British Sri Lankans
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British Sri Lankans
British Sri Lankans ( si, බ්‍රිතාන්‍ය ශ්‍රී ලාංකිකයන්, , ta, பிரித்தானிய இலங்கையர்) are an ethnic group referring to British people who can trace their ancestry to Sri Lanka. It can refer to a variety of ethnicities and races, including Sinhalese, Tamils, Moors/Muslims and Burghers. History Pre-Independent Ceylon Since the times of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, Sri Lanka historically had contact with Western Europe by being a stop on the highly profitable trade routes between the West and the East, whether through Arabic traders or directly through Western European traders. The term "serendipity" comes from the Latin word used by Romans for the island. There may have contacts between Anglo-Saxon England and Sri Lanka as the rulers of East Anglia were part of an international culture stretching to the Baltic and far beyond. The objects discovered at Sutton Hoo included garnets ...
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London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a major settlement for two millennia. The City of London, its ancient core and financial centre, was founded by the Romans as '' Londinium'' and retains its medieval boundaries.See also: Independent city § National capitals The City of Westminster, to the west of the City of London, has for centuries hosted the national government and parliament. Since the 19th century, the name "London" has also referred to the metropolis around this core, historically split between the counties of Middlesex, Essex, Surrey, Kent, and Hertfordshire, which largely comprises Greater London, governed by the Greater London Authority.The Greater London Authority consists of the Mayor of London and the London Assembly. The London Mayor is distinguished fr ...
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Anglo-Saxon
The Anglo-Saxons were a Cultural identity, cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo-Saxons happened within Britain, and the identity was not merely imported. Anglo-Saxon identity arose from interaction between incoming groups from several Germanic peoples, Germanic tribes, both amongst themselves, and with Celtic Britons, indigenous Britons. Many of the natives, over time, adopted Anglo-Saxon culture and language and were assimilated. The Anglo-Saxons established the concept, and the Kingdom of England, Kingdom, of England, and though the modern English language owes somewhat less than 26% of its words to their language, this includes the vast majority of words used in everyday speech. Historically, the Anglo-Saxon period denotes the period in Britain between about 450 and 1066, after Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, th ...
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Ceylon Tamil
Sri Lankan Tamils ( or ), also known as Ceylon Tamils or Eelam Tamils, are Tamils native to the South Asian island state of Sri Lanka. Today, they constitute a majority in the Northern Province, live in significant numbers in the Eastern Province and are in the minority throughout the rest of the country. 70% of Sri Lankan Tamils in Sri Lanka live in the Northern and Eastern provinces. Modern Sri Lankan Tamils descend from residents of the Jaffna Kingdom, a former kingdom in the north of Sri Lanka and Vannimai chieftaincies from the east. According to the anthropological and archaeological evidence, Sri Lankan Tamils have a very long history in Sri Lanka and have lived on the island since at least around the 2nd century BCE. The Sri Lankan Tamils are mostly Hindus with a significant Christian population. Sri Lankan Tamil literature on topics including religion and the sciences flourished during the medieval period in the court of the Jaffna Kingdom. Since the beginnin ...
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Muthu Coomaraswamy
Sir Muthu Coomaraswamy ( ta, முத்து குமாரசுவாமி; 23 January 1834 – 4 May 1879) was a Ceylon Tamil lawyer, writer and member of the Legislative Council of Ceylon. Early life and family Coomaraswamy was born on 23 January 1834 in Amaittodam, Mutwal in south western Ceylon. He was the son of Gate Mudaliyar A. Coomaraswamy and Visalachchi Ammaiyar. From 1842 to 1851 he was educated at Colombo Academy where he won the Turnour Prize in 1851. Coomaraswamy married Elizabeth Clay Beebe, daughter of William Beebe from Kent, in 1878. They had a son, Ananda Coomaraswamy, the eminent art critic. Career After finishing school Coomaraswamy joined the Ceylon Civil Service as a cadet at the Colombo Kachcheri. He was appointed police magistrate and was known as the "boy magistrate". He resigned from the civil service after a short period. He joined the legal profession as an apprentice under Richard Morgan. He was called to the bar at the age of 22. Cooma ...
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Ananda Coomaraswamy
Ananda Kentish Muthu Coomaraswamy ( ta, ஆனந்த குமாரசுவாமி, ''Ānanda Kentiś Muthū Kumāraswāmī''; si, ආනන්ද කුමාරස්වාමි ''Ānanda Kumārasvāmī''; 22 August 1877 − 9 September 1947) was a Ceylonese metaphysician, historian and a philosopher of Indian art who was an early interpreter of Indian culture to the West. In particular, he is described as "the groundbreaking theorist who was largely responsible for introducing ancient Indian art to the West". Life Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy was born in Colombo, British Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, to the Ceylon Tamil legislator and philosopher Sir Muthu Coomaraswamy of the Ponnambalam–Coomaraswamy family and his English wife Elizabeth Beeby. His father died when Ananda was two years old, and Ananda spent much of his childhood and education abroad. Coomaraswamy moved to England in 1879 and attended Wycliffe College, a preparatory school in Stroud, Gloucestershire, a ...
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Felix Reginald Dias Bandaranaike I
Justice Felix Reginald Dias Bandaranaike I ( si, ෆෙලික්ස් රෙජිනල්ඩ් ඩයස් බණඩාරනායක; 26 July 1861 – 30 January 1947) was a Ceylonese (Sri Lankan) judge and lawyer. He was a Judge of the Supreme Court of Ceylon. Born to Rev. Canon Samuel William Dias Bandaranaike, he was educated at S. Thomas' College and the Colombo Academy. He went on to Trinity Hall, Cambridge gaining a MA and LLM from the University of Cambridge. He apprenticed to Henry Fielding Dickens, KC and was admitted to the Inner Temple in 1887 and took oaths as an Advocate in Ceylon in 1888. He started his practice as an Advocate, before joining the judicial service as Police Magistrate and Commissioner of Requests in Gampola. From 1893 to 1897 he served as Crown Counsel. He became the acting District Judge of Colombo in 1897, Additional District Judge in 1898 and District Judge in 1906. In 1902 he was among the Ceylonese representatives invited to attend ...
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Sir John Kotelawala
General Sir John Lionel Kotelawala ( si, ශ්‍රිමත් ජෝන් ලයනල් කොතලාවල; 4 April 1897 – 2 October 1980) was a Sri Lankan statesman, who served as the 3rd Prime Minister of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) from 1953 to 1956. Born to a wealthy landholding and mining family, Kotelawala had a difficult childhood with the suicide of his father and financial difficulties that followed. He was educated at Royal College, Colombo and Christ's College, Cambridge before returning to become a planter and run the family estates and mines. Kotelawala joined the Ceylon Defense Force as an volunteer officer in 1922. Being from a politically active family, he entered mainstream politics in 1931 having been elected to the State Council of Ceylon. He went on to serve as Minister of Communications and Works in the Second Board of Ministers of Ceylon. Having served as the commanding officer of the Ceylon Light Infantry, he transferred to the reserve with the r ...
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SWRD Bandaranaike
Solomon West Ridgeway Dias Bandaranaike ( si, සොලොමන් වෙස්ට් රිජ්වේ ඩයස් බණ්ඩාරනායක; ta, சாலமன் வெஸ்ட் ரிட்ஜ்வே டயஸ் பண்டாரநாயக்கா; 8 January 1899 – 26 September 1959), often referred to by his initials as S. W. R. D. or S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike and known by the Sri Lankan people as "The Silver Bell of Asia" (ආසියාවේ රිදී සීනුව), was the fourth Prime Minister of the Dominion of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), serving from 1956 until his assassination in 1959. The founder of the left-wing and Sinhalese nationalist Sri Lanka Freedom Party, his tenure saw the country's first left-wing reforms. Born to a wealthy, political family, he studied philosophy, politics, and economics at Christ Church, Oxford, and was called to the bar at the Inner Temple. Returning to Ceylon, he entered local politics by joining th ...
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Lascars
A lascar was a sailor or militiaman from the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia, the Arab world, British Somaliland, or other land east of the Cape of Good Hope, who was employed on European ships from the 16th century until the middle of the 20th century. Etymology The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' states that the word has two possible derivations: :Either an erroneous European use of Urdu ''lashkar'' army, camp .. or a shortened form of its derivative ''lashkarī'' ..In Portuguese ''c''1600 ''laschar'' occurs in the same sense as ''lasquarim'' , i.e. Indian soldier; this use, from which the current applications are derived, is not recorded in English. The Portuguese adapted this term to "lascarins", meaning Asian militiamen or seamen, from any area east of the Cape of Good Hope, including Indian, Malay, Chinese and Japanese crewmen. The English word "lascarins", now obsolete, referred to Sri Lankans who fought in the colonial army of the Portuguese until the 1930s. The ...
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Sir Alexander Johnston
''Sir'' is a formal honorific address in English for men, derived from Sire in the High Middle Ages. Both are derived from the old French "Sieur" (Lord), brought to England by the French-speaking Normans, and which now exist in French only as part of "Monsieur", with the equivalent "My Lord" in English. Traditionally, as governed by law and custom, Sir is used for men titled as knights, often as members of orders of chivalry, as well as later applied to baronets and other offices. As the female equivalent for knighthood is damehood, the female equivalent term is typically Dame. The wife of a knight or baronet tends to be addressed as Lady, although a few exceptions and interchanges of these uses exist. Additionally, since the late modern period, Sir has been used as a respectful way to address a man of superior social status or military rank. Equivalent terms of address for women are Madam (shortened to Ma'am), in addition to social honorifics such as Mrs, Ms or Miss. Etymolo ...
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Adam Sri Munni Ratna
Adam; el, Ἀδάμ, Adám; la, Adam is the name given in Genesis 1-5 to the first human. Beyond its use as the name of the first man, ''adam'' is also used in the Bible as a pronoun, individually as "a human" and in a collective sense as "mankind". tells of God's creation of the world and its creatures, including ''adam'', meaning humankind; in God forms "Adam", this time meaning a single male human, out of "the dust of the ground", places him in the Garden of Eden, and forms a woman, Eve, as his helpmate; in Adam and Eve eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge and God condemns Adam to labour on the earth for his food and to return to it on his death; deals with the birth of Adam's sons, and lists his descendants from Seth to Noah. The Genesis creation myth was adopted by both Christianity and Islam, and the name of Adam accordingly appears in the Christian scriptures and in the Quran. He also features in subsequent folkloric and mystical elaborations in later Judaism, ...
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Flag Of Ceylon (1875–1948)
The flag of Sri Lanka ( si, ශ්‍රී ලංකාවේ ජාතික කොඩිය, translit=Śrī Laṃkāvē jāthika kodiya; ta, இலங்கையின் தேசியக்கொடி, translit=Ilankaiyin teciyakkoṭi), also called the ''Sinha'' Flag or Lion Flag, consists of a golden lion holding a ''kastane'' sword in its right fore-paw in a maroon background with four gold bo leaves, one in each corner. This is bordered by gold, and to its left are two vertical stripes of equal size in teal and orange, with the orange stripe closest to the lion. The lion and the maroon background represent the Sinhalese, while the saffron border and four bo leaves represent concepts of '' mettā'', ''karuṇā'', ''muditā'' and '' upekshā'' respectively. The stripes represent the country's two largest minorities, with the orange representing the Tamils living in Sri Lanka – both the Sri Lankan Tamils and the Indian Tamils of Sri Lanka – and the green stripe r ...
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