A study on unique cultural characteristics of the ‘Kinnara’ community in Sri Lanka

In the Sri Lankan social organization, the ‘Kinnara’ people represents one of the bottom most strata in the Sinhalese caste hierarchy. ‘Rodi’ and ‘Kinnara’, two main castes in the inferior layers of the subordinate caste order, can be identified as tribes as well as being castes. Even though they bore specified caste duties in the Sri Lankan caste order, the tribal features are clearly visible among them. In the Sri Lankan research literature, this research carries the objective of identifying the cultural features which had been unique to Kinnara community and their transformation in the modern times. Kinnara people had been identified as a tribe by M.D. Raghavan through an anthropological research. The reason behind was the sociocultural features which they were carrying even in the 1950s as ‘Kinnara’ was an isolated community at that period of time. But today, a rapid dissociation from those unique cultural features and a swift assimilation into the main society can be well observed. Therefore the research problem in this research is “What are the modern changes