The island of Sri Lanka (known as Ceylon until the promulga tion of the new Republican Constitution in 1972) is the historical homeland of two ancient civilizations, of two distinct ethno-nation al formations with different languages, traditions, cultures, territo ries and histories. The history of the Tamils in the island dates back to pre-historical times. When the ancestors of the Sinhala people arrived in the island with their legendary Prince Vijaya from the `city of Sinhapura in Bengal' in the 6th century BC they encoun tered ancient Dravidian (Tamil) settlements. Even the Sinhala his torical chronicles - Dipavamsa and Mahavamsa - document the existence of Dravidian kingdoms of Nagas and Yakkas before the advent of Sinhala settlers in the island. In an attempt to distort the authentic history of the original settlers, the Buddhist monks, who wrote the historical chronicles, depict the ancient Tamils as 'non humans' as `demons possessing super-human powers'. Though the question of original settlement is obscured by legends and mytholo gies, modem scholars hold the view that the Tamils were indis putably the earliest settlers. Because of the geographical proximity of southern India to the island, it is highly probable that the Dravidian Tamils were the original inhabitants before the sea land ing of Prince Vijaya and his crew from northern India.


The Buddhist historical chronicles record the turbulent histori cal past of the island from 6th century BC, the history of great wars between Tamil and Sinhala kings, of invasions from southern Indian Tamil empires, of violent struggles for supremacy between Tamil and Sinhala kingdoms. The island was ruled by Sinhalese kings and by Tamil kings at times and the intermittent wars com pelled the Sinhala kings to move their capital southwards. From the 13th century onwards, until the advent of foreign colonialism, the Tamils lived as a stable national formation in their own kingdom, ruled by their own kings, within a specified territory of their tradi tional homelands embracing the northern and eastern provinces.


Marco Polo once described Sri Lanka as the island paradise of the earth. The British colonialists called it `the pearl of the Indian ocean'. Separated from the southern coast of India by only a twen ty-two mile stretch of water, the island has a territorial area of 25,332 square miles. For centuries before colonial penetration, the island had a traditional self-sustaining economy with a reputation of being the granary of the East. The mode of economic production in the pre-colonial epoch was feudal in character. Structured with in the feudal mode, the economic organisation of the Tamil nation had a unique set of relations of production characterised by caste stratification with its hierarchy of functions. The extensive hydraulic agrarian system with its network of tanks and canals for which the mediaeval Ceylon was famous, had fallen out of use and was decaying and disappearing under the thick jungles in the north as well as in the north central provinces. The Sinhalese feudal aris tocracy, by this time, had moved to the central highlands and estab lished Kandy as the capital.


When the Portuguese first landed on the island in the beginning of the 16th century, they found two ancient kingdoms, the Tamils in the north-eastern region and the Sinhalese in the south, two dis tinct communities of people with different cultures constituting themselves as separate nations ruled by their own kings with sov ereign state structures. The Portuguese entered into treaties and then fought battles and finally in the battle of 1619 they conquered the Tamil kingdom and hanged the Tamil king Sankili Kumaran. Yet the Portuguese and the Dutch, who came after them, governed the Tamil nation as a separate kingdom, recognising the integrity of the Tamil homeland and the ethnic identity of the Tamil people. In 1796 the British colonial empire took control of the island from the Dutch and in 1833 imposed a unified state structure amalgama ting the two national formations irrespective of the ethnic differ ences. Thus foreign colonialism laid the foundation for the present national conflict. Though the British, for administrative purposes, created a unitary state, they recognised that the island had been the homeland of two separate nations. In 1799 Sir Hugh Cleghorn, the first Colonial Secretary observed in the well known 'Cleghorn Minute', `two different nations, from very ancient period have divided between them the possessions of the island: the Sinhalese inhabiting the interior in its southern and western parts from the river Wallouve to that of Chillow, and the Malabars (the Tamils) who possess the northern and eastern districts. These two nations, differ entirely in their religion, language and manners.'
Though the Sinhalese and the Tamils have an ancient past with deep historical roots buried beyond the Christian era and possess elements of distinct nations, the island of Sri Lanka, in the course of history, developed a heterogeneous culture. There are other eth nic groups living in the island, of which the Muslims and the plan tation Tamils constitute themselves as significant communities of people with distinct cultural identities.


The Sri Lankan Muslims, whose origins can be traced back to the 10th century, arrived in the island as traders from Arabia. The Muslims adopted the Tamil language as their mother tongue and settled down predominately in the eastern region and in the southern districts. Though they embraced Tamil language and shared a common economic existence with the Tamils as a peasant community in the east, it is their religion, Islam, which provides them with the consciousness of collective cultural identity as a distinct ethnic group.