No Prakash they do say from Bengal (is is not 900yers ago but around 2500 years ago. )but if you look at modern Sinhal dialect they use the word V and not B eg visa ( twenty )Vandura( Monkey)this is west Indic. unlike east indic eg Hind Bis( twenty) Bandhar( Monkey) so most probably thero ancestors have come from north west India eg Gujarat. SIndh. These Prakrit soeaking migrants did not bring their women folk withthem. so even according to their legend Mahavamsa( the great history) they took Tamil women from the Pandyan country as their wives. So in reality they from the inception were half Tamil. Other than this orinial lot of migratns from Noth Indai all other migrants for the next 2500 years were from the SOuth of India. Mainly from Tamil Nadu then Kerala then ANdhra and Orissa. Originally Sinhala meant only the descendants of these Aryan/Tamil Migrants speaking thier Prakrit language. Later with the advent of Buddhism. around 2300 years ago, th eentire island other than the population in the North and East got converted. The language of Buddhism was Pali/Sanskrit. therefore a new language started to evolve. This was a mixture of the Prakrit/Sanskrit/Pali amd Tamil. In fact modern Sinhala has around 35 to 40% Tamil root words. The sentence and the grammatical structure is Tamil. Therefore al lthe local Tamils in the south central north central toghether with the other tribes like the Veddhas. Yakkas, Nagas and the Aryan/Tamil Sinhalas became Buddhists and contd
