Sri Lankan Lion

[zen]

 

Sri Lanka has adapted the lion as its (or one of its) symbol. Its cricket team is referred to as Lions as well by SL fans. However, I had never heard about anyone mentioning seeing real Lions in SL. It got me curious to find out more about the Sri Lankan Lion and its existence.  

 

A quick google search led to to wiki and below is what I found:

The Sri Lanka lion (Panthera leo sinhaleyus), also known as the Ceylon lion, was a prehistoric subspecies of lion, endemic to Sri Lanka. It appears to have become extinct prior to the arrival of culturally modern humans, c. 37,000 years BC.

This lion is only known from two teeth found in deposits at Kuruwita. Based on these teeth, P. Deraniyagala erected this subspecies in 1939. However, there is insufficient information to determine how it might differ from other subspecies of lion. Deraniyagala did not explain explicitly how he diagnosed the holotype of this subspecies as belonging to a lion, though he justified its allocation to a distinct subspecies of lion by its being "narrower and more elongate" than those of recent lions in the British Natural History Museum collection.

 

This is very strange. From what I understand from the above:

a) A couple of animal teeth were found

b) Someone did some tests, whose details are not available, and determined that the teeth belong to a species of Lions

c) These lions were extinct even before humans arrived in SL 

 

Another source debunks many of the myths associated with Lions in SL - Link

 

Also,

The appearance of the lion in Sri Lanka’s art, legend and folklore, however, cannot serve as evidence of the presence of lions in the island during historical times. The majority ethnic group of Sri Lanka, the Sinhalese, derive their name from ‘sinha’, the Sanskrit for lion; the name of the island being a corruption of “si[n]hala-dweepa”, which translates as “island of the lion race”. This association with lions appears to have originated from Indo-Aryan colonisers of the island in the sixth century BCE.

“The original home of the first IndoAryan immigrants to Sri Lanka was probably north-west India and the Indus region” (de Silva, 1981: 3). As it happens, northwest India remains the only part of the subcontinent in which lions have been reported during historical times. As P. Deraniyagala (1958) himself points out, the lions in Sri Lankan art are heavily stylised and were evidently the work of sculptors who had not seen the living animal. The frequency with which the ‘sinha’ root appears in Sri Lankan place names cannot be used as evidence for the former occurrence of lions there.

Singapore, which derives from the Sanskrit ‘sinha’ (= lion) and ‘pura’ (= city), and Singaraja (= Fig. 8. The lion in Sri Lankan art. Stylized lions such as this one at Anuradhapura (6th century, AD) are common in Sri Lanka—evidently the work of sculptors who had not seen the living animal. 433 THE RAFFLES BULLETIN OF ZOOLOGY 2005 lion king) in Bali are two prominent instances where the lion has infiltrated the etymology of places in which its has never existed, thanks to the spread of Indo-Aryan culture.

That such place names should be commonplace in Sri Lanka while being almost entirely absent in peninsular India (where, too, they ought then to have been present) is also evidence of an origin based on culture and not the physical presence of lions.

 

So is there any concrete evidence available that Lions existed in SL? 

 

Edited February 2, 2016 by rett

[vvvslaxman]

It is actually loin later it became lion lol

[zen]

It is actually loin 

Fake Lion  

[coffee_rules]

Interesting, Maybe Ravanaa and all his brothers ate it all...

[beetle]

Sri Lankan Loins...ewwww

[zen]

 

 

Looking at the images^, it would appear as if people who sculpted did not even know how a lion looks like! 

Edited February 4, 2016 by rett

[vvvslaxman]

[Detonator]

Dandakosaurus used to live in prehistoric India. Desi Dandakos might be a good name since tigers might go extinct in few decades.