Sri Lanka is an island nation in the Indian Ocean, lying just off the southeastern tip of India, a tear-shaped land of tropical coasts, central highlands, and ancient cities. Once known as Ceylon, it has a recorded history stretching back more than two thousand years, a deep Buddhist heritage, and a reputation for natural beauty and fine tea. Its modern story has been marked by both that rich culture and a long and painful civil war.
Sri Lanka's recorded history begins with the Sinhalese kingdoms that arose more than two thousand years ago, building great cities such as Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa with sophisticated systems of irrigation reservoirs that still impress today. Buddhism arrived in the third century BC and became central to the island's identity. Tamil kingdoms also flourished, especially in the north. From the sixteenth century the Portuguese, Dutch, and finally the British colonised the island, which gained independence as Ceylon in 1948.
Sinhalese tradition, recorded in ancient chronicles, holds that the people descend from Prince Vijaya, an exiled North Indian prince who landed on the island and became its first king, founding the Sinhalese nation. By the legend, Vijaya's own grandfather was a lion, which is why the people call themselves Sinhala, from the word for lion, and place a lion on their flag. The tale is foundational to Sinhalese identity, but Vijaya and his lion ancestry belong to legend rather than documented history.
Sri Lanka is a compact island of remarkable variety. A central massif of forested mountains and tea-clad slopes rises in the south-centre, ringed by lowland plains and a coastline of beaches, lagoons, and coral. The climate is tropical, governed by the monsoons, with a wet southwest and a drier north and east. This range of environments, packed into a small island, supports rich biodiversity, including elephants and leopards, and a landscape dotted with ancient reservoirs.
The flag of Sri Lanka, known as the Lion Flag, shows a golden lion holding a sword on a deep red field, with a bo leaf in each corner, alongside two vertical stripes of green and orange at the hoist. The lion and red represent the Sinhalese people and their courage, the bo leaves the Buddhist values of the nation, and the green and orange stripes the Muslim and Tamil minorities, making the flag a statement of the island's communities.
Sri Lanka is one of the great strongholds of Theravada Buddhism, the faith of the Sinhalese majority, which has shaped the island's culture, art, and history for over two thousand years and fills the land with temples and ancient relics. The Tamil minority is largely Hindu, and there are significant Muslim and Christian communities as well. Religious identity has been closely tied to ethnic identity, a connection that has sometimes deepened the island's communal tensions.
Sri Lankan cuisine is famous for being fragrant and fiery, built on rice served with an array of curries and the fresh coconut that grows everywhere. Distinctive dishes include hoppers, bowl-shaped pancakes of fermented rice flour, and the fresh, spicy relishes known as sambol. The island's long history in the spice trade, the original source of cinnamon, shows in the generous, skilful use of spices. Tea, the island's signature crop, is the national drink.
Agriculture is central to Sri Lanka, and above all it is famous for tea: grown on the cool, misty highlands, Ceylon tea is one of the world's most renowned, and the island is a leading exporter. Rice is the staple food crop, cultivated in irrigated paddies as it has been for millennia, and coconut and rubber are important too. The island is also a historic source of spices, especially cinnamon, which is native to its forests.
The ancient hydraulic civilisations of Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa, and the arrival of Buddhism, are sources of deep national pride. Centuries of European colonisation ended with independence in 1948. The defining tragedy of modern Sri Lanka was a civil war between the government and Tamil separatist rebels that lasted from 1983 to 2009, causing great loss of life. More recently the country has faced a severe economic crisis that brought hardship and political upheaval.
Sri Lanka has a population of around 22 million people. The majority are Sinhalese, who are mostly Buddhist, alongside a significant Tamil minority, largely Hindu and concentrated in the north and east, as well as Muslim and other communities. The relationship between these groups, especially the Sinhalese and Tamils, has been central to the country's modern history. The largest city is the commercial capital, Colombo, on the west coast.
