Ceylon, why changed its name to "Sri Lanka"?

Sri Lanka is a tropical island country in the Indian Ocean with a long history and splendid culture. It is known as the "Pearl of the Indian Ocean", and its largest city, Colombo, is also known as the "crossroads of the East".

But in history, Sri Lanka often appeared under the name of Ceylon. In China's ancient books, Sri Lanka was even described as a "lion country". Now you can also see the lion's design on the national flag and emblem of Sri Lanka.

1948 When Sri Lanka broke away from British rule, it still retained the name Ceylon. However, after the adoption of the new constitution in 1972, the country name of Ceylon, which is more widely known in the world, was abandoned and renamed Sri Lanka. What happened?

First, the offspring of the lion

The birth of ancient Sri Lanka is closely related to Indian civilization. Sri Lanka has been recorded in the Indian epic Ramayana from 300 BC to 200 BC. According to Mahayana Sutra written by Sinhalese in the 6th century A.D., Prince Vigoye, the ancestor of Sinhalese in Sri Lanka, is a descendant of the marriage of a princess and a lion in northern India.

Sinhalese people tend to think that their ancestors originated in northern India. Around the 0/4th century BC, Aryans began to enter northern India. After several years of migration, these Aryans moved further south to Sri Lanka and continued to integrate with local residents, forming the future Sinhalese ancestors.

Aryans who moved to South Asia used Sanskrit. Xuanzang, a monk in the Tang Dynasty, transliterated the Sanskrit "Sinhalese" into "Sinhalese" in The Tale of the Western Regions of the Tang Dynasty, and Sri Lanka was also known as the "lion (teacher) country" in ancient China.

The "Serendivis" of the Romans, Serandib of the Arabs and Serendip of the Persians are also closely related to the Sanskrit "Sinha Tam". Sinhalese has gradually become the etymology of Ceylon in Arabic, Persian and other languages through word of mouth.

Due to the suitable climate in South Asia, the local Sinhalese people began to grow rice very early and built a large number of water conservancy facilities to ensure agricultural irrigation. The emergence of fixed farming agricultural settlements has greatly promoted the development of Sri Lanka's civilization, with not only written records, but also the birth of early countries.

In 247 BC, Ashoka, a Buddhist who unified northern India, began to actively spread Buddhist civilization to the outside world. According to Mahayana, the missionary monks sent by Ashoka brought the sacred objects of the Buddha to the rulers of Sri Lanka.

In this regard, Sinhalese people quickly converted to Buddhism, until today. However, India not only brought the influence of Buddhism to Sri Lanka, but also was invaded by Tamils. In the 5th and 6th centuries, Tamils who lived in southern India and believed in Hinduism began to rise and attacked Sri Lanka many times.

After a long period of tug-of-war, Tamils successfully gained a foothold in northern Sri Lanka and brought a unique Hindu civilization to compete with Sinhalese culture in the south-central part of the island.

After the rise of the Arab Empire, Muslim groups also came to this region to preach and do business, making Sri Lanka an important trade center in the Indian Ocean at that time. Gems, cinnamon and other spices were important export commodities of Sri Lanka at that time.

At that time, Arabs not only almost monopolized the trade between the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia, but also had many Arab businessmen in big commercial ports such as Guangzhou and Quanzhou along the southeast coast of China.

In Arabic, this island is called "Sirandib", which in the final analysis is another transliteration of "Sinhala". The translation of "Sirandib" may have spread from Arabs to China at this stage.

▲ Because Sri Lanka is located in the main road of maritime traffic, businessmen from all over the world are in an endless stream. Roman coins from the 4th century can even be copied in ancient Sri Lanka.

In the works of Zhao in Song Dynasty and Ma Huan in Ming Dynasty, the transliteration of "Ceylon" gradually replaced the free translation of "Lion Country". In the west, the translated name of "Sirandib (Ceylon)" is also widely known through the spread of Arabs and spread to all parts of the world with the colonists.

Second, the influx of western colonists.

After the Tamils in southern India came to Sri Lanka, Sinhalese and Tamils fought on the island for centuries, and it was not until the arrival of western colonists that a unified country was formed.

1498, Portuguese navigator da gama opened a new route to India through the Cape of Good Hope, which enabled the Portuguese to directly compete with Arabs for trade control in the surrounding areas of the Indian Ocean. 1505, after the Portuguese Almeida arrived in Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka began to usher in a troubled modern colonial history.

▲ Portuguese (later Dutch) fortress in Batticaloa, Oriental Province, built in16th century.

When Portugal first came to Sri Lanka, it was also an illusion of happiness. However, with the establishment of the Portuguese stronghold centered on Colombo, the Portuguese colonists immediately changed their diplomatic attitude.

By the end of 16, the Portuguese had basically occupied the western coastal zone of Sri Lanka Island. Because the inland mountains are dense and dense, and it is also the holy land of Sinhalese Buddhism belief, Sinhalese people once resisted stubbornly, but they were still weak.

While Portugal actively participated in the eastern trade, the Netherlands, which came from behind, was not to be outdone. 1602, the Dutch secretly established contact with the inland Sinhalese and plotted to overthrow the Portuguese rule. /kloc-In the first half of the 7th century, with the intervention of other powers, such as the Netherlands, the Portuguese gradually lost their dominant position in Sri Lanka.

▲ The colonial scope of the Dutch

However, the Dutch rule did not last long, and its colonial heritage in South Asia became the object of division between Britain and France. On the one hand, Britain discussed with Sinhalese how to expel Dutch colonists, on the other hand, it was actively planning its own colonial activities in Sri Lanka.

▲ Buddha tooth temple in Sri Lanka. At first, Britain promised to protect Buddhist cultural relics, but soon a church was built in the "forbidden area"

1802, Britain, France, the Netherlands and other countries formally signed the Treaty of Amiens, and Sri Lanka officially became a colony directly under Britain. Sri Lanka inherited the name Ceylon in the past, and the king of England also served as the king of Ceylon and became part of the British royal family property.

Shortly after Britain expelled the Dutch from Sri Lanka, it completely gained the sovereignty of Sri Lanka. With the deepening of British colonial rule, the Sinhalese culture in Sri Lanka was gradually diluted.

Three. From Ceylon to Sri Lanka

Britain is the only big country that completely controls the whole island of Sri Lanka, so its influence on Sri Lanka is unprecedented. In the early days, Portuguese and Dutch activities were mainly confined to the coast. In order to ensure the smooth flow of trade, colonists often need to support or make use of the nobles of the local nationalities, and the local culture has not caused large-scale destruction.

However, with the establishment of British authority in Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka's traditional social culture has suffered an unprecedented impact.

English soon replaced Sinhala as the lingua franca of Sri Lanka. Sri lankans who convert to Christianity and speak English often get more benefits. The original educational and relief functions of indigenous Buddhism, which traditionally occupied the upper position, have been further eroded, not only failing to gain the generally superior social status in the past, but even being marginalized.

▲20 12 ethnic distribution map of Sri Lanka

Under the British rule, Sri Lanka's economic model gradually changed from a single small-scale peasant economy model to a plantation economy model, and gradually formed an industrial route of "planting-processing-exporting".

Therefore, the economic environment with the characteristics of modern capitalism has gradually emerged in Sri Lanka, which has accelerated the social transformation and change in Sri Lanka. At the same time, in order to promote the plantation economy, the British also introduced a large number of Tamils from South India to balance the Sinhalese by supporting Tamil forces. This action of Britain has undoubtedly created potential friction between the two peoples.

At present, the tea planting scale in Sri Lanka is very large, and it is exported to all parts of the world. Driven by the British Empire, "Ceylon Black Tea", as a specialty of Sri Lanka, also spread all over the world as a business card of the island country.

▲ Tea Garden in Ceylon

A hundred years of English education and plantation economic model have cultivated a group of emerging local elites for Sri Lanka. By the beginning of the 20th century, various departments of the colonial government had been flooded with a large number of Sri Lankan local elites.

Many of these families have established very close ties with the British government and maintained the tradition of intermarriage. In short, these local elites have become the backbone of British rule in Sri Lanka.

After entering the 20th century, due to the spread of nationalism, the voice of Sri Lankan people demanding national independence is getting louder and louder. In view of this, in the 1920s, the colonial government also made some retrogression and carried out some reforms, giving more political rights to local ethnic minorities. At this time, the dark tide surged in Sri Lanka, and political parties representing different positions were established one after another. But what followed was the division of political factions.

Conservatives choose to cooperate with the colonial government, while leftists and radicals seek to directly overthrow colonial rule and establish an independent country, while centrists advocate obtaining dominion status through negotiations before establishing an independent country.

▲ don stephen senanayake, the first prime minister of Ceylon Dominion.

At this time, the left-wing Marxist political party, the Equal Socialist Party of Langka, named its motherland with the Sanskrit word "Langka" in order to distinguish the name "British Ceylon" and raise national consciousness.

In 1952, "Sri Lanka" is also quoted as the prefix of the word "Sri Lanka" by the emerging "Sri Lanka Freedom Party". The two words "Sri Lanka" and "Sri Lanka" together mean "bright and splendid land" in Sinhalese.

Britain's national strength was greatly damaged in the Second World War. Facing the surging wave of colonial independence, Sri Lankan independence forces finally reached an agreement with the British government. 1948, Ceylon became independent as a "dominion", but remained in the Commonwealth.

After the independence of Ceylon, Sinhalese and Tamil started serious infighting due to differences over the leadership of the country. Driven by the Sinhalese population, Sinhalese, full of Sinhalese nationalism, passed the Sinhalese grammar case led by the Liberal Party in 1956, making Sinhalese officially replace English as the official language.

▲ Don Stephen Senna Nayak became the prime minister.

1970, the United Front, a political alliance composed of Sri Lanka Freedom Party, Langkawi Equality Socialist Party and Ceylon Production Party, won an overwhelming victory in Parliament. In view of the rising national sentiment of the Sinhalese people at that time, Sri Lanka promulgated a new socialist constitution under the impetus of the new government to replace the Constitution of Soelberg promulgated by the colonists in 1946, thus officially getting rid of the status of an autonomous territory.

During the period of 1948- 1972, Sri Lanka was nominally a "self-governing territory of Ceylon" under the Commonwealth, so many Sri Lankans thought that "Ceylon" represented colonization and humiliation. In fact, when Sri Lanka first applied to join the United Nations, the Soviet Union rejected it on the grounds that it was "not a completely independent country".

Now, in order to eliminate colonialism, the new constitution not only establishes the dominant position of Sinhala and Buddhism, but also deliberately changes the country name "Ceylon" to "Republic of Sri Lanka" and replaces the colonial governor with the president as the head of state.

The renaming of 1972 did not completely replace the word "Ceylon" used in Sri Lanka. Many institutions and products still use the ancient name Ceylon. However, since 20 1 1, the Sri Lankan government has decided to promote the use of the word "Sri Lanka" in all government-controlled institutions.

Many people think that this is related to clearing the traces of colonialism, but many people think that the word "Ceylon" has deep historical significance and has added many historical details to some organizations. The important local specialty "Ceylon black tea" is an exception.

▲ The Logo of Ceylon black tea has not been renamed so far.

After independence, Sri Lanka has been committed to eliminating colonial traces, but it is also difficult to completely cut off its ties with Britain. In recent years, British investment in Sri Lanka ranks second (after China). Tourism accounts for more than 20% of Sri Lanka's economy, and Britain is Sri Lanka's second largest source of tourists (after India).