Kalutara Vidyalaya
boys' school in Kalutara, Sri Lanka
Kalutara Vidyalaya (Sinhala: කළුතර විද්යාලය) is a Buddhist boys' school in Kalutara, Sri Lanka. The college was founded in 1941 by Sir Cyril de Zoysa. It is a national school providing primary and secondary education.
History
In order to provide education to the Buddhist children of Kalutara district, the Kalutara Buddhist Society, led by Sir Cyril de Zoysa, tried to start a Buddhist school in Kalutara.
On 6 January 1941, a new school was founded under the name Kalutara Vidyalaya, and student admissions began on the same day. As a result, Kalutara Vidyalaya was officially established on 13 January 1941, with 56 students and 11 teachers at the Martin Bungalow in Nagoda, Kalutara. In the beginning, the college was led by P. de S. Kularatne (principal of Ananda College), J. N. Jinendradasa (principal of Nalanda College), and E. W. Adikaram (principal of Ananda Sastralaya, Kotte). Later, D. D. P. Samaraweera became the first principal of the college.
After only six months, the college became a senior secondary school. At the beginning, Kalutara Vidyalaya at the Martin Bungalow was a mixed school.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Kalutara Vidyalaya” as boys' school in Kalutara, Sri Lanka. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as boys' school in Kalutara, Sri Lanka. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6354664. Authority coordinates are 6.574, 79.965. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1941.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Kalutara Vidyalaya”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Kalutara Vidyalaya primary sources, Kalutara Vidyalaya archive and Kalutara research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Kalutara Vidyalaya”?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Kalutara Vidyalaya” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.