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Veddha
The Vedda ( ; (''Vēḍar'')), or Wanniyalaeto, are a minority indigenous group of people in Sri Lanka who, among other sub-communities such as Coast Veddas, Anuradhapura Veddas and Bintenne Veddas, are accorded indigenous status. The Vedda minority in Sri Lanka may become completely assimilated. Most speak Sinhala instead of their indigenous languages, which are nearing extinction. It has been hypothesized that the Vedda were probably the earliest inhabitants of Sri Lanka and have lived on the island since before the arrival of other groups from the Indian mainland. A 2024 genetics study using high-resolution autosomal and Mitochondrial DNA found that the Veddas were genetically closer to the Santhal, Juang, Irula and Paniya tribes (as well as the Pallar caste) of India, than to the Sinhalese and Sri Lankan Tamils. The study concluded that the Veddas were "a genetically drifted group with limited gene flow from neighbouring Sinhalese and Sri Lankan Tamil populations" a ...
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Vedda Man And Child, Sri Lanka
The Vedda ( ; (''Vēḍar'')), or Wanniyalaeto, are a minority Indigenous peoples, indigenous group of people in Sri Lanka who, among other sub-communities such as Coast Veddas, Anuradhapura Veddas and Bintenne Veddas, are accorded indigenous status. The Vedda minority in Sri Lanka may become completely assimilated. Most speak Sinhala language, Sinhala instead of their indigenous languages, which are nearing extinction. It has been hypothesized that the Vedda were probably the earliest inhabitants of Sri Lanka and have lived on the island since before the arrival of other groups from the Indian mainland. A 2024 genetics study using high-resolution Autosome, autosomal and Mitochondrial DNA found that the Veddas were genetically closer to the Santhal people, Santhal, Juang people, Juang, Irula people, Irula and Paniya people, Paniya tribes (as well as the Pallar caste) of India, than to the Sinhalese people, Sinhalese and Sri Lankan Tamils. The study concluded that the Veddas w ...
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Sri Lankan Tamils
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, Sri Lanka, Northern Province, form the plurality in the Eastern Province, Sri Lanka, Eastern Province and are in the minority throughout the rest of the country. #Society, 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 Vanni chieftaincies from the east. According to the anthropological and archaeological evidence, Sri Lankan Tamils have a very long History of Sri Lanka, history in Sri Lanka and have lived on the island since at least around the 2nd century Common Era, BCE. The Sri Lankan Tamils are mostly Hindus with a significant Christian population. Sri Lankan Tamil literature on topics including religion and the sciences flourishe ...
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Sri Lankan Tamil Dialects
The Sri Lankan Tamil dialects or Ceylon Tamil or commonly in Tamil language Eelam Tamil () are a group of Tamil dialects used in Sri Lanka by its native Tamil speakers that are distinct from the Tamil dialects spoken in Tamil Nadu. These dialects are more conservative than the dialects spoken in India, and preserve features of Old and Medieval Tamil which have been lost in their Indian counterparts. In spite of this, both Sri Lankan and Indian Tamil dialects retain a degree of mutual intelligibility. Sri Lankan Tamil dialects are broadly categorized into three sub groups: Jaffna Tamil, Batticaloa Tamil, and Negombo Tamil dialects. But there are a number of sub dialects within these broad regional dialects as well. These dialects are also used by ethnic groups other than Tamils and Muslims such as Sinhalese people, Portuguese Burghers and the indigenous Coastal Vedda people. Characteristics As Tamil is a diglossic language, the differences between the standard written lan ...
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Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural diffusion, diffused there from the northwest in the late Bronze Age#South Asia, Bronze Age. Sanskrit is the sacred language of Hinduism, the language of classical Hindu philosophy, and of historical texts of Buddhism and Jainism. It was a lingua franca, link language in ancient and medieval South Asia, and upon transmission of Hindu and Buddhist culture to Southeast Asia, East Asia and Central Asia in the early medieval era, it became a language of religion and high culture, and of the political elites in some of these regions. As a result, Sanskrit had a lasting effect on the languages of South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia, especially in their formal and learned vocabularies. Sanskrit generally connotes several Indo-Aryan languages# ...
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Tamil Language
Tamil (, , , also written as ''Tamizhil'' according to linguistic pronunciation) is a Dravidian language natively spoken by the Tamil people of South Asia. It is one of the longest-surviving classical languages in the world,. "Tamil is one of the two longest-surviving classical languages in India" (p. 7). attested since 300 BC, 300 BCE.: "...the most acceptable periodisation which has so far been suggested for the development of Tamil writing seems to me to be that of A Chidambaranatha Chettiar (1907–1967): 1. Sangam Literature – 200BC to AD 200; 2. Post Sangam literature – AD 200 – AD 600; 3. Early Medieval literature – AD 600 to AD 1200; 4. Later Medieval literature – AD 1200 to AD 1800; 5. Pre-Modern literature – AD 1800 to 1900" at p. 610 Tamil was the lingua franca for early maritime traders in South India, with Tamil inscriptions found outside of the Indian subcontinent, such as Indonesia, Thailand, and Egypt. The language has a well-documented history wit ...
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Sabaragamuwa Province
The Sabaragamuwa Province (, , ) is one of the nine provinces of Sri Lanka, provinces of Sri Lanka. Ratnapura is the capital of the province. History The provinces of Sri Lanka were created by the British Empire, British in the 19th century, but did not have any legal status until 1987 when the 13th Amendment to the Constitution of Sri Lanka established Provincial councils of Sri Lanka, provincial councils. The province is named after its former indigenous inhabitants, namely the Sabara, an Indic term for hunter-gatherer tribes, a term seldom used in ancient Sri Lanka. The Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka is located in the town of Belihuloya, and was founded in 1991. Geography The province has an area of 4,968 km2 and a population of 1,918,880. Major towns include Ratnapura and Kegalle. Demographics Ethnic groups The Sinhalese people, Sinhalese are the majority ethnic group of the Sabaragamuwa province. Additionally, there are sizeable minority populations of India ...
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Tibeto-Burman Languages
The Tibeto-Burman languages are the non- Sinitic members of the Sino-Tibetan language family, over 400 of which are spoken throughout the Southeast Asian Massif ("Zomia") as well as parts of East Asia and South Asia. Around 60 million people speak Tibeto-Burman languages. The name derives from the most widely spoken of these languages, Burmese and the Tibetic languages, which also have extensive literary traditions, dating from the 12th and 7th centuries respectively. Most of the other languages are spoken by much smaller communities, and many of them have not been described in detail. Though the division of Sino-Tibetan into Sinitic and Tibeto-Burman branches (e.g. Benedict, Matisoff) is widely used, some historical linguists criticize this classification, as the non-Sinitic Sino-Tibetan languages lack any shared innovations in phonology or morphology to show that they comprise a clade of the phylogenetic tree. History During the 18th century, several scholars noticed paral ...
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Austroasiatic Languages
The Austroasiatic languages ( ) are a large language family spoken throughout Mainland Southeast Asia, South Asia and East Asia. These languages are natively spoken by the majority of the population in Vietnam and Cambodia, and by minority populations scattered throughout parts of Thailand, Laos, India, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Nepal, and southern China. Approximately 117 million people speak an Austroasiatic language, of which more than two-thirds are Vietnamese language, Vietnamese speakers. Of the Austroasiatic languages, only Vietnamese language, Vietnamese, Khmer language, Khmer, and Mon language, Mon have lengthy, established presences in the historical record. Only two are presently considered to be the national languages of sovereign states: Vietnamese in Vietnam, and Khmer in Cambodia. The Mon language is a recognized indigenous language in Myanmar and Thailand, while the Wa language is a "recognized national language" in the de facto autonomous Wa State within M ...
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Upper Myanmar
Upper Myanmar ( or , also called Upper Burma) is one of two geographic regions in Myanmar, the other being Lower Myanmar. Located in the country's centre and north stretches, Upper Myanmar encompasses six inland states and regions, including Mandalay Region, Mandalay, Sagaing Region, Sagaing, Magway Regions, and Chin State, Chin, Kachin State, Kachin and Shan States. By contrast, Lower Myanmar encompasses the southern and coastal-facing regions of Myanmar. Upper Myanmar is home to several distinct cultural regions, including the homeland of the Bamar people, Bamar in the low-lying central plains, and those of the Chin people, Chin, Kachin people, Kachin, and Shan people, Shan peoples in the highlands. Home to over 23 million people, the region's agricultural sector, natural resources, and shared borders with India, China, and Thailand have made Upper Myanmar a major economic hub. Four of List of cities and largest towns in Myanmar, Myanmar's ten largest cities—Mandalay, Taungg ...
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Senoi
The Senoi (also spelled Sengoi and Sng'oi) are a group of Malaysian peoples classified among the Orang Asli, the indigenous peoples of Peninsular Malaysia. They are the most numerous of the Orang Asli and widely distributed across the peninsula. The Senois speak various branches of Aslian languages, which in turn form a branch of Austroasiatic languages. Many of them are also bilingual in the national language, the Malaysian language (Bahasa Melayu). Status and identity The Malaysian government classifies the indigenous people of Peninsular Malaysia as Orang Asli (meaning "indigenous peoples" in Malay language, Malay). There are 18 officially recognized tribes under the auspices of the Department of Orang Asli Development, Department of Aboriginal Affairs (''Jabatan Kemajuan Orang Asli'', JAKOA). They are divided into 3 ethnic groups namely, Semang (Negrito), Senoi and Proto-Malays, which consist of 6 tribes each. Such a division is conditional and is based primarily on the con ...
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Semai People
The Semai (also known as Mai Semai or Sengoi Hik) are a semi-sedentary ethnic group living in the center of the Malay Peninsula in Southeast Asia, known especially for their nonviolence. This characterization was made by Robert Knox Dentan, an anthropologist who studied the Semai in the 1960s, though he offered a more nuanced view after subsequent fieldwork. They speak Semai, an Austroasiatic language closely related to Temiar, spoken by Temiars nearby. The Semai are bordered by the Temiars to the north and the Jah Hut to the South. The Semai belong to the Senoi group, and are one of the largest indigenous ethnic group in the Peninsula and the largest of the Senoi group. Most Semai subsist by cultivating grain crops, hunting, and fishing. Origins It is thought that the Semai are the descendants of the original population of Southeast Asia, arriving on the Malay peninsula approximately sometime during 8000 to 6000 BC.Dentan, R. K., & Skoggard, I. A. (2012). Culture Summary ...
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