Sinhalese people in the context of "Ruwanwelisaya"

Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, formerly known as Ceylon, is an island country in South Asia. It is located in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, and is separated from India by the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait. It shares a maritime border with the Maldives in the southwest and India in the northwest, and it lies across the Bay of Bengal from Bangladesh and Myanmar in the northeast and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the east. Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte is the legislative capital of Sri Lanka, while the largest city, Colombo, is the administrative and judicial capital which is the nation's political, financial and cultural centre. Kandy is the second-largest city and also the capital of the last native kingdom of Sri Lanka. The majority of the population speak Sinhala, while Tamil is the second most-spoken language. They are spoken by approximately 17 million and 5 million people respectively.

Sri Lanka has a population of approximately 22 million and is home to several cultures, languages and ethnicities. The Sinhalese people form the majority of the population, followed by the Sri Lankan Tamils, who are the largest minority group and are concentrated in the north of the island; both groups have played a major role in the island's history. Other long-established groups include the Moors, Indian Tamils, Burghers, Malays, Chinese, and Vedda.

Sinhala (/ˈsɪnhələ, ˈsɪŋələ/ SIN-hə-lə, SING-ə-lə; Sinhala: සිංහල, siṁhala, [ˈsiŋɦələ]), sometimes called Sinhalese (/ˌsɪn(h)əˈliːz, ˌsɪŋ(ɡ)əˈliːz/ SIN-(h)ə-LEEZ, SING-(g)ə-LEEZ), is an Indo-Aryan language primarily spoken by the Sinhalese people of Sri Lanka, who make up the largest ethnic group on the island, numbering about 16 million. It is also the first language of about 2 million other Sri Lankans, as of 2001. It is written in the Sinhalese script, a Brahmic script closely related to the Grantha script of South India. The language has two main varieties, written and spoken, and is a notable example of the linguistic phenomenon known as diglossia.

Sinhala is one of the official and national languages of Sri Lanka. Along with Pali, it played a major role in the development of Theravada Buddhist literature.

Burgher people, also known simply as Burghers, are a small Eurasian ethnic group in Sri Lanka descended from Portuguese, Dutch, British and other Europeans who settled in Ceylon. The Portuguese and Dutch had held some of the maritime provinces of the island for centuries before the advent of the British Empire. Burgher people are often referred to as belonging to one of two sub-groups, either Dutch Burghers or Portuguese Burghers, though both are of mixed descent.

Most of those who retained close ties with the Netherlands departed with the establishment of British Ceylon as a crown colony at the end of the 18th century. However, a significant community of Burghers remained and largely adopted the English language. During British rule, they occupied a highly important place in Sri Lankan social and economic life. Portuguese settlers were mostly traders who formed colonies. Lisbon did not discourage European settlement—even to the extent of advocating intermarriage with the Sinhalese. This was not encouraged by the Sinhalese. It was not the policy of the Dutch East India Company to endorse similar unions, although unofficial liaisons between its employees and local women occurred in the late eighteenth century.

Chinese people in Sri Lanka or Sri Lankan Chinese (Sinhala: ශ්‍රී ලාංකික චීන; Tamil: இலங்கை சீனர்கள்), are Sri Lankan citizens of full or partial Chinese descent born or raised in Sri Lanka. Most trace their origins to Hakka and Cantonese migrants from the southern coastal regions of China and other Han migrants from Hubei and Shandong who migrated to Sri Lanka in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.

Intermarriage between Sri Lankans, mostly Sinhalese women, and ethnic Chinese men is very common and they have adopted the culture, language and integrated into broader Sri Lankan society. As a result, the vast majority of Sri Lankan Chinese have partial Sinhalese ancestry. Approximately 80% of Sri Lankan Chinese live in Colombo and are mainly involved in the dental trade, textile retail, hotel and restaurant industries. In the past, some younger generations of Sri Lankan Chinese left the country due to political instability. Additionally, a fair amount of Sri Lankan Chinese have at times migrated to other countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia.

Theravada Buddhism is the largest and official religion of Sri Lanka, practiced by 70.1% of the population as of 2012. Practitioners of Sri Lankan Buddhism can be found amongst the majority Sinhalese population as well as among the minority ethnic groups, most notably the Sri Lankan Chinese. Sri Lankan Buddhists share many similarities with Southeast Asian Buddhists, specifically Thai Buddhists and Burmese Buddhists due to traditional and cultural exchange. Sri Lanka is one of only five countries in the world with a Theravada Buddhist majority, and others are Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar.

Buddhism has been declared as the state religion under Article 9 of the Sri Lankan Constitution which can be traced back to an attempt to bring the status of Buddhism back to the status it enjoyed prior to the Dutch and British colonial eras. Sri Lanka is one of the oldest traditionally Buddhist countries.

The Sinhalese monarchy (Sinhala සිංහල රාජාණ්ඩුව) has its origins in the settlement of North Indian Indo-Aryan immigrants to the island of Sri Lanka. The Landing of Vijay as described in the traditional chronicles of the island, the Dipavamsa, Mahavamsa and Culavamsa, and later chronicles, recount the date of the establishment of the first Sinhala Kingdom in 543 BC when Prince Vijaya (543–505 BC), an Indian Prince, and 700 of his followers are claimed to have landed on the island of Sri Lanka and established the Kingdom of Tambapanni. In Sinhalese mythology, Prince Vijaya and followers are told to be the progenitors of the Sinhalese people. However according to the story in the Divyavadana, the immigrants were probably not led by a scion of a royal house in India, as told in the romantic legend, but rather may have been groups of adventurous and pioneering merchants exploring new lands.

The Sinhalese monarch was the head of state of the Sinhala Kingdom (Sri Lanka). Anachronistically referred to as the Kings of Sri Lanka, the monarch held absolute power and succession was hereditary. The monarchy comprised the reigning monarch, his or her family, and the royal household which supports and facilitates the monarch in the exercise of his royal duties and prerogatives. The monarchy existed for over 2300 years. Tambapanni and its successive kingdoms were situated in what is presently Sri Lanka. The monarchy ended with Sri Vikrama Rajasinha of Kandy in 1815 after generations of European influences and upheaval in the royal court.

The Sinhalese script (Sinhala: සිංහල අක්ෂර මාලාව, romanized: Siṁhala Akṣara Mālāwa), also known as Sinhala script, is a writing system used by the Sinhalese people and most Sri Lankans in Sri Lanka and elsewhere to write the Sinhalese language as well as the liturgical languages Pali and Sanskrit. The Sinhalese Akṣara Mālāva, one of the Brahmic scripts, is a descendant of the Ancient Indian Brahmi script. It is thought to be derived from Grantha script.

Anuradhapura Veddas (Sinhala: අනුරාධපුර වැද්දන්, romanized: Anurādhapura Væddan, Tamil: அனுராதபுரம் வேடர்கள், romanized: Aṉurātapuram Vēṭarkaḷ) are people of North Central Province of Sri Lanka who are descendants of indigenous Vedda people of Sri Lanka who have adopted the culture, religion and language of the dominant Sinhalese residents of the province. By far they are the largest segment amongst the various groups of people who claim Vedda ancestry. They are also ethnically related to Tamil speaking Coast Veddas who live in the minority Sri Lankan Tamil dominant Eastern Province of Sri Lanka who have adopted Tamil and Hindu cultural norms of their neighbors. Settlements of Anuradhapura Veddas also spread into the neighboring Polonnaruwa District and a few villages in the interior of the Trincomalee District.