Anil de Silva was born in
Kandy, Sri Lanka, in 1909. Her father,
George E. de Silva, was a
Sinhalese Buddhist who became a politician, was President of the Ceylon National Congress, and also served as a Minister of Health. Her mother,
Agnes Nell, was a
Burgher Christian who actively campaigned for universal suffrage in Sri Lanka and succeeded in getting it in 1931 with the enactment of the Constitution which extended suffrage to all women over 21. Her sister
Minnette de Silva was the well-known first woman architect of Sri Lanka. After her marriage to Robert Nichol-Cadell, she resided in England from 1933 to 1938. However, this marriage did not last and she moved to
Bangalore and from there to
Bombay, where she joined her sister Minnette who was pursuing studies in architecture at the Bombay School of Architecture, where she was the first female student. While in Bombay, de Silva was one of the founders of the
Indian People's Theatre Association. While in Bombay, her friend
Mulk Raj Anand, a writer and member of the
Progressive Writers' Movement, an art historian and member of the
Communist Party of India, offered her the post of assistant editor of his journal,
Marg, which covered traditional and modern art and architecture. She was assistant editor of Marg from 1946 to 1948. In January 1947
Marg published an exclusive edition covering the heritage of Sri Lanka, its arts, culture and life. Through
Marg, de Silva became associated with the promotion of modern art and held many art exhibitions; one such exhibition was of
George Keyt in India. With
Pupul Jayakar, she co-edited the children's magazine
Toycart. In the 1940s she was associated with the
Indian Communist Party and was considered Bombay's
avant-garde. She was one of the "principal ideologues and organizers" of the communist movement in Bombay. In 1945 she authored a book titled
Chinese Women and Freedom (Kutub Publishers, 1945). She was involved in translating to English a book on
Collection of stories by
Ding Ling. In 1949 she left her job in Bombay and moved to
Paris, where she married a Frenchman. In Paris, she studied at the
Louvre for a course in art history, the first Asian to do so. In Paris, studying the arts exhibited in the museums, particularly at the
Musee Guimet, she learned to appreciate
Asian art heritage. This later inspired her to write and publish
The Life of the Buddha Retold From Ancient Sources in 1955, a book which incorporated illustrations of as many as 160 art works from various parts of Asia. In 1956 she presented a television programme on the
BBC titled "Asian Club". In 1958 de Silva planned an all-woman expedition to China, which at the time did not allow people from the West to visit, to study the cave paintings in
Dunhuang (Tun-huang) and
Maijishan (Maichisan) in
Gansu province. Her team was composed of
Romila Thapar as research assistant,
Dominique Darbois as photographer, and Mingo Wong, a Chinese woman translator. The team studied 469 caves. Their two books based on their research focused on China's Buddhist heritage at a time when British imperialism and
Christianity were prevalent in the country. De Silva's visit to China was facilitated at the intervention of her friend S.K.Panikkar, a historian from
Kerala who was Ambassador of India in Paris and who was a friend of
Zhou Enlai, the then
Prime Minister of China.
UNESCO assigned de Silva the task of co-editing a series on
Man Through His Art. In the 1960s de Silva moved permanently to her cottage in
Cambridge, England. While on retirement, at 83 years of age she wrote and published the book
This Moste Highe Prince: John of Gaunt, 1340-1399, related to the son of
Edward III, father of
Henry IV. At age 85, she wrote a book on
Christine de Pizan, a 15th-century author. She died in November 1996, aged 87. ==Publications==