Sinhalese people
| Regions with significant populations | |
|---|---|
| Sri Lanka: 14,800,000 [1] Middle East: 10,000[citation needed] | |
| Languages | |
| Sinhala | |
| Religion | |
| Theravada Buddhism, Christianity, small groups of atheists, agnostics, others | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Indo-Aryans, Dravidians, Veddahs |
The Sinhalese are the main ethnic group of Sri Lanka. They speak Sinhala, an Indo-Aryan language and number approximately 15 million people with the vast majority found in Sri Lanka, while nearly 320,000[citation needed] live in other countries, mainly in Southeast Asia including Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia and Western Nations. [3] [4]
History
Legendary accounts relating to the Indian epic saga, the Sanskritic Ramayana, discuss largely unverifiable events of deities battling over the fate of the ancient island of Lanka (presumably modern Sri Lanka), as the name of the island and its various peoples are often traced to the peoples and places named in the saga or some analogues that are believed to represent them. The Sinhalese derive their language from Indo-Aryan invaders from India who are believed to have invaded the island of Sri Lanka sometime around 500 BCE.
According to local legend, the Sinhalese are descended from the exiled Prince Vijaya and his party of several hundred who arrived on the island between 543 to 483 BCE after having been made to leave their native regions of Orissa, Bengal and elsewhere in India. The recorded history of the Buddhist Sinhalese can be found in two large chronicles, the Mahavamsa, written in Pāli roughly around the 4th century BCE, and the much later Chulavamsa (believed to have been penned in the 13 century CE by a Buddhist monk named Dhammakitti), which are considered unique in terms of age and longevity, and cover the histories of the powerful ancient kingdoms of Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa. The name Sinhalese comes from the Indo-Aryan term Sinhala, meaning the lion people. Buddhism was an early element introduced to the island by Ashoka's son Mahendra during the 4th century BCE and so the Sinhalese identity, combining their Indo-Aryan language and Buddhist faith, has defined much of Sri Lanka's history ever since.
Sri Lanka was home to aboriginal populations including the Veddahs and later Dravidian peoples who largely merged with an invading Indo-Aryan population of indeterminate size. Race as such in Sri Lanka has little basis in either anthropology or genetics, although variations do exist between some Sinhalese upper class group such as the Kandyan in contrast with the tiny remnants of full-blooded Veddahs, but intermingling has long blurred any substantial and general variations in the population. In fact, some early genetic tests (Y-chromosome and MtDNA only) show that the majority of the Sinhalese genetically cluster with both the Tamils and other Indic populations.
Genetic and anthropological assessments
Contrary to popular opinion, in part instilled by British colonial policy of 'divide and rule', the Sinhalese are not a distinct group that is entirely or even mainly of 'Indo-Aryan' origin, which is itself a linguistic categorization and not a palpable 'racial' group. In fact, most Sinhalese, like most Indian populations show a high degree of genetic similarity that stems from a population that formed on the island roughly 12,000 years ago and has been little changed through invasions by Indo-Aryans and other groups. A 2003 Stanford study analyzing the origins of various South Asian populations (including 40 Sinhalese and over 90 Tamils from Sri Lanka) found that most of the population of the island and India in general:
- Taken together, these results show that Indian tribal and caste populations derive largely from the same genetic heritage of Pleistocene southern and western Asians and have received limited gene flow from external regions since the Holocene. [5]
These findings are corroborated by numerous other studies including a 2004 Biomedical Central Study:
- Gene flow from West Eurasia-Broadly, the average proportion of mtDNAs from West Eurasia among Indian caste populations is 17% (Table 2). In the western States of India and in Pakistan their share is greater, reaching over 30% in Kashmir and Gujarat, nearly 40% in Indian Punjab, and peaking, expectedly, at approximately 50% in Pakistan (Table 11, see Additional file 6, Figure 11, panel A). These frequencies demonstrate a general decline (SAA p < 0.05 Figure 4) towards the south (23%, 11% and 15% in Maharashtra, Kerala and Sri Lanka, respectively) and even more so towards the east of India (13% in Uttar Pradesh and around 7% in West Bengal and Bangladesh). The low (<3%) frequency of the western Eurasian mtDNAs in Rajasthan may be in part a statistical artifact due to the limited sample size of 35 Rajputs. [6]
Overall, the evidence supports the strong possibility that the Sinhalese are largely indigenous to Sri Lanka and adopted the Indo-Aryan language from invaders who in turn showed limited ancestry from some original Indo-Aryan invaders stemming from some Eurasian homeland. Ultimately, the genetic evidence also shows substantial genetic drift that corresponds to geography and in the case of Sri Lanka supports the notion that most Sinhalese stem from very early migrants, rather than later invaders:
- Modern Pakistani, Indian, and Sinhalese donors, examined for combinations of mini- and microsatellite loci, along with a number of Y chromosome and mtDNA markers (24), show varying degrees of diversity, which is expected from their geographic position and ability to receive waves of migrants pulsing from Africa and West Asia at different times. DYS287 or Y chromosome Alu insertion polymorphism also clearly demonstrate the gradual decline in insert-positive Y chromosomes from Africa to East Asia, reaching a transition point from polymorphic levels (1 to 5%) to private polymorphism in Pakistan. [7]
Thus, not surprisingly other studies done from different perspectives and goals substantiate these findings. In a 2003 American Journal of Human Genetics study entitled The Genetic Heritage of the Earliest Settlers Persists Both in Indian Tribal and Caste Populations, the 'West Asian', presumably Indo-Aryan and other, genetic indicators show that,
- Their frequency is the highest in Punjab, ∼20%, and diminishes threefold, to an average of 7%, in the rest of the caste groups in India... [8]
These findings all include sample groups from Sinhalese populations in Sri Lanka who were thus compared to other South Asian and other Eurasian groups. From an anthropological perspective, the modern Sinhalese represent a fusion of a wide variety that nonetheless is overwhelmingly indigenous to the island of Sri Lanka and the genetic variations (based on Y-chromosomes and MtDNA only) between the Sinhalese and their Tamil and Veddah neighbors appears to be largely marginal and may be restricted to a small degree of sporadic differences rather than anything universal although some genetic drift has taken place that corresponds to language barriers.
Geographic diaspora
The vast majority of the Sinhalese live in Sri Lanka (mostly in the south and west of the island), but there are significant expatriate communities in Southeast Asia, Europe (notably the UK) and in North America (in particular the United States).
Given its position at the junction of major trade routes spanning the Indian Ocean, Sri Lanka inevitably has other ethnic groups in addition to the Sinhalese and the Tamils, such as Sri Lanka's small Arab, Chinese and Burgher (of mixed Dutch and Sri Lankan descent) communities.
This ongoing mingling of ethnic groups can be most obviously noticed in the Sinhalese language of (Sinhala) itself, which has a vocabulary that borrows heavily from foreign languages, particularly Portuguese as well as English.
Religion
Most of the Sinhalese are Buddhists (85-93%), and are considered the only ethnic group in South Asia who overwhelmingly adhere to the Theravada sect of Buddhism, though it should be noted that many Sinhalese Buddhists also venerate Hindu deities as well as indigenous gods. [9] The remainder mostly belong to the Roman Catholic church. There are also sizable Muslims-Singhalese people who intermarried with Arab traders and become assimilated into the Sri Lankan Moor community.
The modern Sinhalese
The Sinhalese tend to identify themselves through their Sinhala language and Buddhist faith which sets them apart from the main ethnic minority of Sri Lanka, the Sri Lankan Tamils. In addition, economically, the Sinhalese also display a dominance over the island nation which has led to some discontent from other groups. Sinhalese society is highly educated in comparison to many developing countries with roughly 95% of the population being literate. In addition, due to a policy of universal healthcare, life expectancy is quite high as well reaching an apogee of 72 years. Female emancipation has led to many changes including greater parity between the sexes and prominent female polticians including former Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike and President Chandrika Kumaratunga. The Sinhalese also have a stable birth rate and a population that has been growing at a much slower pace in comparison to India and other Asian countries.
Contemporary problems
The past thirty or so years of Sinhalese history has been marred by ongoing ethnic strife with Sri Lankan Tamils. (see Ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka).
References
- De Silva, K.M. History of Sri Lanka (Univ. of Calif. Press, 1981)
- Gunasekera, Tamara. Hierarchy and Egalitarianism: Caste, Class, and Power in Sinhalese Peasant Society (Athlone 1994).
- Roberts, Michael. Sri Lanka: Collective Identities Revisited (Colombo-Marga Institute, 1997).
- Wickremeratne, Ananda. Buddhism and Ethnicity in Sri Lanka: A Historical Analysis (New Dehli-Vikas Publishing House, 1995).
Online references
- Sri Lanka
This image is available from the United States Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division under the digital ID {{{id}}}
This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Wikipedia:Copyrights for more information.
- The Genetic Heritage of the Earliest Settlers Persists Both in Indian Tribal and Caste Populations, Am. J. Hum. Genet. 72:313–332, 2003.
- Most of the extant mtDNA boundaries in South and Southwest Asia were likely shaped during the initial settlement of Eurasia by anatomically modern humans, Biomedical Central, BMC Genetics 2004, 5:26
- Department of Census and Statistics-Sri Lanka
- Ethnologue-Sinhala, a language of Sri Lanka
- CIA Factbook-Sri Lanka
- Genetic Clues to Dispersal in Human Populations: Retracing the Past from the Present (2 MARCH 2001 VOL 291 SCIENCE). [10]
