What’s the Story: The Sri Lanka Podcast

Of Sri Lanka’s bears, buffaloes and boars, which animal is its Bach?  Which its Bhrams?  And which is its heroic Beethoven?

Though occupying barely 1% of the world's total landmass, Sri Lanka hosts well over 2% of its recognised bat species.   But are there 28 species here?  Or 29?  Or 37?  How exactly do you count bats?

Sri Lanka was once home to tigers, lions, rhinos and hippos.  But where are they to be found today?  And what might disappear next?

The destruction of the 1500-year-old Anuradhapuran kingdom fell due – but was it destroyed by problems of its own making – or by a force so overwhelming that no power could ever hope to withstand?

The Lambakanna king, Sena II, pulled victory from disaster.  Sri Lanka became one of the dominant powers in the Indian Ocean.  So how did it get from there to the doors of desolation in barely 125 years?

How was it that, even as life seemed at its easiest, the plush and kind middle years of later Lambakanna rule almost came to an abrupt halt - courtesy of an Indian invasion?  

King Manavanna was to restore the fortunes of the returning Lankbranaka dynasty, and his succeeding sons were to rule as if the kingdom merited nothing but the best.  But was the Anuradhapuran kingdom really that safe?

As the Lambakanna kings retook their throne for a second innings, how was it that rice, that most ordinary of all crops, was to power the last glorious golden age of the one-island state? 

Water flowed, and the kingdom functioned as the long, late Indian summer of Lambakarna rule drew to its end.  Or did it?  What drove the dynasty to destruction and laid the land open to invaders?

Regicide vied with restitution as the Lambakanna dynasty moved into its middle age – but just how well did the state survive these years of make-do, mayhem and murder?

After the ruinous excesses of the last Vijayan kings, Sri Lanka’s Lambakanna were to rule for two periods, the first lasting 369 years. But how did they rescue the state from ruin?

It was the mastery of water that powered the Anuradhapuran Kingdom, but how did its first Lambakarna kings ensure so rapid a development of its technology as to superpower their domain?

It was a counterfeit lookalike king who presided over the bloodbath collapse of the Vijayan dynasty that had ruled Sri Lanka for over 600 years.  How did things ever come to such a pass?

As a third and fourth Tamil invasion subjugated Sri Lanka, who were the feisty avenging kings who rescued it from the suspicion that things are never so bad that they can't get any worse?

Barely 300 years into its nationhood, Sri Lanka was invaded twice.  Why was it that no one saw the turmoil that lay ahead, and who were its conquerors?

Two great Sri Lankan kings ruled in quick succession – Pandu Kabhaya and Devanampiya Tissa. How did this double windfall hasten the tiny kingdom to burst into a great state?

How did Sri Lanka, barely 7 decades old, survive the death of its founding father, Vijaya, and its first recorded civil war, which erupted over the death of Vijaya’s nephew?  

Sri Lanka’s first recorded monarch established a family that would rule for over half a millennium, and a nation that flourishes to this day. But how did that all begin? 

Adam’s Bridge was a bridge crying out for repair, even before the great storm of 1480 shattered it forever.   Unpredictable and uneven, sailing had long been the better option. But for Sri Lanka’s first settlers – who had still to master boats – a short walk from India was all it took.    And walking was what they did: Palaeolithic and later Mesolithic migrants from the Indian mainland who strolle...

The simple fact that Sri Lanka is an island has determined the country’s character; for “islands,” as Richard Dawkins remarked, “are natural workshops of evolution.” But how did this all happen?

In almost every aspect of its existence, Sri Lanka defies logic - yet still it spins a potent and inexplicable magic. So how exactly did it get to be like this? What makes Sri Lanka unique?