Pandukaabhaya and Raksha Connection

 [From  random comments in Defencewire by myself]

News: Anuradhapura reveals its Pre-Vijaya secrets.

In the back of these invaluable findings in deep excavation pits in Anuradhapura, there are few non-connected facts [so far] which makes me ponder a bit about the known part of history. Note that they are hear-say, and I haven't tagged it as "History", but "Opinion", but if they connect with evidence, they become History academically.



Let me point the non-connected facts.

- Anuradhpura seem to be a capital long before Vijaya came.

- Vijaya did not rule at Anuradhpura, although that was a big city by his time.

- Pandukabhaya was brought up by natives of SL, whereas the king's ppl were looking to kill him

- Some hypothesize that Pandukabhaya's father was a native

- Pandukabhaya was the creator of Sri Lanka, between him and Vijaya -the written history's start,  nobody had the control over island, but just ruled the few aryan colonies. It is impossible for him to achieve it if the natives thought that he's an outsider.

- Pandukabhaya fought a war against the Aryan princes and his army was made of natives.

- Pandukabhaya chose Anuradhapura as his kingdom

- Pandukabhaya did not "import" a wife.

I think these things are connected. Like the film Aba hints, my hypothesis is whether Pandukabhaya is the Sinhala hero who defeated the Aryan settlers and completed the ethnic integration of the descendants of Vijaya and his 700 ppl. Hence the true forefather of Sri Lanka's known history.

Right or wrong my hypothesis is, Archeologists of SL are in the verge of one mega find, perhaps a finding that will push the final nail in the coffin of mythical homeland Eelam, and the Kumari Kandam fairy tale. There will no longer be debate on Sangam litrerature whose fancy lines are interpreted 100 times in order to prove a mythical tamil presence in SL before Vijaya.

SL wasn't uninhabited before Vijaya. Every legend tells about civilization in SL. We have found evidence for one of the earliest Homo Sapien settlements in Fa Hien and Balangoda caves leading back to 133000yrs [humanoids then].

And imagine the days of early [known] civilization. Imagine the first adventures of rudimentary ships. When naval powers grew and trade started ticking in, anyone crossing Indian ocean in that day's technology almost certainly HAD to stop in SL, before they cross the long remaining stretch. These events date way back than just 2500yrs. Traders had to have interacted with ppl, by means of trade and also by means of settling with them and integrating into their nation.

Then of course The Ramayan. I may not take it literally true, but having Indians imagine facts about SL in that way, makes me think that there had been powerful pre-vijaya kingdoms in SL with technology marvels, and there had been wars with them.

All point to one place. That there was an advanced pre-vijaya civilization in SL, and it being a strong center of trade of that time. Otherwise, if Vijaya started it from scratch, how can Romans know about this place in mere 400-500yrs?

Mahawansa author mistakenly names the fore-father of our nation as Vijaya. As I stated before, it looks more likely that Pandukabhaya is the first king to represent the natives in the known history. Obviously we have speculation about pre-Vijaya times. Vijaya, who came from India, ruled parts of Sri Lanka, and his discendants must have got integrated in several centuries. It was 700 families vs a big nation. Pandukabhaya himself may be an exalmple of that integration [a mixed child].

My point is that Vijaya incident is a mere intermediate point in SL history. Not the start of it. When history was written, it was made so for whatever reason.

Archeology hasn't dug the depth. No funding for such acts. This time some Germans have found interest in SL, [and I hope for good reasons] so Dr Deraniyagala has gotten to the depth he wanted. Also much evidence is buried under the densely packed SL population, and we're unable to dedicate our today to find our yesterday.

Why am I so much concerned about it? Because these Eelamist who are best known identity thieves in the planet not only steal credit cards but also steal our own native identity. They think they are the natives of this land an call it "home land". In their version deduced from Mahavansaya there exist Vijaya, and Gamunu. Missing Pandukabhaya and Thissa.

If you take Vijaya and Gamunu alone, and think that Sinhala came from India, then it leaves you to imagine that tamils are the natives as the wars of Gamunu are against tamils. These shrewd hypocrites deliberately miss out the overwhelming evidence of Pandukabhaya and Thissa who can be proven as Sinhala kings.

Project Eelam create its Homeland fairy tale in into four segments of our history.

        Pre-Vijaya days:
                - What they call their homeland time
                - Which is a pure identity theft

        Coming of Vijaya:
               - They call him the Sinhala king who invaded them.
               - I think he's an Aryan king who invaded native Sinhala [then called by some other name]

        Coming of Gamunu:
               - They call him who invaded Anuradhpura, which they claim as their kingdom capital
               - Note the missing period of time between Vijaya and Gamunu and why they overlook that.

        Post-Gamunu:
               - They call is a 2000yr old "Occupation"
               - One of the best jokes, even if this is true.
               - You simply do NOT call a 2000yr old settlement as an occupied land anyway.
               - Not only it is ridiculous, it is fake too, which is what I'm proving here.

Sadly our pundits waste time on etymology of term Sinhala, which is distantly related here. Whether it is Sinha-le, or Siv-hela or whatever, that cannot suggest exactly who are represented by the name. Names change over time. Perhaps the early nation in SL, had other names but they later adapted Sinhala. Another notable point is that kings make names, ppl make the nation, so it is possible that many Indians knew of SL by Vijaya and called us Sinhala.

What we need is concrete evidence to prove that Sinhala had been living in this country for eons, and Tamils are invaders who recently erupted out of human volcano caled Tamilnadu in past millenium. Although there is no meaning in calling a piece of land "home land" of any, if anyone wants, then it will only be the homeland of Sinhala - a fact which we wanna prove and throw as we're not interested in tribal mono ethnic racism like theirs. We don't want to add an extra privilege into it. Once they're disproved we do not wanna continue with it. Then after Sri Lankans can live happily ever after as Sri Lankans.

I'm hopeful that few profs in archeology will settle the matter once and for all.

Meanwhile, if you find eelamists preeching everyone about a mythical Homeland theory and invasion where it was "occupied" for past 2000+ years, remind them of Pandukabhaya, the Aryan/Sinhala prince who stood for native Sinhala, got the natives to fight for him and topple the kingdom, and brought the whole island under control for the first time in written history, obviously as he was loved by natives. Talk about Thissa in Anuradhapura, who's his grandson, whose presence is unquestioned due to the arrival of Buddhism. Eelamists have no explanations for these. That is why they conveniently miss them out.

Origin of Sinhala and Myth of Tamil homeland

[[Some time ago I posted this in an access-limited blog srilankapatriots.blogspot.com]]

From time to time somebody raises a list of questions about the origins of Sri Lankan nation. It is quite evident that these people are pretending sleepers whom you will never wake up. They are clinging onto whatever the mythical threads of history and trying to prove that Sri Lanka belongs to ethnic Tamils in order to justify the work of the most inhuman terrorist movement of our time. There seem to be no academic sense in the discussion. Nevertheless the misinformation and defamation needs to be clarified for the sake of truth and sanity.

Before we dig this dual tomb of Vijaya and Ravana we need to assert few facts. Even if Tamils inhabited Sri Lanka for eons, it is clearly irrelevant to the present day terror war. Today's war was caused by a terrorist group and worldwide support base of it. Since they took up arms and started terrorist acts, Sri Lanka Defence Forces are compelled to counter them [and they do well]. Once you take up arms the reactive party is without choice to inflict maximum damage on you and eliminate. So let the war be spoken in its language and leave aside history in battle front.

Apart from the war, this historical myth has no place in the broader political context either, as today’s world is not divided by some ancient lines. Americans accept that they stole lands of Red Indians and Aussies even apologized for what they did to Aborigines. Israel was casted out of Palesthene where latter was once created vice versa. Human settlements vary from time to time. If we mark the borders based on those of ancient lines, then the debate is as of which day? It makes no sense at all.

Hence the claim of Eealm based on the mythical history is a null point both militarily and politically. Nevertheless for the records and academic interest I would like to point how historically wrong these "homeland" claimers are.

Many of the conspiracy theorists seem to hate the ancient chronicles Mahawamsa. With due respect to ancient book, I agree that we cannot base our argument on the books alone. Most of these books are based on millennia old legend [by the time of writing] and fictional writing. They are mostly written as tribute to some ancient characters. We have the science of history called archeology which is way ahead of this art of history.

However, the conspiracy theorists cling onto same Mahavamsa on one point. The book states that Sri Lankan history started after Vijaya - the bandit prince - was chased from his Indian regional kingdom and they landed in Sri Lanka around 545BCE. It further affiliates the term "Sinhala" to be brought down to Sri Lanka by Vijaya. Conspiracy theorists take this idea to prove that Sinhala are invaders 2500 years ago, taking control over Sri Lanka’s then overwhelming population.

And then they contradict the book and invent the myth that those people who lived before Vijaya were Tamils. Book says that they were chased into indigenous lands in central Sri Lanka where Sri Lankan form of tribal aborigine people live even to date. Mighty double standards to use the book when it helps your claims, but discard the rest of it.

Valmiki's Ramayan states about history before Vijaya. But that book is even more factious and mythical. It is like folklore, in the tunes of Greek and Roman wars of gods. However the king of Sri Lanka as per the story of Ramayan - Ravana - stands to be an emperor of a major empire of his time. Although details, characters and times of the story are classified as fictional many history analysts agree that it shows clear evidence of a major kingdom in island of Sri Lanka long before Vijaya's arrival and history old wars between Sri Lanka and India.

What happens now is that everyone wants to be the children of Ravana in order to own the legacy and the historical rights for the sixty five thousand square killometers of Sri Lankan real estate.

Ravana may be mythical or real, but the kingdom of Sri Lanka and its population is apparent with chronicles themselves. As per Mahawamsa, Vijaya came with 700 people to a well inhabited island. Archeology in North Central Anuradhapura and Southern Ambilipitiya and Kirinda has unearthed settlements dating pre-Vijaya times. So it is proven beyond anything that there had been some civilization before Vijaya.

Not only Vijaya, there must have been many other immigrants to Sri Lanka, from most parts of India and other Asian locations too. Question is how big was the immigrant population with respect to natives? The archeological evidence asserts city based settlements and kingdom like structure. That means there were hundreds of thousands of people living in Sri Lanka for eons.

The bottom line is that several ship loads cannot change ethnicity of a major kingdom. Likely situation is that all the migrants including Vijaya got mixed with people who lived in Sri Lanka.

So I believe I provided enough reasons to disprove the claim that Vijaya and 700 people eradicated all the inhabitants in Sri Lanka or chased them to a corner. Instead what it looks to be is that Vijaya and 700 got integrated to the island population.

The word Sinhala is interpreted in many ways. Siw-hela and Sinha-le are two prominent debate points. Siw-Hela stands for the theory that there were four tribes belonging to Hela nation, before Vijaya, and they turned into Sinhala later. Sinha-le is a dance to the tune of Mahavamsa, representing Vijaya's blood[Le in Sinhala] of Lion tribe [Sinha].

Any of these theories stands a good possibility. Note that there was a tradition of calling the nation by the ethnicity of the king. Since Vijaya was the ruler of most parts of the island by his time, it is likely to be called by his ethnic background, especially by his fellow outsiders who had no link with other Sri Lankans by that time. In a similar extra ordinary way nation of Philipines is named after a king in Spain, but that does not mean Philipine of today is inhabited by Spanish. Nations are not always called as they wish to be.

In any case Sinhala is a pure word tussle. It is pretty hard to find the etymology.

However there seem to be casual reference to Sinhala in most history material. It is more about usage than etymology. Some names to call ancient Sri Lanka are derived from the word Sinhala, notably Ceylon. It is evident that most of ethnic groups lived in Sri Lanka but were called as a part of the Nation Sinhala. In ancient times Sinhala was used like terms Australian, American or Canadian. Underneath the national context many ethnic groups live.

But this changed in past millennium.

If you visit cities of Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa there is evidence that some major invasion ending them in times ~1000CE and ~1200CE respectively. Evidence further proves that invaders were people of hindu faith of Dravidian [South Indian] origin. Tamils are Hindu Dravidians as well. As per conspiracy theorists, if Tamils were the prominent nation in Sri Lanka why do we see same Dravidians invading and destroying them?

Good evidence can be gained from the village names in predominantly Tamil regions of today. They are not genuine Tamil words. They are Tamilized Sinhala words. It means that the names were first in Sinhala and later converted into Tamil. This is an evidence that Tamils or Dravidians invaded Sinhala people and gained control. You can see the same phenomena in Australia, where original aboriginal town names are converted into English and pronounced in English accent. But the names show their non-English origin.

There is evidence in ancient Sri Lankan North that Dravidians invaded Sri Lanka and started migrating mainly within past millennium. Religious Shrines exhibit more Hindu items. Architecture changes towards Dravidian. There are artifacts found, belonging to Dravidian civilization - all these only within past millennium.
Sinhala kings have fought back to save parts of the island. Finally the Jaffna peninsula remained predominantly Dravidian populated whereas Sinhala [of all ethnic groups] migrated to southern parts. Fate of Wanni is unclear. Wanni is mostly full of jungles, and to date, the most sparsely populated region in Sri Lanka. I think Malaria caused by abandoned irrigation tanks made the region mostly uninhabitable. Again my reasoning is based on ruins and other archeological evidence in the regions.

The hostile entry of Tamils into Sri Lanka, and the uninhabitable land mass between them, stopped the phenomena of ethnic integration of Tamils into mainstream Sinhala. The nation of Sinhala turned into an ethnic group due to this segragation, and their petty internal differences blended and disappeared. The Dravidian invaders remained separate, in a different region. On top of this vibrant social distribution, Muslim traders settled around most ports of the island. Having a very different faith, big wealth and different life style, Muslims hardly integrated with the other two ethnic groups. If ever they did, that was always conversion towards Muslim. Later on Europeans came and left behind some other ethnic groups such as Burgher, Ja, Malay. Right now Sri Lanka is having a growing Chinese population as well.

So the greater Sri Lankan nation is a mixture of many ethnic groups. Tamils dwell in the regions of Dravidian control, speak their languages and believe in their faith; hence it is logical to believe that they are descendants of Dravidian invaders. Note that Today's Tamils of India are of Dravidian origin anyway. Sinhala is the majority, and ancient flag holder of the nation. But today in Sri Lanka they are regarded as a separate ethnic group.

Let us take up few imaginary questions.

Can there be a Tamil/Dravidian minority that lasted from the days of Vijaya until now?

It is very much impossible as the island is small and ethnic barriers would not last long. Only possibility is in a very remote region. But today's Tamils live in North and East. Those were the prime regions of Sinhala kingdom. The Dravidian invasion also occurred there. So it is impossible for a minority to survive.

Simply, ethnic purity over millenia long time frames is only possible if the ethnic group is separated from the rest by some terrain-like barrier.

Were there not any Dravidians living in Sri Lanka before invasion?

There may have been. As I said the Sinhala nation is a mix of all ethnic groups. So they must be part of Sinhala. Like Greek Australian, there must have been a time of Tamil Sinhala or Dravidian Sinhala. After some millennia the internal ethnic identities within Sinhala got lost as they integrated into one race.

This theory is the same for many races of today, such as English, Korean, Japanese or Chinese. At the beginning they comprised different sub groups and after some millenia it is blended into one race.

Can it be a total misleading by Mahavamsa and Sri Lankan civilization was indeed a Tamil one?

Archeology disproves. There is no evidence of a strong Dravidian/Tamil presence in Sri Lanka before 1000CE [invasion]. And Sri Lankan civilization was following Buddhism, and Tamils are Hindus.

As fellow blogger Calvin has pointed out in the comments section [thanks Calvin for this wonderful argument]; it is impossible to have Sri Lankan Tamils and Indian Tamils speak same language if they were two separate nations for two thousand and five hundred years. During that long time, Indian and Sri Lankan Tamils would definitely develop two different dialacts if not two entirely different languages. However, there is no major difference in the langauge in both sides, proving that people migrated from one to the other in recent times.


Is Sri Lanka Homeland of Tamils?

It is pretty hard to debate on a term as loosely defined as homeland. What is a homeland? It is simple and easy to think that Sri Lanka is the home land of all its residents, without any specialty. Tamils are included.

Why is there such a big cry from conspiracy theorists?

There are people who think that man never went to moon. But thinking so won't bring any benefit to them. Hence there is no big cry from those conspiracy theorists on Luna landing. But Tamil Homeland is different. It is used as the framework for the most lethal terror movement of the world - Tamil Tigers. As long as it is sellable they will sell it.

Homeland claim is [mis]used by the terror outfit as a basis for peace talks [when they want to buy time] and to walk away from discussion [when they are re-organized], to motivate cadres [school kids], to obtain support from Sri Lankan Tamil population, to raise money from migrant Tamils and to receive morale support from Tamilnadu and India.

Myth and con live as long as they have a market value, especially when the marketing is conducted with customer at gun point.

Yet, as it was proven for decades now, truth does prevail.

I feel ecliptic...

I feel ecliptic... and here comes the darkness on the sunlit cloudless sky.

This is not my first eclipse, but first time I noticed the drop of light. Sky is completely cloudless, but it is not really blue. Someway between blue and grey. Sun is shining at best, yet the chill is not gone. Even if you walk into sun, you feel as if it is evening sun.

A melancholy and enigmatic feeling is nagging behind my mind and it pulls me from anything I do.

What is that I'm feeling odd about? Life was as sunlit as it wras yesterday. I just chose to stay at home today.

Maybe it is more than the day-today life. Somewhere deep within we're emmensely connected to the lifegiving creator of ourselves. The almighty once and forall, the only almighty as far as earth life is concerned. I am not talking of GOD here, but unless of course you don't call it Sun god. Sun is everything for us, the sole energy source of life until Einstein interfered [excluding some deeper marine beings who depend of geothermal energy]. We are so much dependant on its presence.

We are capable of bearing its absence, not the failure. There is no such killing feeling than a fully lit Sun failing to kill the chill and gloom in a cloudless midday sky. You feel like end of world has come. Now I wonder... has it really? Who knows?

No wonder Mayans sacrificed humans till the chill and gloom is over. You never know when the fading Sun will recover. And we have only one sun, humans plenty.

Many thanks Rohitha and Kalhara for magnificent photos that you lend me for free.

Can someone explain why we have crescent-like shadows?

I have reached infinity

I have reached infinity.

Well, that is what Gmail defined as infinity few yrs back and hence hid the delete button from the front. It is the freely given max storage of Gmail, which was around 7.39GB as per my account.

To my surprise I have hit 95% of it [even w/o porno, which I don't keep there, which I never recieve] and had to either clean some mails or "purchase" [WHAT???] Gmail space. My Gmail fee is already paid by advertisers, so that is paying double.

Then I encountered this simple problem which I never faced even with the sexy primitive tool PINE. What to delete? Or rather how to choose what to delete.

Gmail, to my knowledge provides no way to sort by mail size. Or any other similar selections which we use to determine the mails to be deleted. I suppose it is time for them to provide such facilities, and upgrade their measly ~7GB quota which was set at a time when disk space was measured with units 1/10th of today's.

He who does not evolve perishes, proved by Yahoo with the courtesy of then upcoming Google . Now it looks to be that Google has reached its extinction. Unless they rethink and change, another 20+ year old "child" will shoot the dragon soon.

Thanks to a generous friend, whose "good morning" and "hi be friend" mails that ate hefty MBs in my mail box, and hence I was forced to filter him out into a label, I could use a filter to delete 1/3 of my mail space. But I only have one such generous friend.

Urban Legend

It is common belief that eavesdropping is ethically wrong. But there are occasions that you find rather compelled to do so. Such an occasion may arise when you are waiting for doctor’s appointment, seated in a hospital waiting room in front of some group of people. In such scenario you could have tapped yourself into the transmission at any midpoint of the discussion.


“… at the Arthur C Clarke Center” said one.


“ah really. Where is it?” asked the other.


“That is near Katubedda [off Moratuwa, Sri Lanka] right?” came a third voice.


By this point I had absolutely zero idea whom I was seated in front of. There were three male voices, mid/young aged, coming from the row immediately behind me. In fact I never intended eavesdropping and never was interested knowing who they were at this point.


“who’s in charge of it now?”


“Dr. ---- --------, He was there even when Arthur C Clarke was alive”


“ah really. He died recently right?”


“Yeah yeah… Although so well educated, he was a clerk even by the time of his death ha ha ha”


Others missed the word tussle between Clarke and clerk and the intended joke.


“I did not know that” said one seriously.


“Really was he a CLERK?” asked the second bewildered man with heavy weight on clerk.


"No no. He was writing this thing called fiction.” said the better knowing.


“Isn’t he the one who invented Internet?” somebody jumped in.


“No. It was not Internet. He invented the satellite”


“Exactly” defended the debater. “that means Internet too”


“Wasn’t he American?”


“Australian”


“No no American. That’s why they give such publicity to them. Their man no”


Right at this point I was itching for a glance. But I was reserving the same, as they sat right behind me, hence it would shut them, or even make them return a question to me. They went on.


“Ah I remember, those stories, 2001, 2010 and 2035. I have seen those book” one of them remembered. SEEN, not READ. BTW, 2035?? Was it a private edition for you? Again I kept it to myself.


“Not only books, the film came around 1998. I remember watching”


I ran down memory lane to locate the ACC movie in 1998, and failed. Instead there was Independence Day at large to be mistaken.


“He makes predictions…”


“He has wanted to witness year 2000 at …. [I missed the location] and they have completely sterilized the hall. Even air was filtered fully for dust. Otherwise he’d die”


It came to a pause.


“Arthur C Clarke has predicted that all the satellites will come to Una Watuna [off Galle, Sri Lanka] one day at the end of their life.” one guy is continuing.


“why is that?”


“I don’t know. There must be some truth. I think the gravity is higher at Una Watuna.  It is situated  in the other side of Bermuda”


“What is Bermuda?”


“Bermuda Triangle is a very dangerous place. There, the ships go missing and planes crash”


“Now they have stopped flying over it” an expert voice overtook.


“ah…”


“Yes, as soon as they found about it, they stopped flying”


Well Bermuda Triangle has inhabited countries within, ugh.


“What is happening there?”


“That is some old story. Once there was a civilization there. And aliens destroyed it and sank their island. That civilization had mastered magnetism. Even today magnetic effects are high there”


“Sri Lanka is situated right in the other side of the planet. So the effect of minimum on us”


“That is why Sri Lanka has brainy people?”


“Correct. And every now and then we get a very good leader too. At times it goes bad, but it never goes so bad for us. In addition we have least amount of natural disasters in the world.”


Another pause - as if they sank in their version of Bermuda.


“Arthur C Clarke has said that world will be completely Buddhist in 2050. That is because Buddhism is the only ‘scientific’ religion” one of them never gives Clarke a rest.


“He has said so?”


“Yes. But see they hid the fact. They never let it come out”


“Disadvantageous for their religion I guess”


“Yes. They suppressed  it. But the rumor is that he said so”


“Ah”


“Christians are always like that”


“Yes, even that story that Jesus was a Buddhist…”


“Ah yes I remember. Jesus has lived in somewhere in India”


“Kashmir”


“Nepal, right?”


“No not Nepal, Kashmir”


“This is what has happened. I read it well. See Buddha is predating Jesus by 500 years. And Jesus's time was exactly the days of King Asoka . And when the king organized first Dhamma Sangaayanaa.”

Well Buddha's time was in seventh/sixth century BCE. And wrongly King Asoka reigned in 3rd century BCE, who endorsed the third Dhamma Sangaayanaa.

Anyways...


“Are you sure it was the first?”


“No no, first was immediately after Buddha attained parinibbana.”


“Then the second”


“Not the second either… not even third. This must be forth”


“Whatever”


“So king Asoka lived in Jesus’s time…”


“Hang on Devanam Piyathissa [third century BCE] also lived then.”


“Yes him too”


“But they say Vijaya came to SL on the day after Buddha Parinibbana. And Devanam piya thissa reigned about 100 years after that.”


“I don’t know that, but Asoka lived in the time of Jesus”


“Can’t be.”


“Asoka lived 100years after Buddha”


“No no, I’m sure of that Asoka and Jesus lived in the same time and that is how Jesus became a Buddhist. Asoka gave Buddhism to him”


“I have read history well I am very sure that Asoka lived 100 years after Buddha”

++++++++++++++++


Then it could have gone anywhere. Jesus was married, Buddha was born in Sri Lanka, Alien’s founded human civilization, Man never made it to moon, Indians had a mercury engine, no no it was Sri Lankans, King Ravana and his flying hours, 2012 end of the world, world was inhabited by Sri Lankans.... oh you just name it. Sadly, putting an abrupt and premature end to my thought provoking and extremely educational informal study program, the nurse called my name. I had to go.


On my way I could satisfy myself with the much wanted glance at them. They were three medical sales reps probably in their twenties or thirties, waiting to market the latest of their products to the doctor. And it is immaterial who they are. Could be anyone, in today’s mad quest for information.


The whole event left me thinking... we were brought up with only the radio and the newspaper [with a black and white TV appearing in the middle of my teenages]. And our previous generation lacked the radio too. But the planet spun with more sanity.


Today we live in the peak time of information era. Televisions with dozen channels, Satellite television with 24x7 feeds from likes of Discovery or National Geographic, news papers of all kind, and Internet at almost every household. And Internet with google, Internet with Wikipedia. Is this the kinda achievement they all intend? Or is the society mature enough to gobble the big information double whopper?


Despite being great sources of accurate information, these media contain equal or higher amount of false information, or let’s say misinformation. Misinformation has this tendency of always being the spiced up version of any story wrt to the truth and hence they have the better appeal. And they are deliberately presented with an agenda of spreading, and therefore their marketing edge is higher.


How many mails do we get in a day with misinformation? And how many news papers of today publish faulty articles with the reference “from Internet”? How many cheap marketing campaigns and political campaigns take over the right information in the Internet?


Good thing about Information era is that they replaced the school classes which only a selected subset of smart kids followed. Today every Tom Dick and Harry is an expert on petty topics such as Napoleon or String Theory or Quasars or Pulsars. But those old day's classes were mostly accepted knowledge, but the Tom Dick and Harry interpretation of the universe is solely their own unconfirmed gibberish.


Plus the journalists of past possessed much brains than mouth with respect to today. With little brains and bigger mouth, it is the unconfirmed legend storage called internet that fills the gap between supply and demand. For journalism being a service by society for society, the degradation of sanity levels mutually effecting journalism and society as a whole.


We are yet to see its outcome. Today most of us are still capable of finding the right information [at least with few google/wiki/about.com searches]. That is because there is a differentiation of right and wrong information and existence of sanity in most minds. They both are soon deteriorating and in another few generations, especially after the world has eliminated the old-fashioned non-information era people, there will not be such differentiation of sanity to save us. Today there stand three states, be non-informed, informed or misinformed. Tomorrow the latter two will mingle in such a way that prior state can be hardly defined. And of course there will be no one to define it.


Is this the culmination point of information era? Sanity would ponder in the verge of its extinction.


[I hereby confirm that the entire proceeding was a true happening in a waiting area of a prominent hospital in Colombo and it is literary accurate to the memory persistence of my brain within a day and my translation skills]

Of Religion and lack of it

I find following facts important if you're considering the possibility of any religion being universal truth. Warn, in this context I do not explicitly respect any religion for the sake of my argument. So pls do not get hurt. W/o debate you can never understand.


1. Assymetry of wisdom:


Why do religions always owe their roots to the other preceding religions? If it is bloody truth, why needing an alibi? Why can't it stand totally on their own, leaving behind the childhood preachings of the founder completely?


Christ invented the redemption for the curse mentioned in Judaism. Buddha found the end to the sansara cycle which was taught in pre-buddha vedic teaching. Big problem is, if we think that one religion is the universal truth, then its preceding religions also have to be a part of that truth. Then you feel very unfair to think that only a particular set of people knew all the truth and rest of the world never did.


Buddha alone can be super-genius, but how can many preceding Indians also be super-genius [for their share in Dhamma] but Hebrews, Egyptians or Chinese weren't? I'd expect wisdom to happen all over, not at only one place.


2. Failure to see life as Evolution:


Life was a key topic of every religion. But so far I have never seen a precise explanation of life being derived from tiny molecular beings many billions of years ago, found in any of the religions. I know some ppl have found one or two similar lines. But the ones I saw are in the type of "nostre-damus knew 9/11", i.e. very distant word riddles that can be interpreted as you wish.


I am with strong understanding that life got derived from small molecular beings. There is so much evidence for it. But why did all religion founders fail to explain it? They have taken up similar topics, so you can't say that they knew it but found it irrelevant. I think they DID NOT know it. And it is a very important fact they have missed.


3. Need for intangibility to explain life:


What would a vedda/tribesman think if he sees a robot or a car? He would beyond doubt think that there lives some soul in it. It is natural to associate some intangible force to any activity that you fail to understand. I think that soul/athman/gandabba+prathisandhi et al are similar attempts. Truth remains that simple biology and chemistry can explain all what human/life does, if that extremely complex process can be deduced within a human brain. In another words, life's material explanation still lacks enough neuron CPU power to be deduced, but it is deterministic.


It makes intangibility optional. No longer an essence. Whereas all religions have noticed the macro scale complexity of life as a result of an intangible force.


4. Why do we not find people "realize" other religions w/o influence:


Let's say that religion XXX is the truth but only truth. So every religion including YYY are false. If this is true, I'd expect to see people of YYY realizing XXX on their own. Every human is with a certain mental capacity. Evolution has spread thinking power equally. So why do we not see that this happening often. Most religious conversions occur due to association of people, critical events of life, reading a book of it, education and religious schooling, following the majority of the country etc etc.


In all cases of conversion previous knowledge of XXX is an essence to convert into that. If XXX is truth, I'd like to see many ppl have found it on their own, in different variants. Many math theories are found that way in different places independently. Sadly we see no such cases for religions.


5. Causality [I did not mean Hethu Pala Vaadaya here] and Randomness:


Every religion depends on the framework of cause-result. At macro scale we think that this is so. We have evidence. Pull the trigger bullet goes. Fails to go, some reason can be found. Pure causality.


At micro/nano/pico scale, what we find is a set of random events. They have a probability space of anything. Pull the trigger, the house is built !!! But the likelihood is very low. However these minute scale randomness, which exhibit the nature of converging at macro scale, can be taken as one way to explain the whole universe. Infinite number of minute random events. The collaboration of them leaves us with only distinct macro scale possibilities [infinite number of], which is in fact our imagination.


Pull the trigger goes the bullet
Pull the trigger no bullet as bullets are over
Pull teh trigger no bullet as ignition failed
Pulled the trigger boom goes the gun as road runner has stuffed soil in the front. And you end up with a charcoal fox.


See the number of possibilities are infinite here. But they are not all equally probable.

My two cent's worth for Expatriate Enterprenuers

This post originated from my comment to SanerComics's blog post on similar topic. Later it appeared in LankaPatriots and SanerComics himself promoted it to a new post.

- Value your workforce: Employees are the best asset, and they should be well supported.

- Make it a win-win: Make sure that your employees are always given a chance to build career in their desired path while making that plan the best use of them for you.

- Balanced Team: Do not hire 25 freshers and 5 guys with 10 yr experience [especially if you are dealing with graduates]. The balance of the team and right hierarchy would work like an oiled machine

- Do not preach Americanism: Some who lived in west [and received third degree brain wash] try to make the company a territory under US law. You ought to support SL way of life. One of my bosses almost lost a valued employee as he once said "show your F**King document" in a public meeting. This is not America.

- Be profitable: Some run centers for tax cuts in west. Some run them to have a base to visit SL. But ppl who work will find it hard to accept. You have an obligation to have a genuine business that means profiting and benefiting employees.

- Do expand: As I mentioned above some companies do not have big strategy. Employees suffer most.

- Do business no charity: Some western investors think that they do a favor by bringing company to its employees. They think IT IS DUTY of SL to support them. WRONG. You ought to come and start a company to earn money, other objectives are secondary.

- Do not cry: Some expat investors complain regarding anything from mosquitoes to check points. They are right, SL is not the most perfect country. But what is the point? SL remains SL. If you open a cafe in Saudi Arabia, you can't complain for having to close it on Friday.

- Be objective, do not let minor hurdles to take you down: Running business in SL is tough as systems are not best. You may face issues in customs, power supply, municipal, taxation etc. But tackle them in SL way and do not let them take over your goal.

- Be strategic: Do not expect your SL employees to run it for you. Usually they look at you with a higher view and respect. Generally they expect your guidance.

- Don't block: Some business ppl try to block the progress of anyone in order to keep things at controllable level. Do not, you're the end looser not them. They can find another job.

Today, I think that the best support you can do for SL is to start a company on your own or bring some investor. It should be profitable and you ought to be money oriented.

Beyond the Rock

There is a big Rock out there. Nobody ever reached it, because the terrain between us and the rock has not been manageable for our folks. The rock covers a great range of the panorama and we don't know what is there behind it.


Since we are unable to physically trek the terrain, there are so many people trying out different ways. Some try to meditate and send their hyper-physical mental footprint over the rock to see what is beyond. Some say that every night they view beyond the rock in their dreams. Another thinks at times some unknown force whispers about what is beyond the rock, for him being privileged to hear that. Also there are people who think that if they close their eyes and concentrate, they really can see it through the hard rock.

And there were scenes unfolding. Dorenjo has seen a shadow of a tail appearing in a side of it - a tail of a crocodile - and he thinks that there lives a big crocodile. Harp saw the trunk of an elephant in one blink of an eye and "it is a big elephant", he debated. Jintil heard a roar of a lion, at a time he was drunk very much. Each of them believes in their experience. Everyone thinks that what is beyond the rock is what either they experienced or their trusted buddy did.



But sadly, the rock is not in clear sunlight. It is covered in a blur of mist. Under the common enigmatic gloomy skies in this part of the world anything can be seen or imagined.



And they debated, quarreled and even fought wars to prove that it is Crocodile, Elephant or the Lion. They captured other's territory, put the inhabitants to the sward to accept it, or die. Some of them dressed in much civilized clothes and spent years traveling around explaining what - as they think - is beyond the rock, hence drawing many to believe it. When Dorenjo passed away, his descendants brought his diary and stated how clearly Dorenjo and his contemporary clan has written the eye-witness record of Crocodile, and hence that their belief is correct.



Later appeared another group that says that neither of the tail, trunk and roar are enough reasons to guess it. Yet they find no answer to explain what is beyond the Rock. Some even say, provided that we manage the terrain by any means, beyond the rock will be another bigger rock covering what is beyond - in fact a whole series of infinite rocks. And you will never experience or comprehend what is beyond.



Someone is suggesting that crocodile, elephant and lion must be living in harmony, and hence we also should. It is a sweet idea, hence all like to follow, but everyone is finding it hard to believe how the three animals co-exist at one place. And then another one states that it is a peculiar animal with tail, trunk and roaring power, called a Croco-Ele-Leo, which all the other parties consider as serious blasphemy.


There exists a knowledge base and derived technology which helps us to understand our local terrain and make our lives easy. Some people extend its logical horizon to interpret this unknown territory from what they know, hence deriving assumptions. Some debate that the role of the knowledge and technology is to find a way to cross the terrain and find out what is beyond the rock.


Sometimes I feel that we should have ignored the Rock altogether and got on with our daily life. But then most folks are unable to find a cause for the life - a reason why we are here, or the moral values of our life. Most of the folks find that life becomes void and hollow if not for the Rock. Hence some call what is Beyond the Rock as inspiration, cause, meaning, etc whereas some others call it addiction, craze or a mental virus.


One fine day, I dreamt a weird nightmare, which I could not understand. I consulted the educated people, and they gave me very different interpretations always mapping to Crocodile, Elephant, Lion or some other hypothesis previously known to them, after which my puzzle just deepened. Following is that nightmare, somebody please explain this if possible.



[as per the dream...] "Finally we developed what it takes us to the Rock. And when we reached there we saw something which is beyond our every expectation. Beyond the Rock lived another group of species separated from another tough terrain, hence equally puzzled of what it is behind their side of the rock. And hence believing, fighting, killing, preaching and debating just the same."

Life- if any

I must admit that I am not among the top zillion qualified lot to talk about this topic, yet I find pretty hard to control my emotions (not to post it). Quite often I end up seeing articles on search for ET Life, and the sort of "Norms" that they set as search criteria in the process - Oxygen, Carbon, Water, Earth-like planets, Sun-like stars etc. And I always feel that they have a great miss-interpretation on the "thing" called "life" terrestrial or extra.


I agree that my statement may sound pretty lunatic when it comes to life of planet Earth. We are Carbon based life forms, defined quite clearly, whereas everything else is regarded as non-life. This is greatly thanks to the common root (presumably) from which the life on Earth evolved. Unfortunately, the life elsewhere will take its own paths from its own roots (can be multiple roots too).


Hence we need to define life in more abstract and generic way in order to detect it elsewhere. At this point we have to recognize the most critical fundamentals of life. I think there are only few elementary features that made life sustainable on earth. Assuming that base minimum requirements can cause it, let's generalize them for any extra-terrestrial location.


1. Ability to multiply its own structure (be it chemical of any other).


2. Ability to apply mutations to the new generation at the correct rate [i.e. mutations strong enough to adapt to the rates of environmental transformations, yet subtle enough to retain the basic properties of the original]


In my opinion, any "thing" with above two features would sustain and develop into what can be called "life" by themselves. When I stated any "thing" I did not limit myself to amino acid, big molecules, any particular element such as carbon, or not even to matter itself. It can be any combination of "thing"s that exists in the universe. (Even in virtual universes such as cyber space – but let's leave that part for AI rights groups, one day, when they start appearing)


Self reproduction which I mentioned as fact (1) above, is a fundamental that happen in many processes. Rivers give birth to other rivers, rocks break into other rocks and combine also in enormous timescales. Stars explode and the subsequent nebulae give birth to more stars. Mostly, the reproduction happens with mutations, making the child different to parent. Nevertheless, an effective mutation is all about the extent or rate that it changes the original. Mutations capable of matching the exact speeds of the change of environment, will sustain, as the early amino acid or DNA did. If the mutations miss the beat of nature, the overall process does not sustain for longer periods such that they become something unique and progressing that we can call "Life".


On this basis we can state that all the other features which we consider as essential for life are just macro-scale composite features that are results of above two basics. And they are just defined (taken for granted) based on the life on Earth. Unfortunately, these by-products can be completely different elsewhere.


With right dignity to all the religious and meta-physical ideologies, let me leave aside the concept(s) that something lives inside the chemical bodies of living beings. The belief of soul/athmaya/vingnanaya(as in Buddhist philosophy) are beyond our ability to measure or debate. For that very reason it's not a good classifier for detecting life. If souls/vingnanaya drives humans and animals, what makes you think that trees, rivers and mountains don't have souls/vingnanaya? How do you prove?


On the other hand it is compelling to accept that every activity that living beings manage, do not ESSENTIALLY need any such driving phenomena, but can be explained purely based on underline chemistry of DNA and other building blocks of life. It's like AI where small deterministic programs get together in such a complex way to emerge [and pretend] as if they can think and decide. The huge ha-ho of soul/athmaya/vingnanaya can be something similar to a tribesman trying to explain an artificial intelligence system, imagining that some ghost is making the decisions. This point is a strong test against all the religions. I would leave them out of the debate here with the view that we cannot detect life based on something that is not detectable (hence escaping the charges on sigma Blasphemy for all religions).


There is another major question on life and non-life. That is the matter of reaction speed of the species. Imagine that there lives a life form which takes one million earth years to produce offspring (oh well!!!). The sluggish beings do their day-to-day actions in the durations of thousands of earth years. They are immovable and "dead as rocks" for the time span of a human life. Will humans detect it as life?? And then imagine an alien species who works so fast that so many generations pass through within a period of a mere milliseconds (don't expect them to have material bodies btw) They may build civilizations which lasts for less than a second. Can we detect them? We'd call them both "non-life".


Now this story does not have to be Extra Terrestrial. If we generalize the reaction time difference it can make us re-define many natural processes of our own planet as life. For some time, I've heard, that some people considered earth as a giant living being.


At this juncture, we come to a point of asking "what is this life thing anyway?", or "what right do I have to state that humans are life and rocks are not?". Both undergo chemical transitions. One can sustain its transitions in such a way that it converges and evolves towards some direction, whereas other's transitions are hardly progressive and say, at best, sporadic. Just that progressive evolution makes humans do things that classify them for "life". Wrong place at wrong speed for rocks unfortunately, as their changes nullify themselves and never develop into a complex living beings.


Slowly I'm closing in on a logical doom. "Life" which I generalized at my best to two basics, is itself a definition, a meta-symbol. That depends on the reaction speed of the one who defines it. A generalized picture of life cannot be defined. More general you are, it becomes clearer to you that the term holds nothing in it - or everything in it.


As per the perception few decades ago, many thought that aliens are like humans with ears noses and mouths etc (slightly deformed as their mamas had no folic acid pills during pregnancy :)). Today's scientists are trying to think out of this tiny box. How wonderful!!! ET life does not have to look like humans. It just needs water/oxygen and Mediterranean climate. Well, bravo chaps. You've just got out of the first box of a series which you don't know of.


But what else can they do? Our technology today is so weak that we're unable to detect even the water/oxygen based inhabitants of Mediterranean climate elsewhere. There can be so many various life forms in 3000 degree hot furnaces in other solar systems, or even in Sun. But how can we detect such a variation whereas we can't find our own ET cousins. So isn't it better to start at 30 degrees? I think it's better than just sitting and thinking about the magical variations of possible life forms all over the universe (which I'm so fond of doing).


However I do not know how realistic this search is. I do NOT believe that there is a "higher likelihood" for life to exist in earth like places. The story of Earth Life is unique enough for it to be "unlikely" to repeat elsewhere. It's not for the "likelihood" of life to EXIST that we choose these planets, but because we have higher likelihood to DETECT life there.


Attempts of search for ET life, is nothing different to early colonial archeology explorers in Indian sub-continent. The region had such long history that some archaeological sites were beyond detection with their technology. They detected what is obvious, while stepping over the treasures of later historians. Nevertheless their efforts made way for latter generations to detect such sites.


Nevertheless the journalists and scientists go wrong when they open their mouths. They need to state these things more generally and humbly. They ought to mention that "life" can exist anywhere in any form. They ought to (perhaps turn a little red and) state that there is not much meaning in this big term called life anyway. Then accept that they have no strength to dig all the depth of this universe but they are starting at their best point. And they're just little kids making sand mansions in the backyard of this universe. As a matter of some tragic fact, the extent of this universe can make humans much younger than that.

Don’t miss the Interlude

It was roughly around three thirty in the afternoon, yet the sudden rain changed the tempo of the day. Oceanic road extended to the foreseeable future with its shiny wet patches all over the place. Rain has spoiled the nature. The breeze, the clouds, the trees,, the ocean, it all danced quick step. We drove along, as the untamed ocean pounded on the rocks, breaking, and blowing a mist of salty breeze away onto us.

Sky was mostly gloomy, yet its prisoner has almost got out of the cloud. Isolated points of turbulence mark distant patches of varying brightness on the canvass of the great ocean. Trapped Sun rays reach them from the circular portholes of the cloud in bright orange beams. - Spectacular scenery. - Nature at her beauty.

Yet I didn't feel as if we were on picnic.

Well, we were not.

I was driving along the yet-to-be-finished Ocean Drive, somewhere close to Bambalapitiya, in order to make in time for my baby's doctor appointment. And we were running late.

All that came to my mind was, well, the speed of the car, time of the watch (only my wife had one), and the meter reading of the imaginary policeman who would appear from behind any bush or building - and then the negotiation, fine or the bribe to get away.

To be honest, I did notice the beauty around me, tried myself to drag into it, yet failed. A distant glimpse of a joyous feeling rose, and suddenly found that it was very much out of place. And I wondered why…

We miss the interlude of life. We are waiting for the long weekend or the annual leaves to make us happy. And we let go the long boring rest of time, made so by our own selves. Then we call it the madness, curse or rat-race called life, which sucks. Even rats must be laughing.

Life's interlude is not really an interlude. It does not come after voices faded. It does not happen in a known day or time. It happens always. It is infinitely bound with every other day-today happenings. It's the idealistic mind of us which ignores the moments of joy in the expense of an imaginary fear, life goals or humanly concerns of ours.

But the same us dump all those concerns and fears and life goals out of the window of the picnic vehicle during the long weekend. Amazingly we fail the same for most of the little bits of times that come in our way totally free.

And it can come anywhere anytime in your life. In a little laughter at the back of your office, a rare traffic-free drive on the way to your work, or may be on your way to meet your CEO in the scenic open-lift ride in the skyscraper by the busy harbour in sight, - later to find out your are just fired. Well, in getting fired itself. This picnic is called life. And we are taking it like it or not. It's a matter of keeping your eyes open during the journey.

There are two types of people who climb that thorny harsh mountain. One type climb it to reach the peak - and then perhaps, to mark it with the flag on the top. Another lot climb to admire climbing. Reaching the peak is a mere point of their journey. They enjoy the journey for itself - the thorns for thorns, slippery rocks for slippery rocks, and leaches for leaches. Life is more enjoyable for the latter type.

Not just the picnic, the life is a gigantic scholarly institute as well. I like to talk to different people and study many different things. I like reading anything that comes in my way. In a very much unknown church, once I found very interesting headstones of many generations apart. It may be boring if it was of a deadman 25years ago. But the mere writing of both Sinhala and English of two hundred and fifty years ago means a lot for you. Sri Wickrema Rajasinghe was still unborn by then. Don't laugh. You'd read them certainly if you saw them in a museum, and be surprised, like I did in that church.

I may be talking in irrelevant lines. There are people dying in hunger. There are people who endanger their lives in the enemy line on behalf of all of us. But just talk to such people. Within their limitations they enjoy their life. And if not for that joy they wouldn't be doing what they are doing.
 
And then they would be working in offices, like most of us. And hate the life. No joy, the usual rat-race, the whole list of complaints.

Someone else once wrote the following.

"Some say that life is very short. But Life is the longest period of time that anyone can feel."

So do not wait till the end of it, to enjoy it.