Vidyalankara University
| කැළණිය විශ්වවිද්යාලය களனி பல்கலைக்கழகம் |
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University of Kelaniya Crest
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| Motto | Sinhalese: පඤ්ඤාය පරිසුජ්ඣති (Pannaya Parisujjhati) |
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Motto in English
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Self-purification is by insight |
| Type | Public |
| Established | 1959 (as Vidyalankara University) |
| Chancellor | Ven. Welamitiyawe Dharmakirthi Sri Kusala Dhamma Thero |
| Vice-Chancellor | Prof. Semasinghe Dissanayake |
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Administrative staff
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771 academic, 637 non-academic |
| Location | Kelaniya, Sri Lanka |
| Campus | Suburban |
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| Affiliations |
University Grants Commission (Sri Lanka), Association of Commonwealth Universities, International Association of Universities, Global Universities Partnership on Environment and Sustainability |
| Website | www |
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The University of Kelaniya (Sinhalese: කැළණිය විශ්වවිද්යාලය, Tamil: களனி பல்கலைக்கழகம்) is a state university of Sri Lanka. Just outside the municipal limits of Colombo, in the city of Kelaniya, the university has two major campuses, seven locations, six faculties and four institutions.
The University of Kelaniya has its origin in the historic Vidyalankara Pirivena, founded in 1875 by Ratmalane Sri Dharmaloka Thera as a centre of learning for Buddhist monks.
With the establishment of modern universities in Sri Lanka in the 1940s and 1950s, the Vidyalankara Pirivena became the Vidyalankara University in 1959, later the Vidyalankara Campus of the University of Ceylon in 1972, and, ultimately, the University of Kelaniya in 1978.
The University of Kelaniya has pioneered a number of new developments in higher education. It was one of the first universities to begin teaching science in Sinhala and the first to restructure the traditional Arts Faculty into three faculties: Humanities, Social Sciences, and Commerce and Management.
It has several departments not generally found in the Sri Lankan University system and some Kelaniya innovations have been adopted subsequently by other universities. These include the Departments of Industrial Management and Microbiology in the Faculty of Science; Departments of Linguistics, Fine Arts, Modern Languages and Hindi in the Faculty of Humanities; and Mass Communication and Library and Information Sciences in the Faculty of Social Sciences.
The coat of arms of the University of Kelaniya is circular and consists of three concentric bands, the outermost of which contains the name of the University in Sinhala and English. The motto of the institution, "Pannaya Parisujjhati" ("Self-purification is by insight"), is a quotation from the Alavaka-sutta of the Samyutta Nikaya, given in Sinhala characters in the same band. The middle band containing a creeper design encloses the innermost, which shows a full-blown lotus, signifying purity. These two designs are reminiscent of those occurring in the well-known moonstones at Anuradhapura.
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Wikipedia