Sri Lanka’s ancient, almost lost martial art | Hacker News Reader

Sri Lanka’s ancient, almost lost martial art

atlasobscura.com

148 pointssamizdis110 comments

Angampora is a fascinating martial art, but while British colonialism is/was a scourge across the world there's little evidence that they actually banned the martial art. While I generally don't like to use reddit posts as sources, this one[0] is well researched enough and includes its (long list of) sources that I figured it counts.

[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/kh9gfb/the_brit...

There's something about martial arts that encourages mythologising. The Reddit post you link to also mentions the uncritical assertion that Angampora is 5000 years old.

Gillian Russell wrote a nice essay about the nature of received wisdom among many martial arts practitioners: Epistemic Viciousness in the Martial Arts.

https://fightsciencesresearchinstitute.wordpress.com/2008/10...

The linked paper doesn’t seem to exist :/

https://web.archive.org/web/20100705171320/https://artsci.wu...

Just getting into this, but already fascinated. Great article.

Sri Lankan here. I'm probably going to catch some flak from enthusiasts for this, but what you see in this article is essentially a modern recreation. As far as I know, nothing except the name itself has survived antiquity (if this actually existed, it faded long before Europeans arrived). Enthusiasm in this art form was rekindled due to a fictionalized depiction in a TV show named Dandubasnamaana about 15-20 years ago, if I remember correctly. I've already had a complete Sri Lankan history education by then and I had never heard the word "Angampora" before this TV show. This is true of most Sri Lankans.

Isn't this actually a pretty common phenomenon with martial arts?

i.e. IIRC modern tae kwon do goes no further back than the 20th century, despite some practitioners and nationalists (disclaimer: I'm Korean myself) claiming it goes back hundreds or thousands of years.

>Isn't this actually a pretty common phenomenon with martial arts?

It is. Tae Kwon Do is little more than Shotokan Karate brought to Korea by the Japanese during the WWII occupation, with some fancy kicks later added and a fake history re-created. The vast majority of "ancient Asian martial arts" are at most 100 years old, many are significantly younger. I'm a long time practitioner of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and after the publication of Choque had to come to terms with the fact that almost everything I had been told about the early history of the art was complete nonsense.

Yeah, that is my understanding too. I don't doubt that there existed forms of martial arts in ancient Korea, but I doubt there is a straight lineage from back then to modern TKD.

What would you say about the 104 year old practitioner in the article then? Do you think he was he part of modernized version?

Reminds me of neopaganism in the West, where some people in the movement will claim there's an unbroken tradition.

Do you think this is fed by a preoccupation/pride in the culture with their practices and beliefs being incredibly ancient? I think it's pretty well-known that that's a thing in India, but I don't know to what extent it also exists in Sri Lanka.

While all the damages of the British occupation of Sri Lanka and elsewhere is terrible, I believe banning martial has been common the world over, especially before the modern era.

I think various Chinese rulers as well as the Maoist banned some martial arts, Russia banned everything but Sambo in the Soviet era, Capoeira was developed in Brazil as a "secret martial art", martial arts were banned in Okinawan at one point (home of Karate and related arts).

Being an oral tradition, martial arts tend to be always fracturing and in danger of dying out. Source: lots of martial arts contacts plus I practice an art known seriously to only one other person I know of in the world.

It's comparable to gun control, except that it kills the traditions of undocumented martial arts. But the people in power don't care about that.

Yes, I was just going to add the similarity to gun control.

But I'd also add that the urge for control isn't limited to states. When these arts were valuable, masters would be selective and kind of abusive, about who they let learn the secrets. The long, seemingly pointless exercises one had to go through to learn obscure art X were basically tests of loyalty and efforts to instill loyalty.

> martial arts tend to be always fracturing and in danger of dying out.

Makes me wonder how many we’ve already lost that aren’t documented

The reality is that most "martial arts" are mostly performative, as the principles of actually useful hand to hand combat are fairly universal and anything that isn't effective and efficient "evolves" out quickly. E.g. wildly flaying weapons, static Bruce Lee style kicking/punching only h2h fighting styles, etc. - spectacular for movies and demonstrations, but little use in actual fighting.

So anything that's "lost" is just as easily replaced by someone else coming up with another ritualized choreography.

Take aikido. Why are there so many people doing that? It's not because it has anything to do with actual fighting. It's like why panda bears are still alive - if it were to be left to nature, they'd die out soon, the main reason we have so many is because they look cute to humans and we protect and encourage their existence.

Bruce Lee thing was specifically designed for movies, so I dont think it is good example of traditional martial arts that might or might not be lost. It was modern adaptation literally for movie.

Aikido is done a lot now, becauae it adapted to current world. What people do is modern variant where not useful pieces got removed and useful pieces are pushed up. Useful here being fun engaging exercise - and in our world being sedentary is more of risk then having to go on the offensive against ennemy clan.

Right, and there is nothing wrong with spectacular fighting for movies, but it did give rise to the idea that this is what actual fighting looks like. Which it doesn't.

Same with aikido - it's fine when people do it as a form of exercise, like lots of Chinese do tai chi, but let's not kid ourselves on the efficacy. I used to train at a place where there was an aikido group before us, and the teacher would always be talking about "do this or that because of this specific thing the samurai did on the battlefield". I wasn't going to be That Guy challenging him in front of his students, but please - you're literally standing there in what actual samurai wore as underwear under their plate armor when going to war, and now you're going to claim that they used some hand-wavy wrist lock to disarm another guy in full armor charging them with a 3 foot sword? To each their own, but at least be honest to yourself and your students. And it's usually these people who have the most self-aggrandazing ideas about "bushido" and how their hocus pocus is somehow morally superior. How are straight up lies and deceit morally superior?

(I know you weren't claiming my last point, I'm just saying that those promoting their fight-like dance choreographies as "martial arts" need to be honest to be able to claim the moral high ground.)

Aikido has a lot of woo, especially from “true believers”.

Putting that aside, it is pretty similar to meditation. It’s not really physically taxing, the movements are intuitive, and it isn’t competitive, so your main opponent is your own mind and heart. It’s a realization that can help you out a lot in other sports or life in general.

One of the most physically gifted athletes I grew up with was fitter and could train harder than anyone I knew, but never amounted to anything in sports, combat or otherwise, because he always completely lost his cool under pressure. Maybe Aikido would have helped him out if he had thought to try it.

Yes, most martial arts are more of cultural dance and ceremony than an actual effective fighting techniques. MMA/UFC has done more to advance the state of the art than a 1000 years of dojos ever did. From a cultural standpoint it's a shame that this martial art is lost, but I would be surprised if it had anything novel that would translate to real combat.

Well, MMA is a one-on-one sport, with all that entails. No multiple opponents, no small joint manipulation, no gouging, no biting, no spitting, no striking the neck or back of the head, no kicking the head of a downed opponent.... etc etc. All of which could happen in actual combat and non-sport fighting.

There was a famous Greek fighter who competed in the original Olympics who's preferred tactic was to break all the fingers of his opponent first, before finishing them off. It was pretty normal for fighters to lose teeth or suffer broken bones.

This guy? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sostratus_of_Sicyon

Go Sostratus!

Apart from multiple opponents, those all seem like fairly minor variations on MMA technique in the sense that defending against the legal MMA attacks naturally defends against the illegal ones as well, and similarly the same skills that allow a fighter to land legal attacks would allow them to land illegal ones in a non-sport situation. It seems unlikely an overall inferior MMA fighter could win just by focusing on specific illegal moves.

For multiple opponents, I could certainly see that changing the optimal strategy, but it seems like the odds of winning would still mainly be a function of how strong a fighter is one-on-one, since the only hope is to quickly neutralize the additional opponent(s).

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Attacking eyes, fingers, groin, etc. would change everything. Everyone thinks grappling is more “realistic” than pre-MMA striking styles, but they forget that most of those grappling positions leave tons of delicate targets wide open for poking, ripping, gouging.

The effective techniques in MMA are just as defined by the ground rules as any other martial art. Real “anything goes” fighting would be as different from MMA as MMA is from kickboxing.

It changes things, sure, but I think the person best able to adapt and take advantage of those differences would be the better overall fighter, not the person who has practiced more eye gouges or groin kicks. Against a more skilled opponent your attempts to groin kick or break a finger or whatever will most likely lead you to be knocked out or otherwise submitted just like your attempts to choke or side kick would under MMA rules. Being in a position to make those attacks generally implies that your opponent is either less skilled or is deliberately leaving those openings because they know the rules, and could avoid doing so if the rules were different or there weren’t any rules... because ultimately they’re the one in control if they’re a lot better than you at the core skills of fighting.

That said, given two otherwise equally skilled fighters, of course the one with more experience under the specific conditions would have an advantage.

It actually wouldn't change much at all. Every MMA fighter already instinctively protects their head which includes eyes. Finger locks are laughable in an actual a fight. I know a person who (I think stupidly), refused to tap to an ankle lock in a BJJ match, broke his ankle, but did win the fight. No finger lock was stopping him.

I guess someone could try to kick someone's groin and maybe get one through. An MMA fighter is already trained to check kicks down so again unlikely. And if you think someone is going to drop their hands to get to someone's groin...ok.

The reality is BJJ and MMA is basically how most street fight/self-defense situations go down. Untrained people wildly throw some punches and end up on the ground.

The only caveat, which every grapplers knows, is pulling guard is a competition only thing. In a 'real' fight you never want to be on the bottom.

I think this is just dangerous thinking. A real street/bar fighter will head butt your nose and then while your hands go to your face trying to stem the fountain of blood will (if you are a guy) reach down and twist/crush or knee your testicles. The fight will be over in 10 seconds and no amount of knowledge learned on the mat is going to help. The real problem with martial arts is you really can’t train for real fights without being seriously hurt all the time. I say this as a black belt in TKD who still practices but knows the only real winner in a fight is the one that walks away before it starts.

Oh please. It's 2021. There is an entire internet full of video clips of actual fights, and none of them go down the way you say. All this waflling about 'groin strikes' and 'head butts' is just that - arm chair waffling. Reality (as in, documented facts) has shown the people theorizing like this wrong .

Erm.... I've literally seen fights start and end with one headbutt.

I'd suggest there's a bit of us all "talking past reach other".

I have no doubt that anyone who thinks they can end a fight by a headbutt, finger break, or groin kick without learning to trade punches and kicks and to grapple, would be in serious trouble. I'd also say that anyone training only sporting, rule-governed elements of fighting is in a great position compared to someone who has zero experience, but will encounter some very unexpected situations when a bar brawl kicks off.

So how about this: we're all right and wrong in some measures, depending on the context? :)

(Edit: typo)

Most fights are chaotic and end up on the ground. I guess someone unprovoked could walk up to another random person and head butt them (why not just punch or elbow then?), but c'mon that's not how street/bar fights work. People posture for a bit, etc...by the time a fight starts it's not a surprise.

If we're going to go down the imaginary perfect situation, we're back to day 1 MMA/self defense lessons now. In a situation you control distance, either too far away to be hit or close enough for a take down. The fight is over in 10 seconds because the grappler has shot a double leg, put the other person on their back and is beating the crap out of them before the other person even knows what's happened. The grappler also has hundreds or thousands of fights that are about as close to reality as one can get.

As the other responder said, there are numerous videos out there now showing that grappling (MMA, BJJ, wrestling) sports are superior in any real life situation because that's how a large majority of real life situations go down.

This happened not long ago, and the football almost lost their eye...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70UcLUPvotU

> only real winner in a fight is the one that walks away before it starts.

I 100% agree. After training BJJ for years, I've learned never to underestimate anyone. It's a bit counter intuitive, but the more someone learns to fight, the less they want to fight (outside of training of course).

Ah yes, the true and tried "my martial art is too deadly to be tested" argument.

Um... that wasn't my point at all...?

I'm not sure where you train MMA or BJJ, but where I train the self-defense aspect of various grappling techniques are always discussed. There's a reason that it's drilled from day 1 to keep hands inside protecting the head (whether on your feet, ground, or anywhere in between). Next is controlling the shoulders b/c then it's hard for someone to punch.

Every grappler knows pulling guard in a real fight is dumb, with the best position being knee on belly b/c it gives control and the ability to assess the situation for more attackers.

The reason for the lack of small joint manipulation is that it doesn't really work in a true self-defense/life or death situation (and who wants broken fingers for sport?). Heck, I've read of people get their arms broken or shoulders dislocated and keep attacking. You think a finger or toe is going to stop them? LOL.

With all that said, the biggest advantage of training MMA or BJJ is learning to stay relaxed and make good decisions when a self-defense situation does occur. I might have 30+ simulated fight situations per week (with people who know what they are doing attacking me), how many fights in their lifetime has the person been in who may attack me?

Hmmm, I think we're partly in agreement. I've also drilled multiple assailant stuff too, although rarely.

My point was more about MMA not being the pinnacle of fighting. There's much that an MMA fighter would never learn. But this isn't a criticism, it's just a reality. There's no such thing as the "perfect" fighting style.

Incidentally, the reason for banning small joint manipulation is the same reason for banning ballistic joint strikes: avoiding serious injury. I'm certainly not suggesting that breaking someone's finger in a competitive fight would stop them. However, in a mugging/rape situation, breaking fingers and gouging eyes would absolutely be on the cards.

Having said all that, I'd most definitely recommend a good MMA class to someone interested in self-defence. I'd probably suggest augmenting it with classes at a good club that has some element of street awareness, or whatever is appropriate to the local context. That might be mugging awareness and avoidance, or what have you

those are the guys training in mma gyms: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HtnV2M1pAc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z--ZO3fuhz0

That looks fun :) Although from what I can see from a little Googling, these guys might be more street-fighters than MMA players. Some cross-over, I'm sure. My Polish isn't good enough to tell.

I'd like to see what difference some decent strategic training would make in those fights.

There are quite a few team combat fights on YouTube now, often staged in Poland and Russia, from what I can see. Most seem to be groups of one-v-one, rather than mass melée.

It being a cultural expression is (I think, I'm no expert / armchair, etc) an important motivator for erasure. If missionaries think this cultural expression is pagan or anti-christian, they would have tried to suppress or erase it. And it's well-established that China's cultural revolution erased (and is erasing) culture, see also Tibet and the current erasure of Uyghur culture and identity. They seem to have come to an understanding with martial arts, but there were attempts to erase it.

Kung Fu is a major tourist attraction for China and part of their cultural heritage, so they're pretty invested in it.

There is a Chinese citizen that is a very mediocre MMA fighter who goes around and challenges so called "grand masters" to show how full of BS they are. He's beaten so many without any serious effort that the communist party got upset and downgraded his social credit to where he can no longer fly to the matches to go best more phonies.

It's the same thing in any dojo though and there is sadly a bit of a cult perception of thinking each styles grandmaster is some super powerful fighter when in reality they're okay, but could never make it even in a regional MMA match. I feel bad for the Chinese MMA fighter as he sounds like someone with a lot of character, determination, and morals. He believes that Kung Fu is holding his people back I think and that embracing modern techniques is the future of martial arts.

"There is a Chinese citizen that is a very mediocre MMA fighter who goes around and challenges so called "grand masters" to show how full of BS they are."

This guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xu_Xiaodong

I can't edit my original comment, but after re-reading it I hope it didn't come off like I was insulting the fighter. When I say "mediocre" I mean that despite MMA wins (very impressive by itself) I assume he's pretty far from ever being in the UFC. In other words, he represents a fairly average (maybe below average) MMA fighter, yet he was able to take out "master" after "master" in just seconds without any effort. Clearly, MMA is more effective in a fight than Tai-Chi. That isn't an insult to Tai-Chi either, as I think it makes for terrific low-stress excercise and does have some martial merit, just not a whole lot in today's world.

I can't comment for others but I didn't read it that way. I just knew the context and thought people might want to read about it, because it is interesting. Thanks for bringing it up in the first place.

Not a problem. I didn't think you did, but wanted to be sure and your comment was a good place to add it. Thanks for linking to the fighter!

However the cultural fighting styles provide a spiritual or religious framework that MMA lacks. Of course some (many?) won't find that an issue, however I think that the spiritual framework includes moral and character building disciplines which are helpful in life (not always and not completely, but much more than MMA)

Sorry, Bruce Lee and static? What are you even talking about? He's one of the earliest examples of MMA I can think of in how he tried to draw from different martial arts to create jeet kune do, which was not just created for movies.

Edit: As a concrete example, he grew up with Wing Chun. But he realized that the static stance was a huge detriment in real fights, so he took the boxing footwork from Ali, which was a lot of moving around and staying mobile and not standing in one spot.

"Bruce Lee's movie fighting style" then, which has little to do with his proper fight training, like Jean Claude van Damme's fight choreography has little to do with his fighting background.

Apart from that, I do take issue with the for some reason increasingly popular notion of Bruce Lee's fighthing being some sort of proto-MMA. MMA is not just taking something from various sources and calling it "<first name>-fu" or "<first name> tang doo". The essence of (old school) MMA/Vale Tudo is about finding out what works and what doesn't through literal trial by combat, it's not about the mix and match aspect.

That essence is what Bruce Lee espoused as well, from what I've read. Apparently that's what got him into trouble with the traditional "elder" practitioners.

So, exactly what Bruce Lee did. Read his books. He talks about how he was disappointed with traditional martial arts and how he was always interested in finding the most effective techniques and ideas.

I honestly don't understand why you're so eager to criticize what he did when you don't seem to know much about what he actually did and what his thoughts were about martial arts.

Please show me the full contact fights Bruce Lee was in.

Yeah, but even Jeet Kune Do has already died out almost entirely in favor of a combination of (Muay Thai, BJJ, and either Greco-Roman wrestling or Judo) aka MMA. Maybe throw in some Krav Maga for defense against common street attacks and you're set.

Realistically, hybrid martial arts have been around for a long time. When I was a kid (long before the MMA hype train), I did Karate, but it also involved learning ~30 judo throws, a lot of jujitsu, as well as a wide variety of weapons (bo, nunchucku, kama, eiku, sai, tonfa) as all of the instructors also were black belts in some Okinawan weapons art. It was a lot of fun and better than any martial arts training I had previously (made the years I spent on Taekwondo feel embarrassing), but still nearly useless against a mediocre Muay Thai and BJJ fighter.

Well, clearly. He developed JKD decades ago before MMA was ever a thing as we know it now. That's not a slight on JKD, and if he were still around, whatever art he'd be practicing now would be closer to modern MMA than JKD. He was entirely against keeping up techniques/ideas out of tradition. His philosophy was to find what works. If it turns out something stops working, replace it. He was never so married to any idea of a "perfect" martial art or anything. He was always experimenting and trying to evolve away from traditional MA which was entirely stick in tradition and unable to progress/improve.

While not modern MMA the Gracie brothers were doing their vale tudo fights before Bruce Lee was born. Though obviously they were mostly using the techniques that today is called BJJ the fights themselves had almost no rules. This also meant no rounds or stand ups so if a BJJ fighter managed to pull a striker to ground the fights is effectively over.

Problem back then was information. Pre internet and stuff happening really far away from each other (Brazil and Hong Kong/USA).

UFC and the internet really helped to spread information on what actually works to a much wider audience (and from there to a group of practitioners) and thus sped up the development of the techniques a lot.

UFC also made it possible to make a living from actually fighting instead of teaching others which is/was the “traditional” way of making money from martial arts which allows the fighters to fully concentrate on their own skills.

> Take aikido. Why are there so many people doing that?

I blame Steven Seagal here.

Banning martial arts was a common practice. An equally common practice has been claiming your martial art was banned and suppressed in the past, to give it legitimacy and an aura of mystery. With any given martial art, it's hard to determine whether it was actually banned or not.

> An equally common practice has been claiming your martial art was banned and suppressed in the past, to give it legitimacy and an aura of mystery

Do you have any source for this claim?

Which art do you practice? If you don't mind me asking.

I could see close parallels with ancient martial art Kalaripayattu [1] practiced in southern Indian state of Kerala. It's very popular and still being practiced there [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalaripayattu

I agree. The kacha, kalari all look too similar to be a coincidence. Similar style is followed in TN as well.

weapons as well, such as Urumi seem to be common to both.

I am not surprised. Sri Lanka shares a lot of culture and history with India. Afterall one of the origin stories of sri lanka is king Vijaya was banished from India and sailed to Sri Lanka where he met the locals then and established the kingdom that later became Sri Lanka.

When I am working abroad and miss home food and I can't find a Sri Lankan shop, I often substitute it with Kerala food, which I believe some of our main dishes are inspired from. Both Kerala food and Sri Lankan food makes heavy use of coconut milk in preparing their dishes.

What about Tamil food? There are lots of ethnic Tamil in Sri Lanka

One sad thing about these ancient martial arts is, they were great for the battle conditions of the ancient era, but they were not sufficiently improved for modern situations.

I don't know much about angampora in particular, but Kalaripayattu (which is a related martial art from Kerala) has sadly become more of a performing art than martial art these days.

They could follow the path taken by judo and karate and become a sport (ie mock fighting) or a form of self-defense. That will include meditation, mental control and confidence-building which are all benefits. The original purpose of hand-to-hand combat will not be of much use in these times.

In think they performing art is adaptation for modern situation.

We dont need to strangle people or gauge their eyes out anymore in fight. We dont have warlord clans fighting over influence nor trying to eliminate other clans. And where those exist, they use guns.

Martial arts as they existes were attempts to become as deadly as possible. The fight was about killing or seriously harming the other - stuff that leads to prison now.

Well there's Krav Maga.

Kalaripayattu / Silambam / Angampora could have been more skewed towards armed combat with the weapons of that era, which is fair. But martial arts have a place for self defence.

Another reason why martial arts have evolved into sports or towards other non-combative priorities is that practising martial arts in an actual combative way is harsh and rough. Most people don't really want that, at least not on a level that might be required for practising and testing actual combat effectiveness.

I suppose it might be possible for a martial art or tradition to be both actually martial and mainstream if it's part of the local culture e.g. for a significant proportion of men to engage in rough and actually violent martial arts and events. My perspective might be limited, but I don't think most modern societies do that.

> A traditional exercise to strengthen arms involves the assistance of an elephant.

Well that sounds kind of impractical.

I just don't believe this article at all. No way this is even true.

I love atlasobscura's content, but why can't I easily opt out of cookies?

I would pay good money for a solution to the cookies popup problem.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/i-dont-care-a...

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/cookie-autode...

As a Sri Lankan it breaks my heart whenever this type of topic is brought up, the amount of damage colonizers including the British did to my country, my culture is just heart wrenching.

How the British and other colonizers go unpunished for all what they have done not just to my country, but to so many other countries in the past is just unbelievable.

But on a more positive side, more and more Sri Lankans are starting to realize what's missing and are actively trying to bring back some of the knowledge and wisdom that was lost all those many years back.

Not related to the article, but would you be able to comment on why Sinhala is classified as an Indo-European language, rather than as a Dravidian language?

Not OP, but Sinhala is classified as Indo-Aryan having developed when Buddhism spread to Srilanka and separate from Dravidian family of languages which is mostly limited to Southern part of India

Because it is descended from Sanskrit which has been known to be an Indo-European language since the very beginning of comparative linguistics.

It is genetically unrelated to Dravidian languages, but it does have a lot of Dravidian loanwords.

Kannada is very influenced by Sanskrit, but still is a Dravidian lang. Is there more Sanskrit influence in Sinhala compared with Kannada?

It's more about linguistic structure than origin of words.

Kannada, Telugu & Malayalam, even pre-dravidan-movement Tamil have lot of borrowed sanskrit vocabulary, but they retain structure of Dravidian languages.

Also most common words used are also Dravidan origin.

For example:

Kannada - Naanu, Tamil - Naan, Telugu - Nenu, Malayalam - Njan

Etc..

Another small thing unique about Dravidian languages is clusivity, there's exclusive 'we' and inclusive 'we'. While modern Kannada, unlike Tamil / Telugu, doesn't retain this feature, some dialects such as Havyaka retain this feature.

Yes, but does Sinhala hase the linguistic structure of Dravidian languages or not?

I don't understand sinhala but if it is classified as Indo Aryan language and not Dravidian, then that is the reason.

There will be always be some influence and loanwords from neighbouring languages but comparative linguistics can tell origin / family of the language pretty accurately.

Sinhala does not have the structure of Dravidian languages. However, the alphabet used to write Sinhala has a shared origin with the alphabets used to write Dravidian languages. Also due to long coexistence with Tamil in the island, Sinhala burrows lot of loanwords from Tamil.

I am Sinhalese who grew up in Sri Lanka. As such I am exposed to Tamil, but when I watch Tamil TV, at best I can pick few words here and there. But when I watch Hindi show, I understand a lot more due to the structure is very similar to that of Sinhala.

I speak and read Sinhala fluently. I can't speak to origins, but one thing that struck me the first time I learned a little Latin was the similarities:

queen: latin = regina. sinhala = regina.

tooth: latin = dente. sinhala = danta.

nose: latin = nasus. sinhala = naasa.

Etc.

Yeah, historical linguistics distinguishes between a language being influenced by another vs. descending from another.

For example, English is descended from Old English (a Germanic language), but was very heavily influenced by French (a Romance language, i.e. descended from Latin). The grammatical structure and origin of basic words are still more Germanic than Romance.

Some tales tell that Sinhalese were Buddhists from somewhere near modern day Bengal who fled to avoid persecution.

Languages are classified based on relatedness, not geography. Just as you have an Indo-Aryan language, Sinhala, that made it down to Sri Lanka, you also have a Dravidian language, Brahui, that stuck around up in Pakistan.

The famous example of an "out of place" language is Madagascar, where they speak a language you'd expect to find spoken by Pacific islanders.

> How the British and other colonizers go unpunished for all what they have done

It’s rare for such large scale oppressors to be punished in their times.

Do you see parallels with what the majority Sinhalese in Sri Lanka has done to the minority Tamil population for decades?

Yes and no. The civil war that waged in Sri Lanka was something really complicated, where at one point it was hard to choose who was right or wrong in the conflict.

As far as I know the Sinhalese started the whole civil war but the LTTE escalated the situation where they were committing atrocities I cannon't write on a forum like this. And mind you, both sides committed some pretty messed up atrocities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_Tigers_of_Tamil_Eel...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_attacks_on_civilians_a...

After the war ended despite what's been told in international media, as a Sri Lankan who represent an ethnic minority there I can say I feel safer now, people have seem to forgotten about the war to some extend and there's a lot of healing that is being done (no thanks to the government though) personally I remember a time when we took different buses to school/work even if we were all heading in the same direction incase one of the busses were attacked by the terrorists we wont lose both parents in the family. There was a lot of mistrust and a lot of divide among everyone even in school you had different ethnic groups hanging out with their own ethnicity. But now we have a more diverse groups of friends we have businessmen, politicians and other elites in society that represent different ethnic groups.

There's a lot of improvements to be made, but I think we as a nation have done really well to rebuild after being enemies for over 30 years.

----

and as for the parallels I haven't heard of stories where the ltte or the army forcing sons to rape their mothers after salting the earth of an entire town like the way the British did. What the British did was wipe out our culture, our history and basically taking away what made Sri Lankan's unique.

I've heard many horrific stories and first-hand accounts where Tamil people were tortured, raped and had their entire families wiped out.

The Sri Lankan Government burned down the Jaffna Library in an attempt to erase Tamil history. They wiped out entire villages with bombs and forced generations to leave Sri Lanka forever.

The British were horrific but let's not ignore what the Sri Lankan Government did to its Tamil people.

LTTE committed war crimes. But, the Tamil people are not the LTTE. Sri Lankan government committed genocide. They bombed UN medical camps and safe zones setup by the Government.

This also happened in South America.

In some cases, the local rulers (Aztecs or Incans) destroyed existing libraries to cement their hold on power, before the Conquistadors arrived.

In other cases (Mayans), the Spanish clergy burned most of the books, with a few "codices" saved:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_codices

And in the US, we have the 1619 Project, statue toppling, etc. in an effort to revise history.

Fall of Civilizations (very addictive Youtube channel)

https://www.youtube.com/c/FallofCivilizationsPodcast/videos

It's very remarkable how Colombo is packed with skyscrapers now, when the war has just formally ended 13-14 years ago.

As a Sri Lankan, most of us like to whinge about our past. We like to think we're the only country that was "oppressed" and the colonizers are the reason for all our current problems.

This guy gets it.

No wonder why they are cozy with the China. That is exactly the Chinese way of thinking. Every problem and suffering are someones else's fault.

> How the British and other colonizers go unpunished

I have to wonder how it's possible to decide whom to punish when the vast majority of those involved are dead, if any are left, and what you would punish them with?

Sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm cutting down the population of "colonizers", you did point at "the British" so it should be up to you to clarify the bounds.

In this case its super easy - Great Britain, a specific state next to continental Europe. Punishment as such can be done ie financially via direct aid. Building schools and hospitals. You name it.

But this would be a direct admission how monstrously they fucked up this world for centuries and that's something no politician will admit, no matter what they think personally. Also, we talk about most of western Europe here (GB, France, Spain, Portugal, Netherland, Belgium, Germany, Denmark, Italy). US also had its colonies like Philippines.

The world is not fair. Rather than waiting for a sorry and help from bullies, get your stuff together and define your own destiny now that you can. I've been to Sri Lanka, have seen former prisons. Same as everywhere else, ie not so far on Andamans.

There’s also a question of how far back to go. With few exceptions, human history is an unbroken procession of brutal conquests. Many colonized peoples were oppressors at some stage in their history. That doesn’t justify the horrors of colonialism, but it does complicate attempts to make absolute moral (or legal) judgments against one group or another based on the crimes of their ancestors.

Problem with this logic is where does it end.

Should modern day Italians pay for what Rome did? Turks for Ottomans? Mongols for Genghis Khan and his children’s empire? The Danish/Norwegian Vikings for taking over large parts of the British isles? The Moscow Rus for taking over the land that became Russia?

Basically human history is one long bloody path for conquest and sadly rarely do the victors pay for the cruelty they inflict on the defeated.

Well sure our history is one of pathetic murderous species, with few exceptions. That doesn't make it anyhow being OK with what your/their ancestors did, does it.

Whataboutism about ancient civilizations does detract from current topic, Great Britain is the same place as 80 years ago, same government, same everything. Heck, almost the same queen. Same for France for example.

But sure you can try desperately to come up with excuses to avoid any responsibility and enjoy the riches your ancestors stole from poor folks. What do you think most western Europe has been doing for past 70 years?

It gets even better - out of guilt (at least 'officially'), they allow young smart folks from former enslaved colonies to study there with few restrictions compared to rest of population. Of course most will stay and not return. The poor place remains poor, but what do wealthy nations care, economy goes forward and demographic crisis is averted for another few years.

I don’t think there is any whataboutism or desperation in asking where one puts the line. Effectively you are asking to punish one group of people based on their ancestry so having some idea where it stops would be nice.

> The poor place remains poor

Relatively yes but in absolute numbers no (this also applies within individual counties even the rich ones). In most places the poor have been getting richer, live longer and are better educated than ever. Basically being poor 80 years ago was much much worse for the individual than today.

If you said this about any other country not inhabited by anglo-saxons or "white" people you'd be called a bigot and justifiably so.

No one alive today should feel guilt/responsibility for something people they've never met did, full stop.

>But sure you can try desperately to come up with excuses to avoid any responsibility and enjoy the riches your ancestors stole from poor folks.

Yes because that's how the world works. There is no responsibility. You're here today because you had ancestors that fought and survived, many of them probably doing "immoral" things. Just because your "riches" are less than others doesn't mean you deserve to have them. Why should YOU get to enjoy anything they have? All I see is a jealous naive individual asking for handouts. Sorry but that doesn't grant you the right to take from others.

Firstly, as pointed out in another comment, it's not whataboutism to ask what the principle is by bringing up other examples. Whataboutism is a fallacy of relevance, the point you were asked is not irrelevant, it directly grapples with the issue at hand.

Secondly, which riches were my ancestors (I'm British) enjoying, and which ancestors? Try to be specific, you're advocating punishment, after all, wouldn't want to find out you're simply being bigoted against a group of people in that vague way bigots do.

Next , more things will be banned in SL by Chinese. SL has willingly adopted and accepted and welcomed Chinese oppression.

Not sure why you and I are getting downvotes for pointing out facts. probably paid shills/rajapaksha fan bois are downvoting any comments critical of the current government.

Straight up Chinese shills

>How the British and other colonizers go unpunished for all what they have done not just to my country, but to so many other countries in the past is just unbelievable.

They're dead. Are you suggesting we punish their offspring for having their DNA?

You might consider punishing all the ancient Indian invaders your country had as well since that also completely changed your country.

This silliness about having to punish someone for stuff that's happened way in the past and has nothing to do with anyone alive today needs to stop.

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