ICANN Sinhala Generation Panel and the First Sri Maha Bodhi Webcast

Presenting the Sinhala Generation Panel’s work in Barcelona

Harsha Wijayawardhana presenting Sinhala Generation Panel work at ICANN63 in Barcelona — Harsha Wijayawardhana presenting the Sinhala Generation Panel’s work at ICANN63 in Barcelona in 2018. Prof. Sarmad Hussain is at the left; Pitinan Kooarmornpatana and other members of the ICANN community also participated in the session.

Harsha presented the progress of the ICANN Sinhala Generation Panel, explaining the linguistic and technical work required to represent Sinhala safely and correctly within the Internet’s Domain Name System. The work brought language scholarship, Unicode expertise and DNS security considerations together in the development of Sinhala Root Zone Label Generation Rules.

The inaugural Sinhala Generation Panel meeting at UCSC

Participants at the first Sinhala Generation Panel meeting at UCSC — The first Sinhala Generation Panel meeting at the University of Colombo School of Computing. The same day included engagement with Indian Generation Panels working across 22 languages. Participants included Prof. Sarmad Hussain, Dr. Ruvan Weerasinghe, Pitinan Kooarmornpatana, Prof. J. B. Disanayake, Harsha Wijayawardhana and other linguistic and technical specialists.

This meeting was an important regional convergence of linguistic scholarship and computing expertise. It strengthened cooperation between Sri Lankan and Indian language communities working to enable South Asian scripts within the global Domain Name System.

ICANN Community in Action display — *The ICANN Community in Action*—representing the multistakeholder community working to sustain a single, globally interoperable Internet.

Harsha Wijayawardhana conducting an ICANN-related capacity-building session — Harsha conducting a capacity-building session connected with ICANN, multilingual Internet technologies and Universal Acceptance.

The first live Internet stream from Sri Maha Bodhi

Harsha Wijayawardhana, Dihan Morwaka and Janantha Marasinghe during the pioneering Sri Maha Bodhi Internet stream — At dusk beside Sri Maha Bodhi in Anuradhapura during the live Internet stream of a Sarvodaya peace-meditation event, between 1998 and 2000. Dihan Morwaka is seated immediately beside Harsha; a young Janantha Marasinghe sits to Harsha’s left, smiling towards him. Photograph shared by Janantha Marasinghe, now resident in Australia.

This photograph captures what Harsha records as the first event ever streamed live on the Internet from Sri Maha Bodhi. It was also one of Sri Lanka’s earliest live Internet-streaming sessions, undertaken when reliable connections, streaming infrastructure and portable networking equipment were exceptionally difficult to obtain.

PeriodLatter part of the 1990s, between 1998 and 2000

LocationBeside Sri Maha Bodhi, Anuradhapura

EventSarvodaya peace meditation

Technical recoveryCisco 805 borrowed from Rajarata University and configured onsite

The stream had begun at dusk, but establishing its Internet connection demanded an urgent technical recovery. The Cisco 2500 router provided by Sri Lanka Telecom failed. Harsha then drove for more than forty-five minutes to Rajarata University to obtain a Cisco 805 router. With the Vice-Chancellor’s permission, the University’s Internet connection was temporarily disconnected so that its only available Cisco router could be used for the webcast.

Harsha recalls configuring the borrowed Cisco 805 in approximately five minutes and successfully reconnecting the streaming team to the Internet. In an era before modern mobile broadband, cloud streaming platforms and simple plug-and-play broadcasting, the achievement depended on networking knowledge, institutional goodwill, improvisation and the determination of the onsite team.

“I was happy that I managed to connect the streamers, with a great deal of difficulty, to the Internet. I recall configuring a Cisco 805 borrowed from Rajarata University in five minutes.” — Harsha Wijayawardhana

The people preserved in the photograph

Dihan Morwaka, seated immediately beside Harsha, was one of his students and later a lecturer at the University of Sri Jayewardenepura. He accompanied Harsha in several research and technology projects. Janantha Marasinghe, then a young member of the team, is seated on Harsha’s left and looking towards him with a smile. Janantha later moved to Australia and shared this memorable photograph, helping preserve the story of the webcast.

Archival note: The date range, technical account, identification of participants and first-stream claim are preserved from Harsha Wijayawardhana’s first-person recollection accompanying the photograph. The wording identifies the event specifically as the first live Internet stream from Sri Maha Bodhi, rather than claiming it was Sri Lanka’s first webcast of any kind.