Some Ethnic Differences Observed by Robert Knox
by Laksiri Fernando-Thursday, September 26, 2013
( September 26, 2013, Sydney, Sri Lanka Guardian) My interests are of ‘ethnicity’ deriving from the discipline of political science and not ethnography or anthropology as such, since I don’t have any disciplinary background in them. Also my effort is not to argue that ethnic labels or characteristics are static or permanent but on the contrary to hypothesise that they are time bound and context specific. Some characteristics, however, might last for many centuries or millennia. What I relate here is what Robert Knox said about ethnic groups in Ceylon in his An Historical Relation of the Island of Ceylon in East-Indies published in 1681 in London, of course with my interpretations and comments. Knox’s was the first book in English on Ceylon. 