Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
60 free Sri Lanka trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Sri Lanka has been called Taprobane, Serendib and Ceylon, and this quiz covers the whole island: the 3,000-year written record that starts with a prince from Bengal, the Bodhi tree planted in 245 BCE that is still alive, the rock fortress of Sigiriya, the Portuguese, Dutch and British, the coffee blight that turned the country to tea, independence in 1948, the world's first elected female prime minister and the civil war that ended in 2009. Easy questions ask for the old name, the capital, the neighbour across the Palk Strait and the sport everyone follows; the harder ones want the legislative capital's full name, the mountain with the sacred footprint, the king who built 1,470 reservoirs, the Arab name that gave English the word 'serendipity', the year Ceylon became a republic and the man who took 800 Test wickets. There is also the lion flag, Ceylon cinnamon, hoppers and kottu, Kandyan dance, the Esala Perahera and the tsunami of 2004. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the country, its history, its landmarks and its people, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Sri Lanka lies just off the southern tip of which country?
India
India: a chain of limestone shoals called Adam's Bridge or Rama Setu links Sri Lanka's Mannar Island to Pamban Island in India, and is said to have been walkable until a cyclone in 1480.
Q 02Which city is Sri Lanka's executive and judicial capital, and its largest city?
Colombo
Colombo, on the west coast, is the largest city and seat of the executive and judiciary, home to the Presidential Secretariat and the Superior Courts Complex at Hulftsdorp.
Q 03Sri Lanka's parliament sits in which city, its legislative capital?
Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte
Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte, usually shortened to Kotte, was the seat of a 15th-century kingdom; the new parliament complex there, designed by Geoffrey Bawa, opened in 1982.
Q 04Which strait separates Sri Lanka from the subcontinent to its north-west?
Palk
The Palk Strait, named after Robert Palk, an 18th-century governor of Madras, links the Bay of Bengal to Palk Bay; Adam's Bridge separates it from the Gulf of Mannar to the south-west.
Q 05In which year did the island gain independence from Britain?
1948
Ceylon became an independent dominion on 4 February 1948, with D. S. Senanayake as its first prime minister; Independence Day is marked on 4 February.
Q 06In which year did the country become a republic and adopt the name Sri Lanka?
1972
On 22 May 1972 the dominion of Ceylon became the Republic of Sri Lanka, dropping the British monarch as head of state; William Gopallawa became its first, ceremonial, president.
Q 07Sirimavo Bandaranaike made history in 1960 as the world's first what?
Elected female prime minister
Sirimavo Bandaranaike became the world's first Elected female prime minister in July 1960, leading the Sri Lanka Freedom Party after her husband's assassination; her three terms totalled about 18 years.
Q 08The 26-year civil war that ended in 2009 was fought against which separatist group?
The Tamil Tigers
The Tamil Tigers, formally the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, fought from 1983 for a separate state in the north and east until their military defeat in May 2009.
Q 09Roughly what share of Sri Lankans are Sinhalese?
About 75%
About 75% of Sri Lankans were Sinhalese at the 2012 census (74.9%); Moors made up about 9%, with Burghers and the indigenous Vedda much smaller minorities.
Q 10Sri Lanka's two official languages are Sinhala and which other?
Tamil
Tamil became an official language alongside Sinhala under the Thirteenth Amendment of 1987, which also made English the constitutional 'link language'.
Q 11Which religion, followed by about 70% of Sri Lankans, is given 'the foremost place' by the constitution?
Buddhism
Buddhism, professed by 70.2% of Sri Lankans at the 2012 census, is given 'the foremost place' by Article 9 of the constitution; each full-moon Poya day is a public holiday.
Q 12Mahinda, who by tradition brought his faith to the island, was the son of which emperor?
Ashoka
Ashoka, the Mauryan emperor, sent his son Mahinda, who converted King Devanampiya Tissa at Mihintale; Mahinda's sister Sanghamitta later brought a cutting of the Bodhi tree.
Q 13The Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi fig at Anuradhapura is claimed as the world's oldest what?
Human-planted tree on record
Q 21Which city at the island's northern tip is home to the Nallur Kandaswamy temple?
Jaffna
Jaffna, on the peninsula at the island's northern tip, is the centre of the Nallur Kandaswamy temple's annual festival and of the public library burned down in 1981 and later rebuilt.
Q 22Before tea, which crop was the island's main export until a leaf disease wiped it out in the 1870s and 80s?
Coffee
Coffee was the colony's main export until the rust fungus Hemileia vastatrix, first noticed in 1869, destroyed the plantations over the next two decades and planters switched to tea.
Q 23Which British planter introduced tea cultivation to the island in 1867?
James Taylor
Human-planted tree on record: the Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi was grown from a cutting of the Bodhi tree at Bodh Gaya, with a traditional planting date in the 3rd century BCE.
Q 14Sigiriya, the 5th-century 'Fortress in the Sky', was built by which king?
Kashyapa I
Kashyapa I, who reigned 477-495 after seizing the throne from his father Dhatusena, built his palace on the summit of the 180-metre rock; only the foundations survive.
Q 15The name Sigiriya means what?
Lion Rock
Lion Rock: the name comes from Sinhagiri, after the colossal brick lion whose paws flank the final staircase; the site later became a Buddhist monastery and is famous for its frescoes and mirror wall.
Q 16Which king, ruling 1153-1186, reunified the island and built scores of reservoirs at Polonnaruwa?
Parakramabahu the Great
Parakramabahu the Great ruled from Polonnaruwa from 1153 to 1186, building or restoring hundreds of reservoirs and canals, and sent a punitive expedition against Burma.
Q 17Which old Arab and Persian name for the island gave English a word for happy accident?
Serendib
Serendib was the Arab and Persian name for the island; Horace Walpole coined 'serendipity' in 1754 from the fairy tale 'The Three Princes of Serendip', whose heroes kept making lucky discoveries.
Q 18In which order did the three European colonial powers control parts of the island?
Portuguese, Dutch, British
Portuguese, Dutch, British: the Portuguese held coastal forts from the early 16th century, the Dutch displaced them by 1658, and Britain took the coast in 1796 and the whole island in 1815.
Q 19Which inland city was the last independent Sinhalese kingdom, falling to the British in 1815?
Kandy
The last king, Sri Vikrama Rajasinha, was exiled to India. The city still houses the sacred Tooth Relic of the Buddha.
Q 20The Temple of the Tooth houses a relic said to be a tooth of whom?
The Buddha
The Buddha: the tooth relic, said to have been smuggled to the island in the 4th century hidden in a princess's hair, traditionally gave its possessor the right to rule.
James Taylor, a Scot who arrived in 1852, planted the first commercial tea at Loolecondera estate in 1867; Thomas Lipton only bought his Ceylon plantations in 1890.
Q 24Most cinnamon sold worldwide is actually which related spice, rather than Sri Lankan 'true cinnamon'?
Cassia
Cassia, the bark of Cinnamomum cassia grown mainly in China, Indonesia and Vietnam, makes up most of the world's cinnamon trade; Ceylon 'true cinnamon' comes from Cinnamomum verum.
Q 25What appears in each of the four corners of Sri Lanka's lion flag?
A bo leaf
A bo leaf, from the sacred fig, sits in each corner as a symbol of the majority faith; the green and orange stripes stand for the island's two largest minorities.
Q 26What is Sri Lanka's highest mountain?
Pidurutalagala
Pidurutalagala rises 2,524 metres above the hill town of Nuwara Eliya; its summit carries the island's main broadcast transmitters and is a restricted military zone.
Q 27The rock formation at the summit of Adam's Peak, sacred to four religions, resembles what?
A footprint
A footprint: Buddhists hold the 1.8-metre hollow to be Gautama's, Hindus Shiva's, while Muslim and Christian tradition assign it to Adam or St Thomas; pilgrims climb overnight for the sunrise.
Q 28What is Sri Lanka's longest river?
The Mahaweli
The Mahaweli runs 335 kilometres from the central highlands to the sea at Trincomalee, draining the largest basin of the island's 103 rivers.
Q 29In which year did Sri Lanka win the Cricket World Cup?
1996
In 1996 Sri Lanka beat Australia by seven wickets in the final at Lahore, Aravinda de Silva scoring an unbeaten century; they lost the finals of 2007 and 2011.
Q 30Which Sri Lankan spinner is the only bowler to take 800 Test wickets?
Muttiah Muralitharan
Muttiah Muralitharan took his 800th wicket with the final ball of his last Test in July 2010; a 2002 Wisden statistical analysis ranked him the greatest Test bowler ever.