Researcher, Erlendur Haraldsson has investigated the case of Purnima, a young Sri Lankan girl who continued to claim past life memories at the age of 9 (an unusually late age for such memories).

Purnima was born with a large cluster of hypo-pigmented birthmarks on her left chest wall and over her lower ribs.
From the age of 3 she began recounting a previous life and referring to the accident that had killed her¹.

She recounted that her past-life family made incense and that she had been making and selling Ambiga and Geta Pichcha brands.
In the course of his investigations, Erlendur checked the local incense shops and found neither brand was manufactured there.

Purnima also claimed that she was killed when she was hit by a large vehicle whilst riding her bicycle.

At the age of 4, Purnima claimed to recognise a temple located 145 miles (233.35 km) away from her home when she saw it on TV.
She stated that the place where she used to live was on the other side of a nearby river.

Later, one of Purnimas teachers and a university graduate travelled to the area Purnima identified as having lived. There, they located 3 incense makers, all small family-owned businesses. One of them specifically made Ambiga and Geta Pichcha incense.

The owner, a Mr Wijisiri, identified that his brother-in-law and associate Jinadasa Perera had died after his bicycle was struck by a bus as he was transporting incense to the market in 1985 (two years before Purnima was born).

Purnima subsequently made a brief visit to the Wijisiri family.
When interviewed, Mr Wijisiri recalled that Purnima had noticed that the design of the incense packets had changed (which they had), correctly recalled an accident in which Mr Wijisisri had injured his knee, identified his brother by name, and correctly named the place where Jinadasa died.

When interviewed by Erlendur, Purnima displayed detailed knowledge of how incense was manufactured (her parents knew very little on this topic).
He went on to confirm many of the claims she had made (see table).

Erlendur also obtained a copy of the post-mortem report on Jinadassa’s death which identified multiple fractured ribs on the left side, multiple internal injuries and a 23 x 10 inch “grazed abrasion” running obliquely from the right shoulder to the left lower abdomen.

In conclusion, Erlendur noted:

First, let me summarize the strong points of this case. The locations of the two families were far apart, and the two families were complete strangers. A third party succeeded in finding the person that matched Purnima’s state-ments. Fourteen of seventeen statements that could be checked were found to match the life of Jinadasa, who had died two years before Purnima was born. Purnima’s cluster of birthmarks was found to fall within an area of fatal injuries suffered by Jinadasa. Her birthmarks are on the left side of the chest, where most of the ribs broke, and where he is likely to have felt most pain. Also, there is some evidence of knowledge of incense-making that is highly unusual for a child, and which Purnima explains as stemming from her previous life. This is a good example of a case with different characteristics that fall into a pattern and must be viewed as a whole: memories, birthmarks and, perhaps, how-to-do knowledge. Overall, one can state that the case of Purnima Ekanayake is of unusual quality.

Title: Birthmarks and Claims of Previous-Life Memories. I. The Case of Purnima Ekanayake
Author(s): Erlendur Haraldsson
Date published: 2000
Journal: Journal-society for physchical research.
Link to full paper (PDF).

1. All the claims made by Purnima at an early age were recounted to the researcher by her mother many years later. It was noted that the mother had already considered the possibility of reincarnation with respect to her birthmarks at the time Purnima was born. ↩

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Image by Mohammad farzan