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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Sri Lanka
Index
The Sri Lankan Tamil community itself boasts an impressive
mythology of cultural and religious uniqueness and superiority.
This is particularly true of dominant-caste Vellala Tamils living
in the Jaffna Peninsula, who regard their Tamil cousins living in
India and the Indian Tamil residents of Sri Lanka, as well as the
Sinhalese, as their less civilized inferiors (thus undermining,
to some extent, the rationale behind Sinhalese fears of
engulfment by the two Tamil communities). According to
anthropologist Bruce Pfaffenberger, the Vellala Tamils place
great importance on the correct observation of Hindu rituals, the
chastity of their women, and the need to maintain precisely the
hierarchical distinctions of caste. Pfaffenberger notes that the
Vellala regard the Jaffna Peninsula as their natu, or
country, and that states ruled by their kings existed there from
the thirteenth century until the sixteenth-century arrival of the
Portuguese. Although not all Sri Lankan Tamils were members of
the Vellala caste, its members dominated local commercial and
educational elites, and its values had strong influence on Tamils
of other castes.
Data as of October 1988
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