Are Sinhalas related to Bengalis?
Genetic studies on the Sinhalese suggest a predominantly Tamil origin followed by a significant Bengali contribution with a slight North Western Indian contribution. While modern studies using more sophisticated testing point towards a predominantly Bengali contribution and a minor South Indian Tamil and North Western Indian contribution respectively.
What are the basis for these studies?
An Alu polymorphism analysis of Sinhalese from Colombo by Dr Sarabjit Mastanain in 2007 using Tamil, Bengali, Gujarati (Patel), and Punjabi as parental populations found different proportions of genetic contribution. According to the maximum likelihood method, nearly 88.07% genetic contribution is from Bengalis. A genetic distance analysis by Dr Robet Kirk also concluded that the modern Sinhalese are most closely related to the Bengalis. This is further substantiated by a VNTR study, which found 70-82% of Sinhalese genes to originate from Bengali admixture.
When three years back, a Sri Lankan envoy sought Indian support on the basis of the claim that the Sinhalese people are descendents of Bengalis and Odias, there was an upsurge of perplexity and outrage among large sections of the Indian population. However, subsequent research has shown that the Sinhalese, who make up about 75 per cent of the Sri Lankan population might very well have descended from inhabitants of ancient East India.
The “Mahavamsa”, arguably the greatest chronicle of Sri Lanka, narrates an interesting episode that marks the origin of the Sinhalese people. As per the mythological record, the foundation stone of the Sinhalese community was laid by King Vijaya who had travelled there from North-West India in 543 BC and founded the first Sinhalese town by the name of Tambapani. One of the murals at the Ajanta caves carry an elaborate depiction of King Vijaya’s travel to the Sinhalese town. According to the Mahavamsa, an ancient chronicle of Sri Lanka’s kings written in Pali, a king from Singhapur in Rarh (southwest Bengal) named Vijaya sailed on eight ships to Sri Lanka with 700 of his people in 543 BC and established the kingdom of Sinhala. Legend describes the Sinhalese as descendants of Vijaya and his people, who would have lived in parts of today’s East Midnapore, close to Odisha. Some scholars believe that today’s Singur — which changed Bengal’s political climate a few years ago — is where Singhapur was located and that Singur derives its name from that ancient town. The Mahavamsa mentions another town in Rarh called Banganagar.
In a recent book, “The ocean of churn: How the Indian ocean shaped human history”, writer Sanjiv Sanyal remarks that the symbol of the lion that is so important among the Sinhalese is equally revered among the Odiyas and Bengalis. While the Narasimha (God Vishnu as half man and half lion) is worshipped in Odisha, among Bengalis the image of Goddess Durga is incomplete without the lion upon which she rides. In the opinion of Sanyal, the image of the lion on the Sri Lankan flag and the religious symbolism of the lion in Odisha and Bengal have the same cultural origins. In his celebrated account on the development of the Bengali language, Suniti Kumar Chatterjee comments upon the Indo-Aryan content in the Sinhalese speech in the following words: “The first immigrants who carried the Indo-Aryan speech to Ceylon seem to have been from the Western Indian coast. Later from 3rd century BC onwards Ceylon seems to have come in touch with Magadha through Bengal and traditions of intimate connections between Bengal and Ceylon are preserved in Bengali literature.”
Historically speaking, what further seems to corroborate the link between Odisha, Bengal and Sri Lanka is the thriving trade between the two regions. While Ceylon (old name of Sri Lanka) depended upon Kalinga for import of elephants, Kalinga imported pearl and silver from Ceylon. Records have shown that by the 5th century BC, a strong relationship had developed between the two regions as a result of the commercial ties that spread fast enough to have its impact upon the socio-cultural and political arena.
However, the genetic, cultural and linguistic relation that the Sinhalese population shares with the Bengalis and Odiyas, though of scholarly interest, has remained largely ignored by the popular masses.
