History
It is believed that about the 5th century BCE, settlers from North-Eastern India reached the island of Sri Lanka. According to the chronicle Mahavamsa, the first settlers were Prince Vijaya and his entourage. The settlers merged with the native tribes known as Yakkha and Naga. In the following centuries, there was substantial immigration from Eastern India-Bengal (Kalinga, Magadha) which led to an admixture of features of Eastern Prakrits.
Read more about this topic: Sinhala Language
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“History, as an entirety, could only exist in the eyes of an observer outside it and outside the world. History only exists, in the final analysis, for God.”
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“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
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