58 Fun Facts About Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka lies just off the southern tip of which country?

India. The limestone shoals of Adam's Bridge almost join the two countries, and records suggest people could cross on foot until a storm breached it in 1480.

Which city is Sri Lanka's executive and judicial capital, and its largest city?

Colombo. It grew up around a harbour that is largely man-made, built out in the colonial era, and that port still handles most of the country's foreign trade.

Sri Lanka's parliament sits in which city, its legislative capital?

Kotte, in full Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte. Parliament moved there in 1982, into a Geoffrey Bawa building set on an island in a lake, on the site of a 15th-century royal capital.

Which strait separates Sri Lanka from the subcontinent to its north-west?

The Palk Strait is so shallow and reef-strewn that large ships cannot use it and have to sail the long way around Sri Lanka instead.

From 1948 to 1972, Sri Lanka held which status under the British monarch?

Dominion. Like Canada and New Zealand, Ceylon governed itself but kept the Crown, represented by a governor-general, until the 1972 constitution made it a republic and renamed it Sri Lanka.

Which classic epic was filmed in the jungles of Sri Lanka, then called Ceylon?

The Bridge on the River Kwai. David Lean shot it on Sri Lanka's Kelani river, where his crew built a replica of the wartime bridge and then blew it up on camera.

Sirimavo Bandaranaike made history in 1960 as the world's first what?

Elected female prime minister. Her party drafted her as leader after her husband, the prime minister, was assassinated in 1959, and it won the July 1960 election decisively.

Sri Lanka's 26-year civil war, which ended in 2009, was fought against which separatist group?

The Tamil Tigers grew from a guerrilla band into a force with its own navy and a handful of light aircraft, which bombed targets around the capital in 2007.

Sri Lanka's Moors, the country's third-largest ethnic group, mostly follow which religion?

Islam. The Moors are commonly traced to Arab spice traders who settled on the coasts over a thousand years ago and married locally, and most now speak Tamil.

Which language does Sri Lanka's constitution name as the 'link language' between Sinhala and Tamil speakers?

English. It was the language of government until a 1956 law made Sinhala the only official language; Tamil gained equal status in 1987, with English kept as the link between the two.

With no tigers on the island, which big cat is Sri Lanka's only one and its top predator?

Leopard. With no larger rival to compete with, the Sri Lankan leopard is the island's only big cat and its top predator, which may be why it has grown into one of the larger leopard subspecies.

Sri Lanka's chronicles name Mahinda, the monk who brought their faith to the island, as the son of which emperor?

Ashoka, the Mauryan emperor, sent his own son and daughter as missionaries, and Mahinda is said to have converted King Devanampiya Tissa on the hill of Mihintale.

Which ancient Sri Lankan capital shelters a sacred fig said to have been planted there about 2,300 years ago?

Anuradhapura. Tradition says the fig grew from a cutting carried across the sea in the 3rd century BCE, and the city around it stayed the island's capital for more than a thousand years.

Sigiriya, the 5th-century 'Fortress in the Sky', was built by which king?

Kashyapa I, who reigned 477-495 after seizing the throne from his father Dhatusena, built his palace on the summit of the 180-metre rock; only the foundations survive.

The name Sigiriya means what?

Lion Rock. Visitors once reached the summit through the open mouth of a gigantic lion built of brick and plaster; the head has collapsed, and only its paws still flank the staircase.

Which king, ruling 1153-1186, united Sri Lanka under one rule and built vast irrigation reservoirs?

Parakramabahu I, called the Great, united the island under one rule and then carried war overseas, sending expeditions as far as Burma.

Which old Arab and Persian name for Sri Lanka is the root of a word meaning 'happy accident'?

Serendib was the Arab and Persian name for the island; Horace Walpole coined 'serendipity' in 1754 from the fairy tale 'The Three Princes of Serendip', whose heroes kept making lucky discoveries.

In which order did the three European colonial powers control parts of Sri Lanka?

Portuguese, Dutch, British. An inland king invited the Dutch in to help drive out the Portuguese and got a new coloniser instead, and Britain seized the Dutch forts in 1796.

Which inland city was the last independent Sinhalese kingdom, falling to the British in 1815?

Kandy kept its independence in the hills through more than two centuries of European rule on the coasts, until its own chiefs signed the kingdom over in 1815 and the last king was deposed.

Sri Lanka's Temple of the Tooth houses a relic said to be a tooth of whom?

The Buddha. Kings kept the tooth close to their palaces because whoever held the relic was believed to hold the right to rule the island.

Which city at Sri Lanka's northern tip is home to the Nallur Kandaswamy temple?

Jaffna. Its public library was burned down in 1981 with more than 97,000 books and manuscripts inside, and was later rebuilt.

Before tea, which crop was Sri Lanka's main export until a blight wiped it out in the 1870s and 80s?

Coffee. A rust fungus destroyed the once-flourishing plantations within a couple of decades, and the planters replanted the same hillsides with tea.

Which Glasgow grocer bought tea estates in Ceylon in 1890 and sold their crop under his own name?

Thomas Lipton. He sold the tea cheaply in packets under the slogan 'Direct from the tea gardens to the teapot'; the island's first tea estate had been planted in 1867 by fellow Scot James Taylor.

Most cinnamon sold worldwide is actually which related spice, rather than Sri Lankan 'true cinnamon'?

Cassia. It carries far more coumarin than true cinnamon, a compound that can harm the liver, and testing for it is one way laboratories tell the two barks apart.

What appears in each of the four corners of Sri Lanka's flag?

A bo leaf, from the sacred fig, sits in each corner as a symbol of the majority faith, while the two vertical stripes beside them stand for the island's two largest minorities.

Sri Lanka's highest mountain, Pidurutalagala, rises above which hill station built up by British colonists?

Nuwara Eliya. At nearly 1,900 metres it is the coolest town on the island, so the British turned it into a hill station where they could escape the lowland heat.

The rock formation at the summit of Adam's Peak, sacred to four religions, resembles what?

A footprint. Each faith claims the hollow for its own figure: Hindus say the god Shiva left it, Muslim and Christian traditions point to Adam or St Thomas, and pilgrims of every faith climb to it each year.

What is Sri Lanka's longest river?

The Mahaweli rises in the wet hill country and flows all year, so its dams and channels carry water to farmland across the island's dry zone.

Sri Lanka beat which team in the 1996 Cricket World Cup final?

Australia. They had refused to travel to Sri Lanka for their group match after a bombing and forfeited the points, then lost the final to the same team by seven wickets.

Which Sri Lankan spinner was the first bowler to take 800 Test wickets?

Muttiah Muralitharan needed eight wickets from his farewell Test in July 2010 and took the eighth, his 800th, with the last ball he ever bowled in Test cricket.

Although cricket is by far the most popular, what is Sri Lanka's official national sport?

Volleyball. A YMCA officer brought the game to the island in 1916, and it was later picked as the national sport ahead of elle, a home-grown bat-and-ball game.

Susanthika Jayasinghe won Sri Lanka's second Olympic medal at Sydney 2000 in which event, won on the day by Marion Jones?

Women's 200 metres. Jayasinghe crossed the line third, but her bronze became silver after Jones admitted doping in 2007 and was stripped of the gold.

Which Sri Lankan president fled to Singapore and resigned by email after protesters stormed his residence in 2022?

Gotabaya Rajapaksa flew to the Maldives and then Singapore, e-mailing his resignation on 14 July 2022 after the country's first sovereign default, months of fuel queues and long power cuts.

In 2021 Sri Lanka tried to become the world's first nation to farm entirely how, with disastrous results?

Organically: an April 2021 ban on importing synthetic fertiliser and agrochemicals cut rice and tea yields sharply, and the policy was reversed in November 2021 as food prices soared.

Which British sci-fi author moved to Sri Lanka in 1956 for the diving and lived there until his death in 2008?

Arthur C. Clarke had barely arrived when he found the underwater ruins of the ancient Koneswaram temple off Trincomalee, and Sri Lanka later gave him its highest civilian honour.

Which Sri Lankan-born author of 'The English Patient' became a naturalised Canadian?

Michael Ondaatje left Ceylon at 11 to rejoin his mother in England and moved on to Montreal at 19; the novel won him the Booker Prize 30 years later.

Watalappam, a coconut-milk and jaggery pudding, is believed to have reached Sri Lanka with which community?

The Malays are believed to have brought the pudding when they came over from Indonesia under Dutch rule, and in their language it is still called serikaya.

Lamprais, a Sri Lankan Burgher dish, is rice cooked in stock and baked in what?

A banana leaf. The parcel holds the rice with a mixed-meat curry, meatballs and sambols, and colonists are thought to have adapted it from a Javanese rice snack wrapped the same way.

Baila, Sri Lanka's upbeat party music, grew from the music of a community whose ancestors the Portuguese shipped in from which continent?

Africa. The Sri Lanka Kaffirs descend from Africans whom Portuguese traders brought over as labourers and soldiers, and their rhythms, mixed with Portuguese Burgher dance tunes, became baila.

Which Sri Lankan town is famous for a complex of five painted cave temples beneath a towering rock?

Dambulla. Tradition says an exiled king sheltered in the caves in the 1st century BCE and turned them into a temple after he won back his throne.

Which Chinese admiral left a trilingual stone tablet in Sri Lanka and carried one of its kings off to China?

Zheng He's tablet at Galle lists his offerings in Chinese, Persian and a local language, and each version dedicates them to a different faith's deity.

Anula, Sri Lanka's first reigning queen, is said to have removed a string of husbands and lovers by which method?

Poison. The Mahavamsa chronicle has her poison two kings and then, one after another, a palace guard, a carpenter, a wood-carrier and a priest she had put on the throne.

From which city did Sri Lanka's kings rule after driving out Chola invaders in 1070?

Polonnaruwa. A Sinhalese king retook it from the Cholas, and for about 160 years his successors ruled the island from it, raising the temples that survive there as ruins.

Hundreds of which animals gather each dry season at Sri Lanka's Minneriya reservoir?

Elephants. When the dry season sets in, herds come out of the surrounding forests for the water and the grass along the shore of the reservoir, which a king built in the 3rd century.

Which national park in the north-west is Sri Lanka's largest?

Wilpattu. Its willus, natural sand-rimmed basins that fill with rainwater, turn a tract of dry-zone forest into a chain of wetlands.

According to the Mahavamsa chronicle, Sinhalese history begins with the landing of which exiled prince?

Vijaya. The chronicle says his father, the king, tired of the prince's violent gang, had him and his 700 followers half-shaved, put on a ship and sent out to sea.

In the Hindu epic Ramayana, the island kingdom of Lanka is ruled by which demon king?

Ravana, the ten-headed rakshasa king, seized Lanka from his half-brother Kubera, the god of wealth, and abducted Sita, prompting Rama's invasion of the island.

By tradition, the Pali Canon was first written down in Sri Lanka in the 1st century BCE on what material?

Palm leaves. Monks had carried the texts in memory for centuries, and when famine and invasion thinned their ranks they wrote the canon out at a rock temple so it would not die with them.

Which Sri Lankan batsman hit an unbeaten 52 in his last Twenty20 international to win the 2014 World Twenty20?

Kumar Sangakkara. He and Mahela Jayawardene had lost four world finals together, and both bowed out of the format that night with a winner's medal at last.

What is Sri Lanka's currency?

Rupee. The name goes back to a Sanskrit word for wrought silver, and the Maldives' rufiyaa is the very same word in another form.

Sri Lanka has a public holiday every month, called Poya, to mark which event?

The full moon. Each Poya is kept as a day of religious observance, so shops and businesses generally close and the sale of alcohol and meat is forbidden.

Ratnapura, Sri Lanka's 'city of gems', is best known for which precious stone?

Sapphire. Miners dig the stones out of old river gravels around the city, and the island's finds include the 423-carat Logan Sapphire now in the Smithsonian.

Balangoda Man, known from remains over 30,000 years old in Sri Lankan caves, belonged to which human species?

Homo sapiens. Despite the name, Balangoda Man is not one skeleton but a whole population of cave-dwelling hunter-gatherers, the earliest reliably dated members of our species in South Asia.

Sri Lanka's national bird, found nowhere else, is a wild cousin of which farmyard animal?

The chicken. Farm chickens descend mainly from the red junglefowl, a close relative of Sri Lanka's bird, and they later picked up a few genes from the Sri Lankan junglefowl itself.

Kottu, a classic Sri Lankan street food, gets its name and its clatter from doing what to flatbread on a griddle?

Chopping it. Cooks shred the roti with metal blades as it fries with vegetables, egg and curry, and the name kottu simply means 'chopped'.

Who was sworn in as Sri Lanka's president in September 2024 after winning as a left-wing candidate?

Anura Kumara Dissanayake was sworn in on 23 September 2024, and seven weeks later his alliance, which had held just three seats in parliament, won 159 of the 225.

Which Sri Lankan president was killed by a suicide bomber at a 1993 May Day rally?

Ranasinghe Premadasa was out with his party's May Day parade when the bomber rode up on a bicycle and set off the blast, which killed the president and more than twenty others.

Which reserve in south-west Sri Lanka is the country's last viable stretch of primary rainforest?

Sinharaja. UNESCO listed it because more than 60% of its trees grow only on this island, and over half of the island's endemic mammals and butterflies live in this one forest.