An Ancient Cosmopolitan Perspective to the Urban Cities of Sri Lanka

Prishanta Gunawardhana1*, Keir Strickland2, Harendra Lal Namalgamuwa1, Umanga Roshani1, Bradly Yon2, P. Penzo-Kajewski2, and Rebekah Kurpiel2

Cosmopolitan urban characteristics, as a historical process, appear to be a typical stage of socioeconomic and political development in which a social structure is based on traders, rulers, Buddhist monks, and an elite society. This paper aims to investigate the outcomes of the cosmopolitan trend on the formation of ancient Sri Lanka's urban landscape. In the urban setting, ideas that have advanced globally are shared to create cooperation among people of different nationalities. In fact, in the ancient environment, a large scale of migration may have occurred indicating that people from many languages, ethnic backgrounds, and beliefs settled in cities. National and ethnic boundaries in the Indian Ocean are strengthened when the focus is on the archaeological material culture and services provided by nations in the context of international trade, which are regarded as indicators of cosmopolitanism. Different local and foreign ethnic groups regularly worshipped monumental structures and images; foreign communities may have established settlements; and some foreign artefacts discovered throughout Sri Lanka's territory demonstrate that ancient Sri Lanka was set up with cosmopolitanism within the urban environment. The 600-500 BCE Plain Grey ware (PGW) and the 350-250 BCE Northern Black Polished ware (NBP) originated in the Ganga valley and were widely used throughout the Mauryan empire. The east Mediterranean region was linked to and involved in Sri Lankan commerce. Black Hellenistic pottery made between 250 and 2 BCE in a global milieu. 50 CE, the east and west Mediterranean sigillata and fine red ware of the east Mediterranean region of the first century CE to the third century CE, and the Black Glazed Grey stone ware and Purple Brown Glazed / Creem Grey Layered Fabric Stone ware produced in China during the sixth to eighth centuries CE all point to Sri Lanka's cosmopolitanism.