Stories, scripts, and sacred landscapes from Hela-Lanka
ආයුබෝවන් | வணக்கம் | Welcome 🙏
Hela Nomad is a long-form exploration of Sri Lankan heritage — from irrigation and inscriptions
to chronicles, invasions, and living traditions — told through documentaries, essays, and digital tools.
Themes
The major threads that connect the videos, essays, and tools.
Brahmi, Sinhala-Prakrit, forgotten scholars like Ratnapala, Tamilakam finds, and the inscriptions that shaped early Sri Lanka.
Ocean-like reservoirs, cascading wewa systems, Parākramabāhu’s engineering vision, and Sri Lanka’s iron and steel traditions.
Tipitaka, Mahavamsa, sandēsha poems, language planning, cultural symbols, and evolving ideas about memory and identity.
Anuradhapura, Kandy, Sitawaka, Keeladi, Tamil Nadu, Laos, Odisha, Nepal — places where history, culture, and landscape meet.
Chola expansion, Vijayabahu’s campaigns, colonial violence, and how conflicts are remembered — or forgotten — across time.
Watch
Documentaries and narrative videos from the Hela Nomad YouTube channel.
A long-form exploration of Sri Lanka’s role in preserving and transmitting Theravāda Buddhism across Asia.
Tanks as inland seas, cascading reservoirs, and engineering that still challenges modern projects.
Wind-powered furnaces and high-carbon steel that travelled far beyond the island’s shores.
More videos and full playlists at youtube.com/@HelaNomad ↗
Read
Essays, notes, and research experiments in written form.
A look at the historical and linguistic roots of the term “Eelam”, tracing inscriptions, Sangam poetry, and later reinterpretations.
A personal reflection on how Hela Nomad began — as a search for the stories buried in stones, inscriptions, and journeys across South Asia.
Many videos begin as messy research notes — some of them are slowly being adapted into public articles, bibliographies, and reference pages.
Selected essays are published on Medium ↗.
Labs
Digital humanities tools and experiments.
A growing collection of tools for exploring Brahmi and modern Indic scripts, testing transliterations, and visualizing glyphs. Built as part of Hela Nomad, but useful far beyond it.
Current focus: Indic Script Explorer (early preview).
About Hela Nomad
Hela Nomad is a slow, patient project to understand Sri Lankan history and identity in a way that is honest, critical, and still rooted in love for the place.
It weaves together archaeology, linguistics, chronicles, travel, and lived experience into long-form videos and tools.
You’re welcome to use the content as a starting point, not an endpoint — question it, read more, and bring your own perspective.
For collaboration or research questions, feel free to reach out via Instagram or Facebook.