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Archeological and literary sources attest that the "Jataka Stories" were subject to temple paintings from the second century onwards. The Vessanthara Jataka has featured prominently among temple painting in several eras of Sri Lankan history. Vessanthara jataka is a famous jataka story which is highlighted among other jataka stories in Buddhist shrines. The specialty given to the Vessanthara jataka in the paintings of Kandy era is particularly noticeable. This feature can be clearly observed in the temples which were built between 1750 and 1900. Some of these temples, located in the up country were patronized by royals like King Kirthi Sri Raja Singha. Other temples in the low country were built with the patronage of the rising middle class. Even with many fluctuating political and social issues, it seems the prominence given to the depiction of the Vessantara jataka was stable and unshakable. Giving priority to the Vessanthara jataka seems to have been a process carried out by a group of patrons, monks, artists and general public patrons who may have expected to achieve their political and social targets through the depiction of the vessanthara jatakaya. Buddhist monks have also attempted to convey the message of Buddhism through the depiction of Vessanthara jatakaya. Artists may have been interested in depiction of the "Vessanthara jataka" story because it was an opportunity to display their talent and attract others. It seems that the general public was also attracted to the Vessanthara jatakaya because of the characters of that jataka story and its sensitive and emotional scenes. The paper will examine the allocation of space to the Vessanthara jataka and its tactful visual techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to shed light on changes of power structure in the households of Sri Lankan migrant women who have returned from working in the Middle East as housemaids. It examines the changing power structure in relation to changes of tasks, responsibilities, decision-making roles, and gender relations in post-migration households. The changing power structure of post-migration households cannot be understood in isolation since it is an outcome of the entire migration process. This paper briefly addresses power relations in pre-migration households as well as during-migration households, in addition to post-migration households. The study reveals that the covert and manipulatory power of women, a characteristic of pre-migration households, changes to overt power or controlling power in post-migration households. This development results in the emergence of an active wife who plays an increasing role in public space, and a cooperative husband who accepts the private space of the household as his responsibility. The data for the study came from households of returned migrants who have worked in the Middle East for a considerable period with the minimum of a two-year stay. The methodology used in the study consisted mainly of anthropological fieldwork, supplemented by sociological data- collection techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through an historical ethnographic analysis of Sri Lanka's oldest charity, the Colombo Friend-in-Need Society, this article explores changing modalities of humanitarian "relations" in colonial and post-colonial contexts. For two hundred years, "the Society" would provide a model of liberal humanitarianism premised on "friendship," a civil and secular relation that the organisation distinguished from "kinship" on the one side and "religion" on the other. Sorting and ranking kinds of charitable practice according to their relations became a project through which the elite could establish the relative values of different forms of mutuality and autonomy and their contribution to colonial and post-colonial development. Paying attention to the Society's role in this process also helps to reveal the historical contingencies of "relation" as a foundational anthropological concept and analytical objective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Until its defeat in 2009, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) controlled numerous civil institutions in the north and east of Sri Lanka. However, the Hindu temples within these territories managed to maintain their autonomy. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Sri Lanka, I contend that central to this paradox was contestation over who had the power to govern the life and death of Tamil subjects. Revisiting the anthropology of sovereignty, I propose an alternative idiom of sovereignty: a vulnerable sovereignty emerging with Hindu deities and based on interdependency and coexistence. I stress that vulnerability does not necessarily make the deities powerless but is the point where the sovereign deity reasserts its power. Finally, I contend that, faced with this idiom of sovereignty, the LTTE learned to embody its logic in its relation with the deities. I argue, thus, that sovereigns can also be thought of outside the notion of absolute sovereign power, bare life, and biopower and instead as sites of vulnerability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent historiographies of 'Science and Empire' have successfully critiqued older euro-centric narratives. They highlighted how science was 'co-produced' through interactions between knowledgeable European and non-European actors in colonial 'contact zones', and how this 'pidginised knowledge' circulated through networks across various sites within the British Empire. This article shares and expands this approach. By focussing on continental European scholars in Ceylon around 1900, it argues that scientific networks were never confined to a particular empire. Science among Europeans was, rather, multi-lingual, mostly cross-disciplinary and always transimperial. Applying such an approach to the history of science in late colonial Ceylon allows us to uncover entanglements between historical processes that have for too long remained subject matters of disconnected historiographies: the emergence of Buddhist revivalism, evolutionary theories about human origins, the transformation from 'liberal race science' to Nazi eugenics in Germany, and the surfacing of British cultural anthropology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Microliths–small, retouched, often-backed stone tools–are often interpreted to be the product of composite tools, including projectile weapons, and efficient hunting strategies by modern humans. In Europe and Africa these lithic toolkits are linked to hunting of medium- and large-sized game found in grassland or woodland settings, or as adaptations to risky environments during periods of climatic change. Here, we report on a recently excavated lithic assemblage from the Late Pleistocene cave site of Fa-Hien Lena in the tropical evergreen rainforest of Sri Lanka. Our analyses demonstrate that Fa-Hien Lena represents the earliest microlith assemblage in South Asia (c. 48,000–45,000 cal. years BP) in firm association with evidence for the procurement of small to medium size arboreal prey and rainforest plants. Moreover, our data highlight that the lithic technology of Fa-Hien Lena changed little over the long span of human occupation (c. 48,000–45,000 cal. years BP to c. 4,000 cal. years BP) indicating a successful, stable technological adaptation to the tropics. We argue that microlith assemblages were an important part of the environmental plasticity that enabled Homo sapiens to colonise and specialise in a diversity of ecological settings during its expansion within and beyond Africa. The proliferation of diverse microlithic technologies across Eurasia c. 48–45 ka was part of a flexible human ‘toolkit’ that assisted our species’ spread into all of the world’s environments, and the development of specialised technological and cultural approaches to novel ecological situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an analysis on the ritual games held on the behalf of the goddess Patini in Sri Lanka. The games include the horn game, the stick game and the coconut game. It is said that the games raise an interesting set of issues about the anthropology of ritual and the underlying assumptions concerning the separation of these games. The interpretation of the games created an antinomy between free will, fate and the nature of the indeterminate structure of existence.

"Living in harmony with nature" has become a root metaphor and an imperative in a postcolonial global discourse on environmental crisis. This article uses an interpretive approach to problematize the concepts of "harmony" and "nature" by juxtaposing "global" and "local" discourses on the human-environment relationship. It argues that harmony is a "Western/global" discourse borrowed by Sri Lankan environmentalists that has varying levels of resonance with "local" cultural concepts through a discussion of myths of the Golden Age, nature and morality, the human-deity-nature triad, and the microcosm-macrocosm relationship. The harmony discourse, however, leaves no space for the articulation of an alternative local discourse on the kaliyugaya, which also offers an interpretation of environmental crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This narrative recounts five days in the life of an anthropologist fieldworker in Sri Lanka, and highlights the kinds of risks fieldworkers are subject to in the aftermath of a civil war. This narrative recounts five days in the life of an anthropologist fieldworker in Sri Lanka, and highlights the kinds of risks fieldworkers are subject to in the aftermath of a civil war. The author publishes this under a pseudonym, and the names of those involved in the account have been changed. This level of violence should not be taken as representative of the whole of Sri Lanka all of the time. The account is offered as a contemplation of the vulnerabilities and risks of fieldwork. See also Michael Roberts' comment on Tamil Tigers' sacrificial symbolism on p. 22. [Ed.] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]