dark-skinned indigenous women, these people still exist today, in very small numbers, known as the "Vedas", the indigenous Negro-Australian race.
The white-skinned Aryans and the black-skinned natives intermarried, forming the Sinhalese. Of course, Sri Lanka also has legends of lions and people multiplying Sinhalese, which have been verified to be more similar to Greek mythology, and may be foreign myths and legends.
Since then, Sri Lanka's history has been relatively dull, giving birth to a dynasty called Viranye, followed by the birth of the first Lambajana dynasty, the second Lamba Jianna dynasty, etc., these so-called dynasties ruled an extremely limited area, about only including the central mountains, as for the vast northern and coastal plains, most of them belong to the borderless zone.
However, in the midst of a complicated history, Buddhism quietly introduced to Sri Lanka, and no one expected to survive so tenaciously for thousands of years.
Buddhism
As we all know, Buddhism was born in ancient India and founded by Shakyamuni, because of the opposition to the decadent Brahmanism, Buddhism won the support of a large number of people at the bottom. But it has not been supported and supported by the rulers.
In the third century BC, the famous Ashoka who ruled the Indian continent promoted Buddhism, and from the northernmost point to Lumbini in Nepal, visiting the birthplace of Buddha Shakyamuni, and the southernmost point to the island of Sri Lanka, legend has it that Sri Lankan Buddhism was handed down to them by Ashoka, and they continue to this day.
Ashoka's promotion of Buddhism allowed Buddhism to quickly spread out of mainland India and even to East and Southeast Asia, and today Sinhalese still make up 74% of the inhabitants of Sri Lanka Island, and 90% are Buddhists, still maintaining the Buddhist faith for thousands of years. Buddhism still plays an important role in Sri Lanka's culture and political system.
The major event in the history of Buddhism is the so-called "assembly", and the Nicaean Conference in the history of Christianity, Christianity is divided into Catholicism and Orthodoxy, and Buddhists have held four large-scale gatherings in history, not only dividing the Buddhist sects, but even affecting the faith of Buddhists around the world.
In the year of Buddha Shakyamuni's nirvana, Buddhists gathered for the first time in the Indian royal city. One hundred years after Buddha's Nirvana, because many people violated the Buddha's precepts, Indian Buddhists organized a second assembly in the city of Visha to determine the Buddhist precepts. By the time of Ashoka, the full promotion of Buddhism began, and Indian Buddhists organized the largest gathering in Fahrenheit, the capital of the Mauryan Empire ruled by Ashoka, with a total of more than 60,000 people. Eventually, many monks came to Kashmir (present-day Kashmir) and organized a gathering there.
These gatherings led to a split between Theravada Buddhism and Theravada Buddhism, gradually forming Theravada (Mahayana, Theravada Buddhism) and Theravada (Theravada Buddhism, Theravada Buddhism). Northern Buddhism is mainly spread in China, Japan, South Korea and other places, mainly Pudu sentient beings, Southern Buddhism is mainly spread in Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar and other places, with Pudu itself as the mainstay, and different Buddhist schools have formed different national characteristics.
The three major schools of Buddhism
After that, Buddhism began to decline, and the transformed Brahmanism-Hinduism began to rise, constantly suppressing Buddhism, and Sri Lanka assumed the main Buddhist function.
The first to introduce Buddhism to Sri Lanka was King Deva Nambiya Desa (247-207 BC). In 29 BC, King Wadhagamuni Appaya, King of Sri Lanka, convened Buddhists from all over the world to hold the fourth assembly of Theravada Buddhist identity, at Alu Temple, an ancient temple in the Madele region of central Sri Lanka, and it was this gathering that confirmed the importance of Sri Lanka in Theravada Buddhism and became the center of Theravada Buddhism in the world.
After this gathering, Sri Lankan monks began to follow the king's order to record the Pali Sanzang and a large number of Sinhala scriptures that have always been passed down orally in Bayeux, and wrote a voluminous Buddhist sacred text, the Bayeux Sutra, which contributed to the preservation of the Buddhist culture of the southern Pali language family, and at the same time, Sri Lankan monks recorded history from generation to generation, so that Sri Lanka, like China, basically has a history of letters every year, and the "Great History" that records its main history is an important text.
Alu Temple
It still stands on Madreu, a small town in central Sri Lanka
It is not far from Kandy and seems to predict that Kandy will soon become a Buddhist holy city
During this period, the most far-reaching historical monument in Sri Lanka was Lion Rock, a building located in the ancient city of Sigiriya where, according to the Great History, the prince usurped the throne and feared his brother's reprisals, so he built this aerial palace on top of this huge rock. Carving directly into the appearance of a lion on the mountain can be described as ingenious. Today, Lion Rock has become one of the must-see tourist attractions in Sri Lanka.
Lion Rock
By the 8th century AD, far-reaching events occurred, the Chola kingdom of South India flourished and ruled the northern part of the Sri Lankan island, followed by the migration of a large number of dark-skinned indigenous people from southern India, namely the Tamils, to the north of the island, followed by the decline of the Sinhalese and the Tamils dominating the island.
This was the first time that the Sinhalese lost all of their land and power, and this period became known as the "Anuradhapura period", from which the whole city was deserted, and the Tamils chose another city in the central mountainous region called Polonnaruwa as their capital.
Anuradhapura ancient city
The earliest national capital of Sri Lanka and a World Heritage Site
From that time on, the conflict between the Buddhist Sinhalese and the Hindu Tamils had begun, the Tamils preached Hinduism while oppressing the Buddhists, the Sinhalese rebelled again and again, and finally a man named Vilamyeba Ku drove the Tamil out, but the capital was still Polonnaruwa, because the city had grown very large.
Polonnaruwa is also famous for its ancient city
World Heritage Site, located next to Kandy
Under the reign of Viranyepakhu, the country was strong, and by the time of his grandson Boraja Ramabakhu I, Sri Lanka was united, Buddhism was established as the state religion, and a Buddhist state on the Indian Ocean was rising unstoppable.
At the same time in India, the north happened to be ruled by the Delhi Sultanate, Buddhist monasteries in the north where Buddhists were concentrated were burned, a large number of monks converted to Islam, and the rest fled to Tubo, Nepal and other places, and Buddhism in mainland India disappeared.
Although Borokaramobhara I was once strong, he understood that there would be no good end for poor military force, but unfortunately his successor did not see it this way, and his successor Nisangamura (1187-1196) was so powerful that he even conquered the lands of South India for a time.
It would be foolish to challenge the continent of South India, which lasted for thousands of years, the only country that Ashoka had failed to conquer, and eventually converted to Buddhism after 100,000 deaths and injuries to conquer the country. Today, the Tamil ruler of the Karlinga kingdom, Moga (1215-1236), is worried that the South Indian population has exploded and has once again occupied northern Sri Lanka.
This time, Sri Lanka failed to restore the entire country, although the efforts of Veyalyeba III and Boraja Ramba II were not able to drive out the Tamils, who tenaciously lived in the Jaffna region in northern Sri Lanka, which has since become the residence of Sri Lankan Tamils to this day.
Similar to Northern Ireland, Sri Lanka has a country with a different doctrine in the north, the Buddhist Sinhalese in the south and the Hindu Tamils in the north fought a centuries-long war, no one can destroy anyone, during this period, Polonnaruwa was also abandoned due to population saturation, replaced by Kandy, a city carved out of mountains with rare plant species, which became the center of Sinhalese rule and a holy city of Buddhism.
colonize
Beginning in the 15th century, with the geographical discoveries of Vasco da Gama and Columbus, the Portuguese and Spanish began to colonize the whole world, and coincidentally, the Portuguese took a fancy to Sri Lanka.
In 1505, the Portuguese landed in Sri Lanka, met with stubborn resistance, and finally the Portuguese and the Sinhalese state concluded a peace treaty, and they returned to India not to harass Sri Lanka.
In 1518, the Portuguese landed in the west of Sri Lanka and found it suitable for the construction of a good harbor, because Kandy's management of the coastal area was still relatively weak, and the Portuguese built a city here, called Colombo, which is the capital of today's Sri Lanka and the main site of the recent sensational bombings. Colombo has had numerous Christian churches since the founding of Portugal, making it the most westernized city.
The country of Kandy has undergone several moves of the capital, and it is also settled in the ancient city of Kandy, the Portuguese are on the coast, the country of Kandy is in the mountains, and it seems that the well water does not violate the river.
The Kandyan state strengthened the role of Buddhism, at that time Sri Lankan Buddhism had declined, and there was no contact with Buddhism in Thailand, Burma and other places for a long time, the king asked Siam (Thailand) to come and preach, the king of Siam sent ten Buddhist envoys led by Yubhikshu, and copied many Theravada scriptures, arrived in Ceylon in 1753, and then successively introduced different schools of Theravada Buddhism from Burma, and Sri Lanka became the center of Theravada Buddhism again.
The kingdom of Kandy reached its peak at this time, due to the lack of fresh water resources in Sri Lanka, successive Kandy kings dug artificial lakes based on a rice field, and finally in 1807 the last king Rajasingha dug a huge artificial lake, called "Kandy Lake". Some people say that Kandy Lake is to Kandy what West Lake is to Hangzhou, Kandy Lake is beautiful and lush with trees.
The beautiful Kandy Lake adds a touch of beauty to Kandy
It was at this time that the Portuguese began to spread Catholicism, and in order to boost the country's faith, the Kandyan people strengthened their faith in Buddhism, so Buddhism was greatly strengthened in Sri Lanka and became a veritable state religion, which continues to influence all aspects of the country to this day.
The Portuguese continued to encroach and eventually occupied the western and southwestern parts of the island, because the Portuguese had a better tax policy, and a large number of residents fled to the coast to live, much to the annoyance of the mountainous Kandyan state.
In the 4th century AD, the tooth of Shakyamuni Buddha was welcomed to Sri Lanka
The Temple of the Relic Relic in Kandy remains a world-famous pilgrimage site for Buddhism
The Portuguese annoyed the Kandyans, but could not do anything, in 1602, they accidentally received a mission, a Dutch mission from the coast of Sri Lanka, Kandyan decided to borrow the power of the Dutch to deal with the Portuguese, and they allied with the Dutch.
The Dutch and Tamils of Jaffna in northern Sri Lanka also eased relations, with the support of the entire island of Sri Lanka. In 1639, they began to besiege Colombo, and in 1658, the Dutch drove the Portuguese out of Jaffna, and as the Portuguese power declined, Portugal withdrew from the island.
However, the kingdom of Kandy has only now found itself luring wolves into the house, although the Kandyan king Roransinga II asked the Dutch to fulfill the treaty and withdraw from the island, how could the Dutch spit out the fat that came into their mouths? Eventually the Dutch replaced the Vigis and occupied the coast, and the rulers changed to a different country, still European, and Dutch rule continued until 1796.
After occupying Indonesia and Taiwan, the Dutch East India Company occupied Sri Lanka, found that the island had valuable spice cinnamon, and began a large number of development, and finally the Dutch East India Company made a lot of money, causing the envy of another emerging power:
United Kingdom.
Although the Dutch made many productive efforts on the island, such as growing coffee and cotton, they almost always failed. At the same time, South India became a battleground between Britain and France, the Dutch were squeezed out of South India, and the reluctant Dutch launched an attack on Britain, accidentally allowing the British to discover the island of Sri Lanka.
The Dutch finally launched an attack on the alpine Kandyan state, wanting to unify the whole island, the heroic Kandyan country made full use of the dense forests in the mountains as cover, using the method of guerrilla warfare, constantly attacking small forces, the Dutch could not fight, soon the Dutch was forced to cease, Kandy won the victory.
However, a powerful British arrived, and in 1795, under the pretext that the Dutch harassed him, the British began to invade Sri Lanka, occupying the entire coastal part of the island in a year, and the Dutch were driven out of the island by the British in only one year.
The country of Kandy was naturally unwilling to be ruled by a third colonial ruler, and fought with Britain for decades, but with little success, in 1815, the last king of Kandy was deposed, the country of Kandy joined Sri Lanka, and the entire island became a British colony.
The British ruled Sri Lanka for more than 100 years, attracting countless Arabs, who integrated into Sri Lanka and became Moors, which is also the origin of one-tenth of Sri Lanka's Muslims.
Because Tamils speak English well, the British employ a large number of Hindu Tamils, who occupied high positions during British rule and made up only 19% of Sri Lanka's population. Seventy percent of Buddhist Sinhalese engaged in manual labor on plantations, which led to the long-term civil strife in Sri Lanka.
Britain's biggest influence on Sri Lanka is black tea, in the Victorian era, the British fell in love with drinking tea, because tea can only be imported from China, and China monopolizes the production of tea, often to tea to blackmail Britain, at that time has completed the industrial revolution Britain can not bear it, launched the Opium War, forced the Qing to open the country.
Although the war is over, tea can only be imported from China, the British for their own dependence on Chinese tea is very headache, later the British East India Company found wild tea plants in colonial India Assam, planted Assam black tea, but at that time Assam black tea had an extremely pungent strong smell, brewed tea soup and Chinese medicine taste similar, most people stayed away, became crude inferior tea. Therefore, the British East India Company urgently needed to explore the secrets of Chinese tea, and needed to import excellent tea plants from China to improve the varieties of Assam tea plants, but the British government's request to import tea plants from China was rejected.
At the end of the 19th century, on the Min River in Fujian, China, Robert Fujun, a Scottish horticultural scholar, he learned Hokkien dialect, imitated Xinjiang people, obtained saplings of small seeds in Zhongshan in the local area, smuggled them back to British India, and when the ship was about to set sail from Shanghai, it was found by local officials, and Fujun actually easily bribed customs officers with silver and transported the saplings to India.
The British used Chinese tea plants to grow tea plants by grafting Chinese tea plants in Assam and Darjeeling, because of the unique local geographical conditions, especially suitable for the growth of tea plants, using Chinese tea making methods, plus the industrial crushed tea method invented by the British, to make a new Assam black tea.
Assam black tea and Darjeeling black tea soon became popular in Britain and became the aristocracy of tea. The black tea of the British East India Company crushed Chinese black tea, and to this day, the world of black tea is still dominated by Britain.
Ceylon black tea and Sri Lanka's national treasure brand - Treasure Ceylon
Sri Lanka is located in the tropics, originally planted coffee, but the taste is weak, then a coffee disaster wiped out the coffee tree, the British in Sri Lanka planted Assam black tea, unexpectedly successful, today the central mountains of Sri Lanka is also based on the production of black tea, especially uva black tea, can be called the best black tea, and Lipton, the British businessman, with the slogan "from the tea garden to the tea cup" in Sri Lanka in large quantities of black tea plantations, his Lipton black tea sold all over the world, until today.
By the middle of the 20th century, the independence movements led by Gandhi and Jinnah led to the establishment of India and Pakistan, and the independence of Sri Lanka was also a matter of time, and Sri Lankans launched attacks on British troops one after another, and in 1948, Sri Lanka became independent.
However, after independence, the majority Sinhalese took political dominance, which made the Tamils who were in power under the British feel very unfair, and in 1972, Verupile Prabakaran, led the famous terrorist organization "LTTE", and launched terrorist attacks that grew even bigger a decade later.
On 23 July 1983, the Sinhalese in Colombo began a premeditated massacre of Tamils, which then evolved into an island-wide massacre that lasted for a month, with 30,000 Tamils being massacred, 135,000 Tamils becoming refugees, and 30,000 fleeing to the Indian state of Tamil. LTTE retaliated and on 2 August 1984, a Sri Lankan plane was blown up, killing 32 people, escalating the civil war, causing a worldwide outcry and sanctions against Sri Lanka.
India then intervened and held talks with the LTTE, the capital of Bhutan, in Thimphu. Finally, in 1986, Sri Lanka promised to grant autonomy to the Jaffna region.
But the civil war did not end, the LTTE massacred 300 Sinhalese in 1988, Indian peacekeepers entered Sri Lanka to fight, the situation became increasingly difficult, and Sri Lanka begged Indian troops to withdraw. At the same time, Indian peacekeepers are at war with the LTTE, which has also taken enmity with the Prime Minister of India.
On May 21, 1991, at 10:20 p.m., Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was active in the Indian state of Tamil, a woman presented him with flowers, then set fire to his body, and Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated. Subsequently, the Sri Lankan army began to stand alone against the LTTE army, and in 2009, Prabhakaran was killed and the LTTE was eliminated.
Unfortunately, after the end of the civil war, the conflict between Sinhalese Buddhists and Moorish Muslims intensified. Ten years after Sri Lanka, which had just emerged from civil war, there were terrorist attacks, and the future of Sri Lanka was a mystery.
bibliography
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4. A Concise History of Ceylon, (Sri Lanka) Nicolas Paranavidana, Beijing, Commercial Press, 1964;
5. Medieval Culture of Ceylon, Heigl (Germany), Wiesbaden, Rhine Verlag, 1960