The Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, usually shorthand as just Sri Lanka,

is an island nation located just off

the southeast coast of India in the Indian Ocean. Its administrative capital city is Cote,

its largest city is also its commercial capital, Colombo, and there are nearly 116,000 people

living in the former, and about 753,000 in the latter. Just as India has long been of

historic and strategic importance for entities well beyond Asia, so too as Sri Lanka, as its

adjacency to the many and varied powerful civilizations living in what is today India, has made it a thriving

and happening spot for cultural and commercial purposes,

and its deep harbors has allowed it to play a role in both the ancient and modern permutations of the Silk Road.

It can host ships that other nearby ports cannot, and it is served as a sort of proxy port for the civilizations based on the Indian subcontinent

since at least the mid-300s BC, and probably earlier than that as well.

Like most trade hubs of this kind,

Sri Lanka's population is a diverse mix of other cultures that used it as a stopover and eventually as a second base of operations.

So folks throughout Asia but also Europe set up shop and then eventually put down roots on this island

throughout the preceding centuries.

And especially once the ancient Silk Road, supported by the trade of textiles and spices throughout the eastern world,

became established and Sri Lanka became a major node in that larger network.

Between 993 and 1017 AD, a civilization based in India called the Chola Empire invaded and conquered

what is today Sri Lanka, and incorporated it into the larger mainland-based Empire as an outlying province

In 1070, that imperial government was overthrown by Sinha Lee's loyalists, the Sinha Lees being the dominant culture in the region before the Chola Empire showed up.

The Sinha Lees culture was oriented around a monarchy that was established on the island

back in something like 543 BC, and they also at that point had crossed the channel from the mainland.

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