In response to a question by a professor:

Ms. Smith,

Since you asked me "What is Sinhalese?", I thought I'd write this. I hope I don't seem too forward, and that you would find the following facts about the Sinhalese (which many have never heard) to be interesting.

The Sinhalese are an indigenous people in Sri Lanka, and have lived there for over 2500 years. 'Sinhala' means 'of lion blood', because the prince who first settled in the island (with 500 followers in 6th century BC) was supposed to have had a lion for a grandfather according to legend. We are of Indo-Aryan descent, and speak 'Sinhala', the oldest of the living Indo-Aryan languages. The Sinhalese have the oldest, continuously recorded history in the world-the story of our race can be traced back over 2500 years.

The Sinhalese invented the sluicegate a 1000 years before the rest of the world, and are considered to have built the most sophisticated irrigation systems in the world according to British excavation engineers. The oldest historical tree in the world (i.e. having the longest recorded written history) is in Sri Lanka, and lives to this day. Last year, over 10 Buddhist pilgrims were lined up and shot at this most sacred religious site by Tamil terrorists. This tree is a branch from the original Bodhi tree under which the Buddha gained enlightenment in 6th century BC. The world's first museum was built in Sri Lanka 2200 years ago. It housed the parts of the ship that brought the Bodhi sapling to Sri Lanka from India in 3rd century BC.

The University of Cambridge, England has 274 volumes of 'Epigraphica Zeylanica' with over 3000 inscriptions from Ceylon (that is more inscriptions than the whole of mainland China has, even though Sri Lanka is only 1/2 the size of the state of New York), including one dating back to 6th century BC. Over 2000 of these have been deciphered, indicating the consistent development of the Sinhalese language.

Recent excavations found the ruins of a steel plant (built circa 300 BC) manned solely by wind power. According to the British engineers who discovered it, it is the only such plant (that uses only wind power) known in the world, and proves that Sri Lanka did indeed export high quality steel to Persia to make the famed Persian swords. At one time, the Sinhalese ships were the biggest at Shanghai harbor (Chinese records), and history records a time when the representative of the Sinhalese sat on the right hand side seat of Claudius Caesar.

Sri Lanka is the only country in the world known to have a monument built in honor of a fallen enemy (2nd century BC). A Tamil invader was killed in a war by a Sinhalese king, who decreed that anyone passing the monument pay homage to the dead king, who even though an invader, was a just king while he ruled. A Sinhalese aristocrat did so at the cost of his life as recent as 1815, while fleeing from the British who were at his heels. The ancient Sinhalese believed neither in being ruled by foreign powers nor the contrary. Whenever there were invaders, they were successfully overthrown, but once the kingdom was won back, these very same invaders were 'allowed to live as they pleased' (ancient inscriptions). The kings even built religious monuments for these very same invaders, some of which exist to this day. Such was the level of tolerance known in my country until colonial invasion.

We had the first woman Prime Minister of the world almost 40 years ago. Today we have a woman President and a woman Prime Minister. When more than 50 countries of the UN convened after World War II (in the US) to decide upon sanctions to be imposed on Japan, it was the Junior Foreign Minister of Ceylon who said, "At a time when Japan has fallen, let us not think of ways to punish that country, but see how they can be helped to rise from the ashes-for it is not by hatred that hatred is ceased, but by love".

I know you had other Sri Lankan students before, I hope you now know a little bit more about their history than you did. I'm sorry this was so long. Thank you for taking the trouble to read all this, and have a nice weekend.

Ruvini.

Being asked whether I was proud to be Sri Lankan: I am not ashamed of it.

Resources:

• On irrigation: "Neither in the lands of their (i.e. of the Indo-Aryan settlers) origin nor in South India did there develop an irrigation system of the magnitude or complexity of that which the Sinhalese afterwards constructed in Ceylon; nothing comparable and contemporaneous (i.e. 1st century A.D.-12th century A.D.) with the ancient dam, canal and tank system of Ceylon , mingling the waters of rivers flowing in different directions is known in continental India" (A Short Account of the History of Irrigation Works, C.W. Nicholas, JRASCB 1960, 43-69).

• On architecture: "The constructive and artistic genius of the Sinhalese race proceeded in the following century (i.e. 2nd century B.C.) to develop the design to an extent not found elsewhere. The most important examples erected in Ceylon are comparable with the greatest pyramids of Egypt. The two largest dagabas at Anuradhapura surpass in contents, and three exceeded in height all but the two enormous pyramids Khufru and Khafra at Gizeh" (Ancient Ceylon, H. Parker, 262).

• On literature: "One of the greatest contributions of the Sinhalese people to the cultural development of South and South East Asia and to world literature is the creation of a historic literature. It is well- known that on the Indian sub-continent before the invasion of the Islamic conquerors virtually no historic literature had developed. ...Sri Lanka tells a different story. In the Dipavamsa and Mahavamsa and in various other Sinhalese texts, we are given an account of the political and cultural history of the island from earliest times until the present time." (Wilhelm Geiger-His Life and Works, Heinz Bechert, 2nd ed., 69). Even the identification of Emperor Asoka was made possible by the Mahavansa; so is the dating of the history of South India.

• On being colonized: "The Sinhalese voluntarily surrendered their Island to the British Sovereign with full reservation of their rights and liberties. They may thus claim to be one of the few ancient races of the world who have not been conquered." (Sketches of Ceylon History, Ponnambalam Arunachalam, 1906)