And so it goes on, 1,200 years later, the complex working-out of the relationships that we see embodied in Tara, between Sinhalese and Tamil, between Sri Lanka and south India, between Buddhists and Hindus.
Marine biologist and Greenpeace campaigner, Thilo Maack , has been looking at the intricate links between these waters, its wildlife and the fundamental role they play in Earth's carbon cycle.
Amid the action and reaction of so dense a swarm of humanity, every possible combination of events may be expected to take place, and many a little problem will be presented which may be striking and bizarre without being criminal.
And here too, in what is probably his most famous work, there is an intricate rise to power not just of a man, but also of a way of life, and perhaps even, of the modern world in its entirety.
The much watched case of Colorado baker Jack Phillips presented a chance for the Supreme Court to draw lines in a tangled debate about free speech, religious exercise and equal treatment in the public square.