113992242-Dravidian-Settlements-in-Ceylon-and-the-Beginnings-of-the-Kingdom-of-Jaffna-By-Karthigesu-Indrapala-Complete-Phd-Thesis-University-of-London-1965

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Jaffna peninsula does not help us to know anything about the
identity of the people who lived there in the pre-Christian
centuries. The Pli chronicle informs us that the port of
Jambukola (Camputtuai), on the eastern coast of the peninsula,
was the main port of embarkation to Tmralipti in Eastern India
from at least the time of Devnampiya Tissa (JD _LIO B.C.).
The two embassies from the island to the court of Aoka
embarked on their voyage from Jambukola Sañghamitt arrived
with the Bo-sapling at this porte The Samudda-paa-sl,
commemorating the arrival of the Bo-sapling, and the Jambukolavihra
were built there by Devnampiya Tissa These facts only
reveal that the northernmost part of the island was under the
suzerainty of the Anurdhapura king in the third century B.C.
and that Buddhism had begun to spread by that time in that
part of the island as in the other parts. But it is in the
second century A.D. that we get some evidence regarding the
people living there. The language of the gDld-plate inscription
from Vallipurain, the earliest epigraphic record diecovered in the
Jafmna peninsula, is the early form of Sinhalese, in which
1. Mv., 11:23.
2. Ibid., 19:23.
3. Ibid., 19:27; 20:25.