5000 Lion flags sent to Jaffna

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 23 December 1997, 23:59 GMT]
The Salu Sala, the state owned sales firm which promotes the indigenous textile industry has sent five thousand Sri Lankan national flags to Jaffna. The flags will be sold through the Salu Sala outlets which were recently opened in peninsula.

A spokesman for Salu Sala said that the Lion flags have been sent for the seasonal sales.

Others said that the government plans to inundate the peninsula with the flags for the 50th independence anniversary.

The army and Police might make it compulsory for businesses in the town and environs to fly the flag. A businessman in Jaffna town said that this will put them in a tight spot.

The lion insignia is Sri Lanka's national flag.

The lion is considered the symbol of the Sinhala people. The term Sinhala means 'people of the lion.The eponymous progenitor of the Sinhala people, according to their mytho-history, is a lion.

The story of the lion and the son and daughter he fathered through a princess whom he had abducted is taught in Sri Lankan schools as the country's official history. (The son kills his father, the lion, becomes king and marries his own sister. King Vijaya, the founder of the first Sinhala kingdom in Sri Lanka, was born of this union, according to the official history.)