Faculty of Arts

Historical Background

The history of the Faculty of Arts dates back to the early beginnings of university education in Sri Lanka. The predecessor to the Faculty of Arts in Peradeniya University was established in Colombo, as part of then University of Ceylon, as two faculties called the Faculty of Arts and the Faculty of Oriental Studies. These two faculties were moved to Peradeniya in 1952, and were amalgamated in 1972 to form the Faculty of Arts.

The twenty years from 1952 to 1972 saw the expansion of the Faculties of Arts and Oriental Studies. The original seven departments of study of the two faculties were Classics, Economics, English, Geography, History, Oriental Languages, and Philosophy. The Department of Oriental Languages was divided in 1943 into the four separate departments of Sinhalese, Tamil, Pali and Sanskrit.

This was followed by the addition of several other academic disciplines to the faculty: Law and Arabic in 1945; Sociology, Education and Modern Languages in 1949 (French and German had been taught for many years as subsidiary subjects); Archaeology in 1959; and Buddhist Philosophy in 1964. The most recent additions to the faculty are the departments of Fine Arts and Management Studies, established respectively in 2001 and 2002.

A sub-department of English for the teaching of English as a second language was set up after the swabasha (i.e., non-English medium) students entered the university. In addition, French is also available as a subject to students following the General Degree Programme.

Department

• Department of Archaeology
• Department of Arabic
• Department of Classical Language
• Department of Economics
• Department of English & French
• Department of Education
• Department of Fine Arts
• Department of Geography
• Department of History
• Department of Management
• Department of Pali & Buddhist Studies
• Department of Philosophy & Psychology
• Department of Political Science
• Department of Sinhala
• Department of Sociology
• Department of Tamil