Island Stories: The Sri Lanka Podcast Podcast Por The Ceylon Press arte de portada

Island Stories: The Sri Lanka Podcast

Island Stories: The Sri Lanka Podcast

De: The Ceylon Press
Escúchala gratis

OFERTA POR TIEMPO LIMITADO. Obtén 3 meses por US$0.99 al mes. Obtén esta oferta.
From elephants to sapphires, tea to cricket, Island Stories: The Sri Lanka Podcast explores a remote and secret Eden to discover the stories behind the things that make Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan. 2024 The Ceylon Press Ciencias Sociales Escritos y Comentarios sobre Viajes Mundial
Episodios
  • Twinkle: A Guide To Sri Lanka’s Gems & When To Wear Them

    Twinkle: A Guide To Sri Lanka’s Gems & When To Wear Them
    Nov 4 2025
    It was Shakespeare’s Enobarbus who remarked of Queen Cleopatra that “age cannot wither her nor custom stale her infinite variety.” But in this observation Anthony’s wise and cynical confident was only half right – for age is as much a skilful creator of variety, as it is of value; if Sri Lanka’s famous gems are anything to go by. And Queen Cleopatra herself – apart from a nightclub in downtown Colombo and an elderly female leopard in Wilpattu – has yet to make much of a mark on the island. The island is home to 75 semi or precious gems – including two precious stones - rubies and sapphires, the latter being the gem that is unmistakably twinned with in popular imagination. Amongst its better known semi-precious stones are Spinels, Amethysts, Sapphires, Garnets, Rose Quartz, Aquamarines, Tourmalines, Agates, Cymophanes, Topazes, Citrines, Alexandrites, Zircons, and Moonstones. All are valued according to a strict criteria: Cut, Colour, Clarity, and Carat - or weight. Thanks to the extreme old age of its rocks (90% are between 500 to 2.5 million years old), Sri Lanka’s gems are so numerous as to often just wash out onto flood plains, and into rivers and streams. Indeed, the mining of alluvial deposits by simple water-winnowing river mining was for long the classic technique used to find gemstones, separating them out from the river sand and clay by simple sluicing in wicker baskets. Tunnel mining represents a more scalable technique. Typically, pits of 5 to 500 feet in depth are dug, with tunnels excavated horizontally from them. The clay, sand and gravel is then sluiced with water in conical baskets to separate out the heaver stones that then settle at the basket base. At a much more industrial level, backhoe earthmover machines, ablaze in their environmentally challenging acid yellow or orange livery, are used to excavate the topsoil. Twenty five percent of the country’s total land area is potentially gem-bearing, but the greatest concentration of mining is around the town of Ratnapura which accounts for 65% of mined gems, the balance mostly coming from Elahera, a district in the North Central Province. The country’s gem mining history reaches back to at least the 2nd century BCE, with the mention of a gem mine in The Mahavamsa. However, if biblical rumours of King Solomon’s wooing of the Queen of Sheba with gifts of priceless Sri Lankan gems, are to be believed, the country’s gem mines can be back dated at least another 700 years. In 550 CE a Greek trader, Cosmas, wrote that "the temples are numerous, and in one in particular, situated on an eminence, is the great hyacinth [amethyst or ruby], as large as a pine cone, the colour of fire, and flashing from a great distance, especially when catching the beams of the sun - a matchless sight". A later traveller to the island, Marco Polo, wrote in the 13th century CE that "the king of Ceylon is reputed to have the grandest ruby that was ever seen, a span in length, the thickness of a man's arm; brilliant beyond description, and without a single flaw. He gives them to the lapidaries who scrape them down until they split away from the ruby stones. Some of them are red, some yellow, and some blue, which they call nailam (saffires)". Today, the country’s gem industry is high regulated, and its exports are one of the country’s main foreign revenue earners, with sales escalating from around $40 million in 1980 to over $473 million in 2022. This places it in 4th position, below that of Garments ($4.7 billion); Coffee, Tea & Spices ($1.6 billion); and Rubber ($1.06 billion). This phenomenal acceleration dates in part to two bouts of government intervention: the establishment of the State Gem Corporation in 1971 and the 1993 Gem and Jewellery Authority Act. By these moves, the government centralised and professionalised the issuing of gem-mining licenses and the l easing government land for mining. They extended control over sales and exporting and made it mandatory that gems discovered within mines could be sold arbitrarily; but must instead be presented at public auctions, with the government receiving a share of sales amounting to 2.5%. The industry’s value chain is a long one. Gem miners sell their stones to dealers, who sell the rough stones to cutter polishers. Historically, these have usually been Ceylon Moors descendants of Arabians traders. The glittering stones are then sold to wholesalers and onto retailers, where the greatest profits are to be made. The two stones that stand like guardians of the jewellery vault in Sri Lanka are of course sapphire and rubies. So great is the affinity between Sri Lanka and its sapphires that the nation might legitimately put in for a name change to be better called Sri Sapphire. They are most typically blue – but can also pop up black, colourless, grey, or even pink, orange – a variant known as padparadscha – from Padmaraga. The country also excels at producing ...
    Más Menos
    26 m
  • Shangri-la: The Primates of Sri Lanka

    Shangri-la: The Primates of Sri Lanka
    Nov 2 2025
    Nearly seven million monkeys leap about Sri Lanka’s trees, the vast majority of them Toque Macaques. To these can be added a handful of lorises, their ancient and more wet-nosed primate relatives. These much overlooked mammals of beguiling rarity and beauty, have talent for invisibility that outsteps even that of Tolkien’s Frodo when wearing The Ring, their visibility not aided by the serious existential threat they face, with numbers of the combined loris species barely rising much about 100,000. With over a third of the country still covered by some form of forest and over 800 trees and shrubs to choose from, the island is a tree hugger’s Shangri-la; and on first sight it would seem quite logical to assume that Sri Lanka was overrun with monkeys of many species. But in fact, the reverse is true. Quality trumps quantity. Just three variants are found on the island - The Hanuman Langur; The Purple-Faced Langur; and The Toque Macaque. The Hanuman Langur The Hanuman langur, also called the Tufted Gray langur - is one of three Semnopithecus priam variants, all of which are found in India; but only Semnopithecus priam thersites lives in Sri Lanka. Various theories – conflicting, convoluted and largely unprovable – have been put forward to account for why the Sri Lankan sub species, thersites, is different to those found in India, though the differences would tax the deductive powers of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Even so, patriotic toxicologists are pressing the case for the Sri Lankan variant to be declared a separate endemic species in its own right. As the debate on this rumbles on, the langur in question gets on with its life blamelessly – and relatively unthreatened by the millstones of modern life. It was named rather eccentrically for Thersites, a bow-legged antihero from Homer’s Trojan Wars, who was later promoted by Plato as a man best fit for the afterlife. This was a doubtful honour to bestow one of Sri Lanka’s elite mammals. Up to sixty inches long head to tail with a weight that can hit close to fifteen kilos, its black face is framed in a wispy white beard that runs from forehead to chin. It is a light grey in colour, and lives as readily in dry forests as urban areas – showing a strong preference for antique cultural sites if their dwellings in such places as Polonnaruwa, Dambulla, Anuradhapura, and Sigiriya are anything to go by. Once settled, they tend to stay put, having little of the gypsy tendency within them. Eagerly vegetarian, they live in troops of up to 50 members, the larger ones being curiously non-sexist - with leadership shared between a male-female pair. Langur monkeys comes with all the complexities of a relatively capacious family – and they live in groups within which strict social hierarchies are observed. Quite how many species belong to the Langur family is a modestly debated subject amongst mammalian taxonomists, but at the last count there were eight. Or seven, depending, stretching from the Himalayas to Sri Lanka. The Purple-Faced LangurThe Hanuman langur shares the closest of all possible evolutionary relationships with the island’s second monkey species, the purple-faced langur – so much so in fact that they have even been known to mate. This is the rarer of the island’s two langur species, its endemic status free of any debate or argument. It lives largely in dense forest but is now threatened by habitat loss that has noticeably eroded its numbers. Vegetarian, with a tendency to opt for leaves ahead of other foods, it is shy and slightly smaller than Hanuman langur but easy to tell apart for its darker colouring, the black brown fur of its body contrasting with the mop of wispy white fur that surrounds its face and sit atop its head. Despite, or perhaps because of being one step away from being critically endangered, the purple-faced langur has settled into its different island environments like a hand in a glove and evolved into a variety of sub species. The Southern lowland wet zone purple-faced langur stands out for its more varied markings – a black upper torso and lavish white whiskers. Occasionally all-white versions are spotted. The Western purple-faced langur - also confusingly named the north lowland wet zone purple-faced langur is the smallest of the lot, its fur a dark greyish brown. The Dryzone purple-faced langur is, in contrast, the biggest version - with arresting white cheeks and an exceptionally long tail. The Montane purple-faced langur, sometimes called the Bear Monkey comes with extra shaggy fur, all the better to keep it warm on the higher mountains on which it prefers to live. Excited taxologists from Jaffna have also called for the recognition of a firth sub species - vetulus harti. Although there are no reliable recorded sightings of it as a living mammal, its pelts have been found around Jaffna and Vavuniya – strikingly yellow gold. The Toque Macaque The island’s third monkey ...
    Más Menos
    19 m
  • Guardians Against Greed: The Mongooses Of Sri Lanka

    Guardians Against Greed: The Mongooses Of Sri Lanka
    Oct 26 2025
    Looking at animals from a purely Kandyan perspective, in the beginning were not early life form sponges, or even aardvarks – but mongooses. For it was, according to the best of legends, mongooses who were responsible for Kandy being built where it was. The city’s earliest history is an impossible mosaic of hearsay, myth, the odd inscription, and later recollections. First founded as an offshoot of the Kurunegala kingdom sometime after 1357, it lapsed into impenetrable obscurity until Vikramabāhu, a rebellious cousin of the Kotte kings remade it as his petite capital. But by the time his grandson, Karalliyadde Banḍāra, came to take over in 1551, the wafer-thin royal line had all but petered out in a poorly judged wave of conversions to Catholicism and acquiescence to the invading Portuguese. It took the rise of a patriotic nobleman noted his machoness, Vimaladharmasuriya, to relaunch the kingdom in 1592 with sufficient vigour as to ensure it lasted as an independent state for 223 years. The king, casting around for the best spot on which to rebuild his capital, has his attention down to the threshing ground that overlooked a large paddy field – now the Sea of Milk or Kandy Lake. The threshing ground, his astrologers advised him, was lucky. Safe even - for it was frequented by a white mongoose, a beast that, as everyone knew, was more effective in keeping a house free rats, mice, snakes, and scorpions than any cat. And so, all around what is today known as the Maha Maluva, the city grew, as serpentine in shape and arrangement as any of the snakes hunted by the king’s favoured mongooses. In fact, the particular mongoose the king was drawn to was more grey than white – being the Common Ceylon Grey Mongoose, or, given its non-endemic stratus, the Indian Grey Mongoose, as it is also known. It is the smallest of the 7 mongoose species or subspecies found on the island. The creature was, wrote Rynard Kipling in 1894, “rather like a little cat in his fur and his tail, but quite like a weasel in his head and habits. His eyes and the end of his restless nose were pink; he could scratch himself anywhere he pleased, with any leg, front or back, that he chose to use; he could fluff up his tail till it looked like a bottle-brush, and his war-cry, as he scuttled through the long grass, was: 'Rikk-tikk-tikki-tikki-tchk!”. Kipling’s famous mongoose demonstrated all the attributes of a perfect mongoose. For despite being somewhat shy around people it is fearless with snakes, its kill strategy focused on tiring the snake by tempting it to make bites it easily avoids. Its thick grizzled iron-grey fur and neuro transmitting receptors leave it immune to snake venom; and for anyone living up-country in Sri Lanka, it is a fine companion to have around. Herpestes Edwardsii, as the beast is known more formally, is little more than 32 inches nose to tail it lives right across the island, often in pairs, eating fruit, roots, and small animals. It lives for around seven years, breading twice yearly and producing up to four cubs, who pop out of eggs, like all mongoose babies. Its fur, stiffer than that of other mongooses, is more interesting than the word grey implies as each individual hair is ringed with creamy white and black markings that make even stationary beasts look as if they are running with blurred go-faster stripes streaking their whole body all the way down to a long bouffant tail. There are in fact 5 sub species of grey mongoose living in India and other parts of South Asia; and whilst Herpestes Edwardsii is the one most seen in Sri Lanka, a second variant, Urva Edwardsii Lanka, has been identified as sufficiently different as to merit its classification as a subspecies unique to the island. Whilst its more Indian cousin lives almost anywhere, the Sri Lankan variant has a marked preference for habitats of 2000 meters or more, and avoids built up areas in favour of jungle, shrublands and riverbanks. For a time it also excited scientist for its superior olfactory capabilities – even to the extent of finding itself being trialled to detect narcotic drugs in police raids. Telling the two apart by looks however is a challenge even committed mongoose scientists baulk at. So imagine their consternation at having to tell apart the three variants of the Brown Mongoose, two of whom are only to be found on the island. Like Goldilocks with the Three Bears, they have their work cut out. At around 30 to 34 inches nose to tail, the Ceylon Brown Mongoose (Herpestes Fuscus Maccarthiae), the only one common to both Sri Lanka and India, is marginally larger than either the Highland Ceylon Brown Mongoose (Herpestes Fuscus Flavidents), or the Western Ceylon Brown Mongoose (Herpestes Fuscus Rubidior). But there the more apparent differences end. All three species have dark brown fur, black legs, and long black enviably tufted tails. All three are sights of simple, breathtaking beauty. But seeing them ...
    Más Menos
    11 m
Todavía no hay opiniones