POSTCARD N.134 - SRI LANKA

Postcard sent on the 29th February, received on the  6th March 2024

Postcard image: Images of VeddHa People
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Ravindra keeps sending me these very interesting postcards from Sri Lanka, always graced with the incredibly diverse and attractive stamps.  I can't really say how much I like them. Bohomȧ  sthoothi, Ravindra!

This time he took me back to the origins of Sri Lanka with a postcard with images of members of what is believed to be the original inhabitants of the Island State: the Veddha people.

The Veddha minority, originally a hunter-gatherer ethnic group that lived in the forests, I read, is almost totally assimilated now, to the point of Britannica stating that Veddha as a separate community have ceased to exist in the 1970s. This, as in many other comparable cases,  will eventually result  in the  loss of their own original language(s), given that Sinhala has taken its(their) place. 

Originally Veddhas were hunter-gatherers and their origins in Sri Lanka can be traced to about 40.000 - 30.000 years ago. Animists and believers in the cult of the dead, Veddha - who now also profess Buddhism or Hinduism, as another sign of acculturation -  have seen their living grounds dramatically shrink over time, given the expansion of urban areas, and  the re-affectation of forest areas to industrial and agricultural uses, as it often has happened to other forest dwelling communities all over the globe.

Sri Lanka Post has issued quite a number of very interesting sets dedicated to the local fauna and flora, as I have been able to show here on this blog, thanks to the very welcome profusion of mail I have been getting from Ravindra.

For this postcard, Ravindra used four of the ten 125 Rupee stamps issued in minisheet form on 03FEB2020, celebrating World Wetlands Day, which is annually commemorated on that particular date.

The theme for the 2020 was "Wetlands and Biodiversity" this being inscribed on each stamp as a legend below the World Wetlands Day logo, illustrated with images of what I presume are local wetland flora species:

left to right; top to bottom:

- Mesua stylosa, a tree of the Calophyllaceae family, endemic to Sri Lanka and listed  as Critically Endangered, by IUCN. (don't think it is a wetland specific species, but I may be wrong.)

- Scyphiphora hydrophyllacea, a mangrove dweller that occurs from India to tropical Asia and the western Pacific. It is the sole species of its genus, in the Rubiaceae family.

- Bruguiera sexangula, the "upriver orange mangrove", a mangrove tree that can reach 30 m in height, occuring in Southeast Asia.

-  Sonneratia alba, another inhabitant of the mangrove areas. This white flowered tree is a member of the Lythraceae family, occurring in Africa and Asia.

- Claiming to be the "largest and most prominent educational institution in Sri Lanka", the Royal College of Colombo was founded in 1835, following the Eton School model, as the Colombo Academy, by  Sir Robert Wilmot-Horton, the Governor, between 1831 and 1837, of what was then the colony of Ceylon.

In 1881, following the approval of Queen Victoria, the Academy would be renamed the Royal College of Colombo, thus becoming the only School outside England to be granted the use of the Royal epithet in  its designation.

On the occasion of the 175th anniversary of its establishment, Sri Lanka Post issued, on 16JUL2010, the celebratory stamp that is also present of the postcard. 

As usual with Ravindra's mail, the postmark hails from the central Post Office at Columbus, Sri Lanka's economic capital .