The origin of the Sinhala language has been the subject of much controversy, and has lately provoked much debate. The Hela Havula movement's claim that Sinhala developed independently on Sri Lankan soil, sans any foreign influences, is not tenable considering the available philological evidence.
Indeed, there hardly exists any modern language that has not evolved from an older source.
It is widely accepted that all modern Indo-Aryan vernaculars including Hindi, Bengali and Sinhala have undergone two main stages before reaching their present state, viz. the old Indo-Aryan stage and the middle Indo-Aryan stage.
The old Indo-Aryan speeches which were spoken in India during 2000-800 B.C. were evidently similar to one another. All these have been conveniently designated as Sanskrit. The term Sanskrit literally means 'refined', 'polished' and was first employed sometime between 7th-4th century B.C. to denote the Old Indo-Aryan speech in contra-distinction to the Prakritic or crude natural speech that evolved from it.
This view has unfortunately not appealed to certain academics. In fact, a well-known linguist, Aelian de Silva has gone so far as to suggest that Sanskrit was 'created' by Rishi Panini around the 4th century B.C.
The fact is that the Sanskrit language in which the vedas were composed, had been in existence in north western India ever since 2000 B.C. This is borne out both by the internal evidence of the Rigveda and the science of comparative philology. The grammarian Panini merely standardised the language.
It cannot be denied that Sinhala is ultimately derived from an old Indo-Aryan speech largely represented by the Sanskrit of the Madya Desha (central India) via a middle Indo-Aryan speech largely represented by Pali. It is therefore not incorrect to employ Sanskrit and Pali terms in representing the prototypes of modern Aryan speeches. For instance, the Hindi Kaam (work) has evolved from the old Indo-Aryan (Sanskrit) karman via the middle Indo-Aryan (pali) kamma. The same could be said of the Sinhala kam as in Kamhala (workshop). Other examples include the Sinhala tena 'place' (Pali, thana, Sanskrit, sthana) the Sinhala mega 'path' (Pali, megga, Sanskrit marga) and the Sinhala eta 'bone' as in eta-sekilla (Pali, atthi, Sanskrit, ashthi).
In fact, epigraphic evidence from Sinhala inscriptions may be cited to show how a language can evolve. For instance, a 4th century Sinhala inscription gives the form chada (moon) which evolved from the pali chanda and the sanskrit chandra, while we find sada occurring in a 15th century inscription. This form in turn became the modern Sinhala handa by aspiration of the 's; and introduction of a semi-nasal before the intervocallic 'd'.
It must however be conceded that Aelian de Silva's attempts at coining a modern Sinhala technological terminology are commendable, for it is imperative today that the younger generation be equipped with a rich scientific vocabulary as they step into the 21st century.
Indeed, his contention that the Sinhala professors are replacing certain elu (pure Sinhala) forms with jaw-breaking Sanskrit terms, is not unreasonable.
He has cited the case of the simple Sinhala eta-sekilla (skeleton) being superceded by the cumbersome sanskrit term ashthipanjaraya. Many young children find such words not only hard to pronounce, but also difficult to remember.
However, at the same time, the Hela Havula's campaign to completely rid the Sinhala vocabulary of Sanskrit terms is also unjustified.
There do exist very many simple sanskrit terms that have been assimilated into the language, such as rupa (form), basha (language), desha (country), dharma (religion), shri (fortune) and sundara (beautiful). Deleting such words which have gained wide currency in everyday usage is impractical. Further, ridding the language of sanskrit loans will deprive it of pleasant sounds such as sha and ja.
Besides, there is nothing wrong in allowing the elu terms and their Sanskritic equivalents to exist side by side in the language as synonyms. The existence of synonymous terms in any given language is an indicator of its richness.
It is imperative that extremist tendencies of any nature should be discouraged. What has made Hindi the rich language it is today is its resistance to extremist moves at linguistic purity.
Indeed, one dreads to think what would have happened to this rich and mellifluous language if the views of the Nagary Pracharini Sabha (which advocated the replacement of perso-Arabic loans with Sanskrit terms) won out. In such as eventuality, Hindi would have been deprived of such common words as asman (sky), dunya (world), zindagi (life), mohabbat (love), dil (heart) and insan (man).
It is high time that the Sinhala scholars got their priorities right and stopped bickering among themselves as to the suitability or unsuitability of sanskritic loans.
What is of more concern today is not the Sanskrit loans that have been assimilated into the language, but rather the usage of English words where native terms will suffice. If this disturbing trend is not arrested, we will probably see the degeneration of Sinhala into a creolized language comprising an English - Sinhala vocabulary.
Although some may dismiss such on eventuality assuming serious proportions, this is in fact now taking place in the urban areas and in a short time may be disbursed to rural regions via media channels.
This is likely to happen since in media dialogues, it is not the literary language that is employed but the colloquial speech.
This could ultimately lead to anglicization of the Sinhala vocabulary to the extent where it could influence literary works.
In fact, this could reach such horrendous proportions that even school text books will have to be revised in favour of English terms. All this will render useless the Hela Havula's painstaking efforts at linguistic purity.
There is nothing wrong in employing English terms to denote modern household conveniences, etc. in a context where the equivalent native terms are cumbersome or do not exist.
However, it is folly when English forms are employed to denote common intimate terms such as boy, girl, boyfriend, girlfriend, husband and wife.
In fact, urban Sinhala is unique in that it remains the only yet uncreolized language where these terms have gained such wide currency.
It is however saddening that Sinhala terms like kolla and kella have assumed a derogatory sense and are deemed unsuitable for polite conversation, especially in urban areas. The more formal pirimi lamaya (boy) and gehenu lamaya (girl) on the other hand are too cumbersome, thereby encouraging the use of the English equivalents. As for the colloquial Sinhala terms mahattaya (husband) and nona (wife), it can be said these are status terms conveying the sense of not only husband and wife, but also master and mistress. This peculiarity has also encouraged usage of the English terms.
One means by which we can rectify this situation is to revive older terms or popularise those already in existence but which have not gained wide currency. Indeed, such a process of linguistic revivalism is not wholly impractical. For example, only a few today know that the common English word 'sibling' is a revived old English term.
Old Sinhala terms could similarly be revived to suit modern usage. For example, kumara (the old sinhala term for boy) could well be revived for usage in polite conservation, while lamissi (girl) which is still used in rural areas, could similarly be employed. The pure Sinhala (elu) terms himiya and biriya could be used for husband and wife. Pemvatha and pemvathiya could be used instead of boyfriend and girlfriend. Such attempts are likely to prove successful, considering the fact that even the term pasala (school) is but a neologism coined by Hela Havula founder Munidasa Cumaratunga.
Evolution of the Sinhala language
The foundation of the Sinhalese nation is tradition ally assigned to the 6th century B.C, when the leg endary Prince Vijaya of Singhapura (a city in the Lala Country of North-East India, present-day West Bengal) and his 700 compatriots landed upon the shores of Sri Lanka. Although this legend, which occurs in the ancient chronicle of Sinhalese royalty known as the ÔMahawansaÕ, is obscured in much myth and fanciful tales, it nevertheless contains a germ of truth. There remains a possibility that great Aryan immigration from Bengal did take place in the 4th or 5th century B.C.
This is borne out by philological evidence which shows that Sinhala, the language of Sinhalese, is ultimately derived from old Indo-Aryan (Sanskrit) through middle Indo-Aryan or Prakrit (whose best representative is Pali, the language of the Buddhist scriptures).
The Sinhala language is therefore a member of the Aryan family of languages, which is a member of a still larger family of languages known as Indo-European.
The Indo-European family of languages, which is by far the largest and the most widely distributed linguistic group in the world, includes such modern languages as German, French, English, Persian and Hindi. The parent Indo-European speech, which is the source of all these languages is believed to have flourished about 5000 years ago in central or eastern Europe.
By linguistic research, it has been possible to connect a number of Sinhala words to words occuring in European, Iranian and North Indian languages. Such resemblances are however not very apparent due to the profound sound changes they have undergone throughout the centuries. For example, Sinhala hatha (seven) is related not only to the Hindi sat and the Sanskrit Sapta, but also to the Persian haft, French sept, Greek hepta, and Latin septem.
The old Sinhala la and the modern Sinhala hada (heart) are related to the Sanskrit hardayah, but also to the Persian dil, French coeur, German herz, Greek kardia, Gothic hairto and Latin cor. Likewise, the Sinhala duva (daughter) maybe connected to the Sanskrit duhitar, Bengali duhita, Bohemian dugte, German tochter and Persian dokhtar. Unlike other North Indian languages, the evolution of Sinhala from the Prakritic stage (3rd century B.C. - 4th century A.C.) onwards could be traced without much difficulty. The islandÕs numerous cave and rock inscriptions (3rd century B.C. - 12th century A.C.) the Sigiri graffiti (8th-10th centuries) and the earliest extant Sinhala literature (9th century onwards) furnish us with the necessary material to undertake the detailed survey of the language right from its very beginnings. The earlier stages are provided by Pali (a Prakritic language of northern India which flourished during the 3rd and 5th centuries B. C.) and Sanskrit (the language of the Veddhas, written around 1500 B.C.). The evolution of Sinhala from Sanskrit and Prakrit (which is best represented by the conservative Pali) maybe explained on the basis of sound change through specific laws.
For example, in Sanskrit, the sound r takes more prominence, appearing in many words. This is not so in Prakrit (Pali) which has a tendency to eliminate this sound. In turn Pali words possessed a high proportion of double consonants, a feature that was eliminated in Sinhala. This had taken place by the 3rd century B.C. as borne out by the earliest cave inscriptions.
Sanskrit Pali Sinhala
karman kamma kam (work)
marga magga maga (path )
Other sound changes include the change of ch to s, which took place during the 8th century A.C. and became regular by the 10th century.
Pali Sinhala
gachach gasa (tree)
kuchchi kusa (womb)
The change of p to v which occured between the 1st-2nd centuries A.C.
Pali Sinhala
rupa ruva (form)
papa pau (sin)
The change of j to d, which first took place in the 4th century A.C. and became regular by
the 9th century.
Pali Sinhala
vejja vedha (physician)
ajja adha (today)
and the change of t to l, which as the renowned German philologist, Wilhelm Geiger has noted, took place through an intermediate d. This occured sometime between the 6th-10th centuries A.C.
Pali Sinhala
putavi polova (earth)
mata mala (dead)
There also exist a number of other sound changes that characterize Sinhala and distinguish it from its North Indian sister languages. The change of Sanskrit s to h and the latterÕs eventual disappearance is unique to Sinhala amongst Aryan languages, although such changes have occured in other Indo-European languages such as Greek and Armenian. We know from ancient Sinhalese inscriptions that the Sanskrit surya (sun) had become hir by the 9th century and hira by the end of the 12th century. This in turn became the present day ira by the 15th century. Owing to its geographical isolation, Sinhala has also preserved a number of old Aryan archaisms not found in any of the North Indian vernaculars. For example, whereas Sinhala, like Pali, has preserved the initial y of old Indo-Aryan, this has been changed to j in all the modern North Indian languages derived from Sanskrit.
Sanskrit yati (go), Hindi jana, Bengali jay, Sinhala yanna. Some Sinhala words have however died out and been replaced by Pali or Sanskrit. For example, the old sinhala la (heart) occuring the Sigiri graffiti (8th-10 centuries) as la-kol hellambuyun (heart shattering fair damsels) is today extinct and has been replaced by the Pali hada. Similarly, the old Sinhala ag (fire) has been replaced by the Pali gini. The old Sinhala term for horse, as today exists only in compound terms such as as-val (horse-hair), as-hala (stable) and as-govva (horse-keeper) and has been superseded by the Sanskrit ashva.
Such old Sinhala words like dana (people), rada (king), and pungul (person) have to all, intents and purposes ceased to exist, and have been superseded by their respective Sanskrit equivalents, jana, raja and pudgala. But by no means is pure Sinhala or Elu(as it is known in literary circles) confined to Sri Lanka. The speech of the Maldivian islanders, Divehi bas, is in fact a dialect of Sinhala, which branched off from the parent language sometime between the 4th-8th centuries.
Due to its strategic position in the waterways of the east, the Sinhala language has been susceptible to manifold foreign linguistic influences. This has come mainly from Tamil, the Dravidian language spoken by the Tamils of neighbouring South India.
Tamil influence was particularly felt after the 11th century, following the great cholan invasion of the island. Such words as padakkam (medal), kulappu (agitation), kappam (tribute), sellam (play), mattam (level), salli (money), padi (wages), kodi (flag), oppu (proof), ottu (espionage) in common parlance in Sinhala, are infact Tamil loans.
Sinhala has also been considerably influenced by the Portuguese, Dutch and English, the languages of the three colonial powers that came to the island in quest of conquest.
Of these three languages, Portuguese, which was first introduced by the Lusitanian conquistadors during the 16th century, has by far, had the greatest impact on Sinhala.
We find Portuguese words referring to institutions:
Sinhala ispiritale (hospital, from Port. espertal)
iskola (school, from Port. escole)
To household furniture:
almariya (cupboard, Port. almario)
mesa (table, Port. mesa)
To articles of dress:
kamisa (shirt, Port. camisa)
saya (skirt, Port. saia)
To items of food:
pan (bread, Port. pao)
dosi (sweetmeat, Port. doce)
And to professionals:
minidoru (surveyor, Port. medidor)
alugosuwa (executioner, Port. algoz)
Terms of address also became popular. The Sinhala nona (lady), which is corruption of Portuguese dona, to this date denotes mistress and wife. The greatest legacy the Hollanders bestowed upon the country was the Roman-Dutch law, which survives to this day as the common law of the land. Hence we find that a great deal of Sinhala legal terms are borrowed from the Dutch language.
Sinhala advakat (advocate, Dutch. advokaat)
notaris (notary, Dutch. notaris)
English too has had a considerable influence on Sinhala, especially in matters pertaining to government and administration.
Sinhala parlimentu-va (parliament)
departementu-va (department)
Since of late, Sinhala, like Hindi, has freely borrowed Sanskrit words into its vocabulary, thus enriching the language considerably.
Such common words as prema (love), bhasha (language), sundara (beautiful), mahila (lady), svarupa (form), viplava (revolution), trupti (satisfaction), sankalpa (concept) are in fact pure Sanskrit loans.
Words coined from Sanskrit have also found expression in more complex terminology.
For example
stana-nama (place-name)
shila-lipi (rock-inscriptions)
shalya-karma (surgical operations)
bhumi-kampa (earthquake)
All these manifold borrowings have further contributed to making Sinhala, the rich, lucid, mellifluous and highly cultivated language it is today. Robert Knox, an English captive who spent almost 20 years (1660-1679) in the Kandyan highlands, paid a fitting tribute to the Sinhala language and its speakers when he noted in his work ÔA Historical Relation of CeylonÕ, (1681) ÒTheir language is copius, smooth, elegant, courtly, according as the people that speak it are
Sanskritisms in Sinhala: striking a balance
That language constitutes an important aspect of a people's cultural heritage cannot be denied. It represents a good part of a nation's intellectual attainments and reflects to a large extent its weltaanschauung or view of the world. It is therefore not surprising why a nation's intellectuals should be so concerned about preserving their language for posterity, some even to the point of advocating a policy of 'linguistic purity' that seeks to purge the language of all foreign influences.
The fact however is that linguistic purity is more often than not a fallacy in most major languages save for a few like Icelandic whose speakers have made a conscious effort to resist external linguistic influences, even in the case of modern-day technological terminology.
Foreign loans
Most of the major languages spoken in the world today have come under considerable foreign influence, including among others Arabic, Persian, Hindi, Sinhala and English. These are largely due to historical or practical reasons. Take for instance Sinhala which has come under the influence of Tamil as a result of recurrent Tamil invasions, peaceful mercantile intercourse and the assimilation of Tamil-speaking caste groups into the Sinhalese social system. Similarly, Sinhala has been influenced by the languages of the European colonial powers including the Portuguese, Dutch and British. These influences could be said to be largely historical. However, there is another reason why foreign loans enter a language and that is because of practical reasons. Sinhala scholars have for instance thought it fit to adopt loans from the Sanskrit language to fill the perceived shortcomings of the Sinhala language, especially in connection with technical terminology.
Indeed, there are hundreds of Sanskritic terms which have entered the Sinhala lexicon in this manner during the past hundred years or so. Many of them appear to have been influenced by the lexicons compiled by Prof. Raghu Vira who coined technical terms for Indian scholarship based on Sanskrit, an ancient Indo-European speech spoken in Northern India around 4000 years ago and believed to be the parent speech from which the modern Indo-Aryan languages such as Hindi, Sindhi, Punjabi, Gujarati, Bengali and Sinhala derive.
The methodology employed by Prof.Raghu Vira somewhat resembled the European model of coining neologisms from Greek and Latin, dead languages which nevertheless form the basis of a good number of modern scientific, medical and technological terms in some major European languages such as English.
Among the Sanskritic loans in modern Sinhala may be included such common terms as praja-tantra (democracy), shalya-karma (surgery), chaya-rupa (photograph), surya-balaya (solar energy), trasta-vadaya (terrorism), harda-spandana (heart-beat), vag-vidya (linguistics) and rupa-vahini (television). Although there can be little doubt that such loans are justifiable and even necessary, one also feels that Sanskritic terms very often tend to be employed unnecessarily even where there exist alternative Helu or pure Sinhala terms which convey the meaning as much as or even better than their Sanskritic equivalents.
This unhealthy trend is especially pronounced in contemporary Sinhala scientific, medical and technological literature including school textbooks where one finds innumerable Sanskritisms being employed even in cases where there exist alternative Sinhala terms. For instance take asthi-panjaraya (skeleton) instead of eta-sekilla, shata-varsha (century) instead of siya-vasa, dirgha-shirsha (dolicocephalic) instead of digu-siras, shila-lekhana (inscription) instead of sel-lipi, patha-shala (school) instead of pasala, arogya-shala (hospital) instead of rohala and karmanta-shala (factory) instead of kam-hala.
One indeed wonders why our academics and educationists should have preferred these complex jaw-breaking Sanskritisms to the far more simpler and pleasant sounding Helu terms, especially when compiling textbooks meant for schoolchildren. Euphony, brevity and practicality have been overlooked by our pundits here in their rush to join the Sanskritic bandwagon which has made rapid inroads into Indian media and academia ever since the 1950s.
Not only are these jaw-breaking Sanskritisms hard to pronounce and require more effort, but may also serve to create a bad impression of high Sinhala among youth. Indeed, this is a matter to which our lexicographers should give serious consideration.
Coining words
Besides employing existing Sinhala terms, the coining of new terms based on old or surviving Helu forms should also be seriously considered. This strategy has been successfully followed in Iceland where the greatest effort has been made to coin modern-day scientific terms from the native lexicon rather than resorting to the easier alternative of borrowing from Greek or Latin as has been the case with English. Indeed, there exists a considerable lexicon in Sinhala, both extinct and existing, which could be made use of to coin scientific and other terminology for modern-day studies.
For instance take old Sinhala words like la (heart), rov (disease), detu (senior), milis (barbarian) and hingu (speedy) which could be easily employed to replace their respective Sanskritic equivalents harda, roga, jyeshtha, mlechcha and shighra which are widely used at present, even in complex terms. By employing such a methodology we could coin a number of neologisms such as sulu-divin (microbes) for kshudra-jivin, savan-nahara (auditory nerve) for shravana-snayu, le-kes-neli 'blood capilleries' for rudhira-kesha-nalika, sivasa 'quadrilateral' for chaturasraya and aturudela (internet) for antar-jalaya.
It is indeed unfortunate that the linguistic puritan Hela Havula movement which advocates the purging of all Sanskritic loans from Sinhala should have largely confined its activities to prose literature such as novels instead of venturing into the more challenging task of coining scientific terms for Sinhala scholarship. This should certainly be a worthwhile exercise and should receive the support of all persons genuinely interested in the perpetuation of the Sinhala language.
Euphonious terms
However, at the same time one must caution that the campaign against Sanskrit should not be taken to a point where it could impoverish the Sinhala language by depriving it of some very useful and euphonious terms. Take for instance such common words as rupa (shape), krama (manner), svalpa (little), avastha (opportunity), bhasha (language), sthana (place), viplava (revolution) and svarupa (form) which are simply worth retaining for their euphony, if not for anything else. There also exist many Sanskritic terms commonly employed in Sinhala which are simply not worth changing for want of a better term.
Take for instance words like madhya-sthana (centre) and bala-dakshika (Girl guides). One cannot also easily find Helu alternatives to convey certain entrenched expressions such as gambhira-(penuma) which though literally meaning 'a deep look' conveys the sense of 'a profound and handsome countenance'. Employing the Helu equivant would give us the ludicrous gemburu-penuma.
There may also be instances where the Helu equivalent of a Sanskritic term used today may have quite a different meaning. For instance, the Helu equivalent of the Sansritic term yantra which is used to refer to a 'machine' is yatura meaning 'key'.
In conclusion, it should be stated that although there exists a need for employing more Helu-based terms in education and academia, even to the extent of coining new ones, due consideration should be given to the brevity and euphony of those Sanskritic terms marked for supersession. Striking a balance between the two is perhaps the best alternative we could think of.
Sinhala, 6000 years ago
It would seem surprising to many that the origins of the Sinhala language could be traced back to 6,000 years ago. Surprising but true. Linguistic research pioneered by nineteenth century German linguists like Franz Bopp and August Schleicher have made it possible to connect Sinhala words to words occurring in a good many European, Iranian and Indian languages belonging to what is known as the Indo-European family of languages and to trace them to their earliest forms.
This science known as comparative linguistics aims at establishing the close relationship that exists between such languages as Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Gothic, Lithuanian, German, French, English, Russian, Persian, Hindi and Sinhala as well as attempting to reconstruct the parent speech of all these related languages which are believed to have shared a common origin in the distant past.
The close connection between these languages is not very apparent at first glance due to the sound changes they have been subjected to throughout the centuries before assuming their present forms. However a closer examination will reveal that all these languages go back to a parent language which German scholars prefer to call the Ursprache or 'Early Speech'. This Proto- Indo-European language was evidently spoken in Southern Russia around 4500 - 3500 B.C. before its speakers dispersed to the outlying areas of Europe and Asia, taking with them their language, which with time became broken up into dialects, and ultimately distinct languages. The German Linguist August Schleicher was the first scholar to attempt the reconstruction of this Proto-Indo-European language in his epoch-making work, Compendium der Vergleichenden Grammatik der Indogermanischen published in 1861. Schleicher's method was simple. What he did was to gather around him many of the then known extinct and extant Indo-European languages from which he deduced how the oldest forms would have sounded like. These hypothetical reconstructed forms he denoted with an asterix, a practice which continues to this day. Schleicher also went on to publish a fable composed in this hypothetical language entitled Avis Akvasas Ka (The sheep and the horses) which has however been subject to some revision (see box). Julius Pokorny in his comprehensive series entitled Indogermanisches Etymologisches Worterbuch (1948-1969) has succeeded in reconstructing the Proto-Indo-European or PIE speech with greater accuracy.
Sound changes
Before we proceed any further, it is thought necessary to give the reader some idea of the sound or phonetic changes that the various Indo-European languages have been subjected to. These differences in sounds or phonetics could be explained on the basis of specific laws through which sound or phonetic changes have taken place. For instance, a major phonetic change characterizing many Indo-European speeches is the change of the PIE *k into sibilants or s sounds. This change has affected the Indo-Aryan, Iranian, Baltic and Slavic languages while it has left unaffected the Greek, Latin, Celtic and Germanic languages. Consider the case of the Greek kuon and Latin canis 'dog' which Sanskrit, an Indo-Aryan language has turned into shvan. The Germanic languages have on the other hand turned the original PIE *k into h such as is found in the Gothic hunths. The Germanic languages have also turned the PIE initial *d to t (as is evident in Gothic tvai 'two' where Sanskrit has dvau and Greek and Latin duo) and the PIE initial *p into f(as is seen in the Gothic fotus 'foot' where Sanskrit has padas, Greek podos and Latin pedis).
The Sinhala language, being an Aryan speech has undergone two significant phases before assuming its present form, viz. the Old-Indo-Aryan stage represented by Sanskrit (C.2000-800 B.C.) and the Middle-Indo-Aryan stage represented by Prakrit(C. 800 B.C.-400 A.D.) whose best representative is Pali, the language of the Buddhist scriptures.
Sinhala forms
Take for instance, the Sinhala numeral term hata 'seven'. This word could be easily shown to have derived from the Sanskritic saptan through the Prakritic satta as found in Pali. Related forms in other Indo-European languages include Latin septem, Greek hepta, Avestan hapta, Persian haft, Lithuanian septyni, French sept and Hindi sat. All these forms go back to the reconstructed PIE hypothetical form *septom. Similarly, Sinhala ata 'eight' could be shown to have derived from the Sanskritic ashtau through the Prakritic attha as found in Pali. Cognate forms include Greek okto, Latin octo, Gothic ahtau, Lithuanian asztuni, German acht and Hindi ath. These forms go back to the PIE *oktau.
Now let us consider kinship terminology which is another very important aspect of a people's vocabulary. Sinhala mava 'mother' we know derives from the Sanskritic matr. Here too we find cognate forms such as Latin mater, Greek meter, Russian matu, Lithuanian motina, Persian madar, Dutch moeder, French mere and Hindi ma. All these forms go back to the PIE *mater which is thought to have originally meant 'producer'. Then take the Sinhala term beya 'brother' which derives from the Sanskritic bhratr. Here also we find cognate forms such as Gothic brothar, Persian baradar, German bruder, Russian brat, Lithuanian brolis and Hindi bhai. These forms go back to the PIE *bhrater which seems to have originally meant 'supporter'.
Then take Sinhala duva 'daughter' which is connected to the Sanskrit duhitr, Avestan dugdar, Persian dokhter, Gothic dauhtar, Dutch dochter, Lithuanian dukte and Russian doch. All these forms go back to the PIE *dhughater which seems to have originally meant 'milker', either a 'milkmaid' or a 'milkling' which is to say 'one who draws milk from her mother'.
Now let us consider some terms denoting body parts. Take for instance the Sinhala term data 'tooth' which derives from the Sanskritic danta and is related to such forms as Latin dentis, Lithuanian dantis, French dent, Hindi dat, Dutch tand and German zahn. All these forms are thought to go back to the PIE *dantis.
Similarly, the Sinhala nahaya 'nose' could be shown to derive from the Sanskritic nasa and related to such forms as the Latin nasus, Russian nos, German nase and Lithuanian nosis. The PIE form seems to have been *nasus. Then take Sinhala in a 'loins' which has derived from the Sanskritic shroni and is related to Greek klonis, Latin clunis, Old Norse hlaun and Prussian slaunis. The PIE form seems to have been *klunis.
Common words
Now let us consider some common words which figure in our day to day speech. Take for example the Sinhala term dora 'door' which derives from the Sanskritic dvara and is therefore connected to the Gothic daura, Lithuanian durys, Russian dver and Dutch deur. The PIE form was evidently *dwar. Also consider the Sinhala term ginna 'fire' which has no doubt derived from the Sanskritic agni and is therefore related to such forms as the Latin ignis, Lithuanian ugnis and Slavonic ogni. The PIE form seems to have been something like *ognis. Finally, let us take the case of the Sinhala taruva 'star' which we know derives from the Sanskritic str and is related to such forms as the Greek aster, Latin stella, Gothic stairno, German stern, Dutch ster and Persian sitara. All these forms go back to the PIE root *str meaning 'to scatter' and hence applied to the stars as being strewn over the sky or as being scatterers or spreaders of light.
An updated version of August Schleicher's Proto-Indo-European tale:
Owis ekwoske
Owis, kesyo wlhna ne est, ekwons espeket, oinom ghegrum woghom weghontm, oinomke megam bhorom, oinomke ghmenm oku bherontm. Owis nu ekwobhos ewewket: kerd aghnutoi moi ekwons agontm manum widntei. Ekwos tu ewewkont:kludhi, owei, kerd aghnutoi nsmei widntbhos: manus, potis, owiom r wlhnam sebhi ghermom westrom krneuti, neghi owiom wlhna esti. Tod kekluwos owis agrom abhuget. The Sheep and the horses A sheep that had no wool saw horses-one pulling a heavy wagon, another one a great load, and another swiftly carrying a man. The sheep said to the horses: it hurts me seeing a man driving horses. The horses said to the sheep:listen sheep! it hurts us seeing man the master making a warm garment for himself from the wool of a sheep when the sheep has no wool for itself. On hearing this, the sheep fled into the plain
Some unique features of Sinhala Language
Sinhalese language belongs to the Indo-Aryan group of languages. The Indo-Aryan group consists of languages like Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Hindi, Punjabi and Maldivian. These languages share common characteristics and the Indo-Aryan language which is closest to Sinhala is “Divehi” the language of the Maldive Islands, which is written in a script called “Tana”. Tana represents a mixture of both Indic and Semitic traditions. ‘Divehi’ is considered as an offshoot or a sister language of Sinhala.
As modern European languages trace their ancestry to Greek and Latin, Sinhalese and other Indo-Aryan languages trace their origins to Sanskrit.
Sinhalese, which developed as an island language, has some unique features which are not known in any other Indo-Aryan language. This uniqueness of Sinhala is due to its exposure to other language families of the region such as Dravidian and Malayo-Polynesian. The Tamil language, which belongs to the Dravidian group has influenced the structure and vocabulary of Sinhalese to such an extent that some scholars were erroneously led to believe that Sinhalese belonged to the Dravidian group of languages.
There are many features in Sinhala, particularly in the sound system, which are not found in the neighbouring Aryan or Dravidian languages. These elements are said to have crept in from African or Polynesian languages. The Sinhala language also contains lexical borrowings from Malay, Portuguese, Dutch and English.
Sound System
Sinhalese has 14 vowels sounds, seven of them are short and the other seven are long. Two of these vowels are unique to the language. They are represented as “æ” and “æ:” and not found in Indo-Aryan or Dravidian. The Germans interpret them as a vowel change caused by the umlaut.
There are 26 consonants of which four are prenasalized stops. The prenasalized sounds indicated as mb, ?d, ?d, ?g do not occur in South Asian languages except in Maldivian. They are attributed either to African or Polynesian languages.
Grammar
The general sentence pattern in Sinhala is subject-object-verb. In literary Sinhala the subject agrees with the verb in gender number and case, whereas in spoken Sinhala there is no agreement between the subject and the verb.
Writing System
Sinhalese is written from left to right. It has no capital letters. The writing system is called syllabic, in other words, the vowels and consonants are not represented as separate units like in the Roman script, but as syllabic units in which the vowel is inherent in the consonant. For instance, the consonant “k” is both “k” and “a” combined. A vowel appears as a separate letter only in the initial position of a word. In other places, it is indicated by adding a vowel stroke to the consonant.
Spoken Sinhalese has 40 sounds that can be represented by the traditional alphabet, except the two central vowels. The alphabet has 18 extra symbols to write words of Sanskrit and Pali origin. The script used in writing Sinhalese is evolved from the ancient Brahmi script used in most Aryan languages, which was introduced to the island in the 3rd century B.C. Around the 6th century, certain symbols were borrowed from a Dravidian writing system to replace some existing symbols.
The Sinhala script is phonetic, in other words, everything that is written down is pronounced the way it is written.
Books on Sinhala language
1. “Say it in Sinhala” by J.B. Dissanayake ; Colombo, 1992
Lake House Printers & Publishers Ltd.
41, W.A.D. Ramanayaka Mawatha, Colombo 2
2. “Sinhalese, the spoken Idiom” by D. Garusinghe
Max Hueber Verlag Munchen, 1962
3. “Sinhalese : An introductory Course” by C.H.B. Renolds, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, 1980
4. “Colloquial Sinhalese”, by Fairbanks, Gair and De Silva Cornell University, U.S.A., 1968
5. “An introduction to spoken Sinhalese” , by W.S. Karunatilaka
M.D. Gunasena & Co. Ltd.
217, Olcott Mawatha ; Colombo
Dictionaries
1. English-Sinhalese Dictionary by Prof. G.P. Malalasekera.
M.D. Gunasena & Co. Ltd.
217, Olcott Mawatha. Colombo
2. French-Sinhala, Sinhala-French Dictionary by Edward Perera & Rohan Jawardena. M.D. Gunasena & Co. Ltd.
Sinhala Courses in European Universities
1. School of Oriental and African Studies
University of London.
2. Institut National des langues et civilisations orientales, Université de Paris
The roots of Sinhala
 A Sinhalese slab inscription in the reign of Abha Salamevan. |
 An old Sinhalese rock inscription found near Galpaya Rajamaha Vihara. |
Words have evolved with time, passing through various phases before assuming their present form. Sinhala is no exception. That the Sinhala language is an Aryan one and is related to other Indo-Aryan speeches such as Hindi and Bengali is generally well known. Less known, however, is the fact that Sinhala is distantly related to other major languages such as German, French, English, Russian, Persian and Lithuanian. The fact is that Sinhala is not only a member of the Aryan group of languages, but also of a larger linguistic group, the Indo-European family, which includes all the major languages of Europe, Iran and Southern Asia. The parent indo-European speech from which all these languages derive, was evidently spoken somewhere in Europe, probably Southern Russia, over 5000 years ago.
Linguistic research pioneered by nineteenth century German Philologists such as Franz Bopp and August Schleicher has made it possible to connect Sinhala words to words occurring in European, Iranian and North Indian languages. Such resemblances are however not very apparent due to the sound or phonetic changes they have been subjected to throughout the centuries. Nevertheless, many forms could be shown to be connected.
For instance, the Sinhala word hata (seven) could clearly be shown to be related to the Hindi sat, Sanskrit sapta, Greek hepta, Latin septem, French sept and Persian haft.
Similarly, Sinhala du (daughter) could be connected to the Bengali duhita, Sanskrit duhitr, Gothic dauhtar, Persian dokhtar, Dutch dochter and Russian doch.
Sinhala nahaya (nose) could likewise be shown to be related to the Sanskrit nasa, Latin nasus, Russian nos, German nase and Lithuanian nosis.
Closest resemblance
However, it is to Sanskrit, Pali and other modern-day Aryan speeches such as Hindi and Bengali, that Sinhala shows the closest resemblance. This corroborates the story related in the Sinhalese chronicle, the Mahavamsa (5th century A.C.) which traces the origin of the Vijayan or early Sinhalese settlers to the Lala country (West Bengal). Sinhala has evolved in stages. We have the old Indo-Aryan stage largely represented by the Sanskrit speech introduced by the Aryan invaders of India around 2800-2500 B.C. Then we have the later Middle-Indo-Aryan or Prakritic stage, largely represented by Pali, the language of the Buddhist scriptures. Thus, Sanskrit and Pali forms may generally be taken as furnishing the early- or proto-types of modern Sinhala forms. These Sinhala forms have not evolved arbitrarily, but have come about as a result of phonetic changes through specific laws.
For instance, the sound r is a common feature in Sanskrit words. Not so in Prakrit which had a tendency to eliminate this sound. The Prakrit forms in turn possessed a high proportion of double consonants, a feature that was eliminated in Sinhala.
Thus:
| Sanskrit marga charma | Pali magga chamma | Sinhala maga (path) hama (skin) |
Thus:
| Sanskrit garbha sthana | Pali gabbha thana | Sinhala geba (womb) tena (place) |
Thus:
| Sanskrit pamshu granthi | Pali pamsu ganthi | Sinhala pas (soil) geta (knot) |
The change of ch to s is an extremely common one. The sibilant obtained thus has often been aspirated in the modern language as is borne out by Sinhala words such as handa 'moon' which has evolved from sanda (P.chanda, Skt.chandra) and hatara 'four' which has developed from satara (P.chattaro, Skt.chatvarah).
As for those Sinhala words which have developed from Old- and Middle-Indo Aryan forms containing a sibilant, we find that these too have undergone aspiration in their passage to Sinhala.
Thus:
| Sanskrit svami shashti | Pali sami satthi | Sinhala himi (master) heta (sixty) |
Thus:
| Sanskrit adya vaidya | Pali ajja vejja | Sinhala ada (today) veda (physician) |
Yet another notable phonetic change in Sinhala is the softening of the Old-and Middle-Indo-Aryan p to v in cases where the p is found to occur between vowels.
Thus:
| Sanskrit dvipa dvipin | Pali dipa dipin | Sinhala duva (island) diviya (leopard) |
What is however particularly interesting is the fact that place-names and personal names have also been subject to phonetic change. For instance, we find Situlpavuva vihara in the south being described as chitalapavata vihara in inscriptions in situ. The site which is supposed to have been built by King Kakavanna Tissa in the 2nd century B.C is called Chittalapabbata in the Pali Mahawamsa.
As for personal names, an interesting example is seen in the Kumbukveva Pillar inscription of the 10th century. The inscription records a proclamation to the effect that the female attendants of a foot through vessel (pen mindiyan) in the village shall be recruited from among the descendants of the lineage of one Doti (Doti himisura nuvata parapuren).
According to the Mahavamsa, Jotiya was a Nigantha or Jaina monk who lived in Anuradhapura around the 4th century B.C. and for whom King Pandukabhaya built a house near the lower cemetery. An application of the phonetic laws that have characterised the evolution of Sinhala will easily enable us to identify this Doti with the Jotiya of the Mahavamsa.
The appellation nuvata used to describe this personage is in fact the Sinhala equivalant of the Pali nigantha. These few examples will suffice to show the profound influence phonetic change has exerted on the evolution of Sinhala throughout the ages.
| Divehi - an offshoot of the Sinhala language | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The Mahavamsa legend concerning the Vijayan migration that took place around the sixth century B.C. would have us believe that the womenfolk of Vijaya and his compatriots drifted to an island called Mahiladipa following their banishment from the Lala country in Bengal. There is reason to believe that this Mahiladipa was none other than the Maldives. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Divehi - an offshoot of the Sinhala language It is today established beyond doubt that the Maldive Islands were peopled long ago by a sea-faring folk hailing from Sri Lanka. Linguistic evidence clearly shows Divehi, the speech of the Maldive Islanders to have derived from an early form of Sinhala known as Proto-Sinhala spoken in Sri Lanka from about the fourth to eighth centuries A.D. This is also corroborated by archaeological evidence such as the remains of stupas in the islands of Gan, Isdu and Miladu, which show that the Maldivians, like the Sinhalese, were Buddhists before they embraced Islam in the twelfth century. Ancient settlement Although it is likely that in the main the Maldives were largely settled by a Proto-Sinhala-speaking folk in early mediaeval times, it may perhaps not be too far-fetched to postulate that intermittent settlement by Sinhalese migrants may have taken place at an earlier date, though on a much smaller scale. The Mahavamsa legend concerning the Vijayan migration that took place around the sixth century B.C. would have us believe that the womenfolk of Vijaya and his compatriots drifted to an island called Mahiladipa following their banishment from the Lala country in Bengal. There is reason to believe that this Mahiladipa was none other than the Maldives. The appellation Mahiladipa literally means 'Women's Island' and seems to have originated from the matriarchal tradition that prevailed in the Maldives in ancient times. Sulayman Al-Tajir in the Ahbar-As-Sin Wal Hind (9th century) refers to a ruling queen, as do Al-Masudi (10th century) and Al-Idrisi (12th century). Al-Masudi, the author of the Murujuhazzab records that the Maldivians are subject to a Queen "for from the most ancient times, the inhabitants have a rule never to allow themselves to be governed by a man". This tradition continued even after Islam gained a foothold since we hear of four Maldivian Sultanas (Queens) who reigned from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. This tradition had however ceased by the seventeenth century, for the Frenchman Francois Pyrard who spent five years in the Maldives has recorded in his memoirs entitled Voyage de Francois Pyrard (1619) that the Kingdom 'never goes to females'. Added to this is the fact that the Maldives has been traditionally designated in Arabic as Mahaldibu, which again suggests a connection between the Maldives and the Mahiladipa of the Mahavamsa. It is therefore possible that the Maldives were settled in ancient times by a Sinhalese folk speaking an early form of Sinhala known as Sinhala Prakrit before it was superseded by the Proto-Sinhala speech of later migrants who immigrated to the islands in superior numbers. Unfortunately, Maldivian chronology does not seem to have been as well developed as that of the Sinhalese and begins from about the twelfth century. The Maldivian chronicle Tarikh compiled by Hassan Thajuddin in the early eighteenth century gives Koimala as the first king of the Maldives. According to the chronicle, the Maldives were sparsely inhabited until about the early twelfth century, when a prince of royal birth named Koimala who had married the daughter of the King of Lanka departed thence with her and reached Resgatimu Island in the Ra Atoll. The people of the island, learning that the two visitors were of royal descent invited them to remain and Koimala was crowned King. Vessels were subsequently despatched to Lanka to bring people of the Lion Race and it was thus that the Maldives came to be colonized by the Sinhalese. The legend may perhaps be referring to a relatively late migration of Sinhalese, for we know that the islands were peopled by a Sinhala-speaking stock well before the twelfth century - a contention borne out by linguistic evidence. The Divehi language The term by which the Maldivians denote their language, 'Divehi Bas' literally means 'Language of the Islands' and has developed from the Old Sinhala diva - island' and basa - 'language', divehi being the genitive form of diva. Divehi shares with Sinhala, the simplification of conjunct consonants, the shortening of long vowels, the dropping of nasals and the de-aspiration of the aspirated consonents of Old-and Middle-Indo-Aryan represented by Sanskrit and Prakrit respectively. It has also turned the Sanskritic and Prakritic ch into s, s into h, p into v and j into d in common with Sinhala. All these phonetic changes had taken place in Sinhala by the beginning of the Proto-Sinhala stage around the fourth century A.D. Thus it is likely that the main body of Sinhalese who migrated to the Maldives did so sometime after the fourth century. However, Divehi does not possess the low front vowel ae and it may be safely assumed that it branched off from Sinhala before the appearance of this vowel. The development of ae from an earlier a or e is believed to have taken place in Sinhala around the seventh or eighth century A.D. so that it is likely that Divehi separated from Sinhala before this important phonological change took place. Many are the phonetic changes that have characterized Divehi ever since it split from the parent speech. Among the more significant changes may be mentioned the replacement of the labial p by the dento-labial f, which probably arose as a result of Arabic influence. Sinh. paen Div. fen 'water'
pas fas 'soil'
paha fahe 'five' Another significant change is that of retroflex t to the peculiar Divehi sound sh which is uttered by placing the tip of the tongue in the highest part of the palate and letting the breath escape sideways between the teeth. Sinh. ata Div. asha 'eight'
rata rashi 'country'
miti(-vaela) mishi(-vela) 'elbow'
Among the other changes may be mentioned that of the velar surd k into its corresponding sonant g. Sinh. kikini Div. giguni 'bell'
kadu gadu 'hunched'
and that of y to d, perhaps through an intermediate j
Sinh. yanna Div. dan 'to go'
yakada dagadu 'iron'
Among the vowel changes may be cited the replacement of the low central vowel a by the high bach vowel u. Sinh. dora Div. doru 'door
maga magu 'path'
handa handu 'moon'
Further, the Sinhala high front vowel i has been replaced by its corresponding back vowel u. Sinh. his Div. hus 'empty'
diva du 'tongue'
hira(-ge) hura(-ge) 'jail'
There are also instances where u has become i Sinh. tuna Div. tine 'three'
kusa kis 'belly'
and a has become i
Sinh. dahaya Div. dihaye 'ten'
vala vila 'cloud'
The Southern dialects It is clear that the dialects of the southern atolls such as Addu, Huvadu and Fua Mulaku which have been less affected by foreign intercourse have preserved the old Sinhala pronunciation more faithfully than the Standard Male dialect. Thus the Huvadu form bate 'cooked rice' shows a closer resemblance to the Sinhala form bat than the bai of the Male dialect. Yet even in Standard Divehi, we regularly come across the older forms in the written language. Thus while the term for 'rice' is pronounced bai, it is written as bat. Similar is the case with 'tooth', pronounced dai but written dat (Sinh.data) and 'book', pronounced fai but written fat (Sinh.pota). The southern dialects have also preserved some old Sinhala forms now lost in the Male dialect. For instance, in the Addu dialect, we come across bala for 'dog'(Sinh.balla), while in the Male dialect, this has been replaced by the Hindustani kutta. Similarly, the Addu tina 'breast'(Sinh.tana) is not found in Male, where urumati occurs in its stead. Archaic forms What is however remarkable is that Divehi has managed to preserve some old Indo-Aryan forms that have been lost in modern Sinhala. Many such forms are however attested in ancient and mediaeval Sinhalese epigraphs and literature. For example, the Sinhala forms of Divehi fan 'leaves'(Skt.parna), has 'thousand'(Skt.sahasra), hila 'stone'(Skt.shila),huvai 'oath'(Skt.shapatha), heki 'witness'(Skt.sakshin), hikan 'to dry'(Skt.shushka) and fuhen 'to ask' (Skt.prcchati) no longer exist. Many are however known to have existed in the not too distant past. For instance, we come across the old Sinhala form sava 'oath' which is related to the Divehi huvai occurring in the Sigiri graffiti of the eighth to tenth centuries. Similarly, the Sinhala form of Divehi fan'leaves' survives in the compound pan-sala 'temple', literally a 'leaf-hall', the residences of Buddhist monks in former times being very modest abodes made of leaves. Besides their fairly copious vocabulary, the Maldivians also seem to have taken with them the Sinhala script when they migrated to their new home. The roundish eveyla akuru or 'ancent letters' found inscribed on lomafanu or copper plates of the twelfth century has been shown to closely resemble the Sinhala script of mediaeval times. The Dives akuru or 'island letters' which evolved from it was in use until about the sixteenth century when it was superseded by the Tana script which runs from right to left and shows Arabic influence.
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Just as the sounds of words change in a language, so do meanings, depending on the context in which they come to be used. Changes in the environment or culture of a people and association with similar concepts or objects are among the factors primarily responsible for semantic shifts or changes in the meanings of words. | Sri Lanka: Sanskritic loans in modern Sinhala | |||
| Among the Sanskritic loans in modern Sinhala may be included such common terms as praja-tantra (democracy), shalya-karma (surgery), chaya-rupa (photograph), surya-balaya (solar energy), trasta-vadaya (terrorism), harda-spandana (heart-beat), vag-vidya (linguistics) and rupa-vahini (television). Although there can be little doubt that such loans are justifiable and even necessary, one also feels that Sanskritic terms very often tend to be employed unnecessarily even where there exist alternative Helu or pure Sinhala terms which convey the meaning as much as or even better than their Sanskritic equivalents. | |||
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A survey of Sinhalese prose literature
from ancient times to the modern period
Sinhalese literature dates back to well over 2000 years and is heir to the great Aryan literary tradition as embodied in the hymns of the Rig Veda, collection of Sanskrit verses composed by the ancient Indo Aryans around 1500 B.C.
Vyasa"s Mahabharata, Valmiki"s Ramayana, Kalhana"s Rajatarangini and Somadeva"s Kathasaritsagara are some of the masterpieces belonging to this great literary tradition, not to mention the Panchatantra composed by an anonymous Indian author in about the 3rd century A.C. which is the source of a good many European fairy tales as shown by the German Scholar Johannes Hertel in his "Das Pancatantra" (1914).
There is literary evidence to show that the Mahavansa, the great chronicle of Sinhalese royalty composed in Pali in the 5th century A.C. has drawn heavily from the ancient commentaries in the Sinhala languages known as the Sihalatthakatha.
The German Philologist Wilhelm Geiger has shown in his "Noch einmal Dipavamsa and Mahavansa" that the Mahavansa was based on an old Atthakatha (commentary) composed in old Sinhala prose. This work appears to have comprised of historical records of a religious nature and collections of legends.
These legends dealt with the early beginnings of the Sinhalese nation from a band of Aryan-speaking colonists from Bengal, deeds of the early kings, wars and other matters of historical importance.
The Mahavansa in itself is a literary masterpiece of the highest order. Composed in fine Pali verse, it narrates the adventures of Prince Vijaya, the founding father of the Sinhalese nation, the romantic union of Prince Gamani and Ummada-chittha, the wars waged by their son Pandukabhaya against his ten uncles, the campaigns of King Dutthagamani against the Dravidian invaders, the justice of the Tamil usurper Elara, the insatiable lust of the nymphomaniac Queen Anula and the self-sacrifice of King Sirisangabo, the paragon of Buddhist virtue, amongst other stories.
These wonderful narratives are based on actual fact, though they contain much literary embellishment. The Sinhalese possess a vast corpus of literature both in prose and in verse written in the Sinhalese language. The old literature has been preserved in palm manuscripts (pus-kola) penned with a stylus.
The oldest extant Sinhala prose work we have dates back to the ninth century. This is the Dhampiya-Atuva-Getapadaya, a glossary to the Dhammapadatthakatha (a Buddhist story book in Pali) compiled by King Kassapa V (913-923 A.C.) This is not to say that there existed no Sinhala prose work before this period. In fact the commentary to the Mahavansa, Vansatthappakasini, mentions a collection of a thousand stories known as the Sahassavatthuppakarana which is now lost to us. It is possible that some of its stories survive in the 14th century Saddharmalankaraya just as the tales of the lost Persian work Hezar efsaneh (thousand stories) survive in the Arabian nights (Alf layla wa layl).
There is reason to believe that the above work was based on some old Sinhala original. Another lost old Sinhala work, the Katha-vasthu is believed to be the source of the Rasavahini, a collection of popular tales in Pali compiled by Vedeha thera. Another early work, the Mahabodhi Getapadaya composed about the 12th century by an anonymous author is a glossary to aid students master the Mahabodhivansa, a history of the sacred Bodhi tree in Pali.
It is evident that many of the early Sinhala prose works were intended as accessories for comprehensive Pali works. Another such example, composed about the same period is the Jataka-Atuva-Getapadaya, a glossary to the Pali Jatakatthakatha which is a commentary of the Jataka tales narrated in connection with the supposed previous births of the Buddha.
However, it is the Polonnaruwa (10th - early 13th centuries) and the Dambadeniya (13th century) periods which mark the efflorescence of Sinhala prose literature. The 13th century is widely considered to be the golden age of Sinhala literature. The Amavatura (lit. flood of nectar) written about 13th century by the Buddhist lay disciple Gurulugomi is one such example. This work deals with the life of Prince Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism. Besides, it also narrates a number of other tales connected with the Buddha or the Boddhisattva (as the Buddha is known in his supposed previous incarnations) such as the story of the beautiful Ditthamangalika and the outcaste, the story of King Ajatasatru the parricide and the story Angulimala the highwayman.
Gurulugomi is also credited with the authorship of the Dharmap-radipikava (the lamp of the good doctrine), a commentary to the earlier mentioned Mahabodhivansa. Gurulugomi"s works are characterised by the use of almost pure Sinhala (Elu) words and limiting Sanskrit and Pali loan words to the minimum.
In this respect, it differs considerably from the language of the getapadas (glossaries) which contained a good many Pali and Sanskrit loans. Other 13th century works of a religious character include the Buth-sarana (Refuge in the Buddha) an eulogy in praise of the founder of Buddhism by Vidyachakravarti and the Pujavaliya (Garland of offerings), a collection of Buddhist tales by Mayurapada Buddhaputra. However, none of these surpasses the Saddharma-Ratnavaliya (Garland of the jewels of the good doctrine) a collection of stories meant for the edification of the Buddhist laity by a monk named Dharmasena.
This extensive work which has been largely based on the Dharmmapadatthakatha, a collection of Buddhist stories in Pali is renowned for the beauty of its style and the simplicity of its language. The stories of Sundara Samudda, Vasuladatta and of Tissa the fat are the more interesting tales narrated in the work.
The Indian tales " upon which the stories have been based " have been embellished and retold for the Sinhalese reader and therefore reflects contemporary social conditions to a significant extent. Martin Wickremasinghe (purana Sinhala stringe enduma) observes thus: "In the pages of the Saddharama Ratnavaliya are to be seen similes and descriptions which reflects the manners, customs, thoughts and ideas of its day. There is no other Sinhala work so helpful in the investigation of the conditions of the olden day Sinhalese." Other works of the period as well as those works of preceding and succeeding periods, also possess this characteristic. In fact, Prof M. B. Ariyapala (Society in medieval Ceylon 1956) has successfully reconstructed the society and life-style of the Sinhalese as it existed in the 13th century through a detailed study of the Saddharma-Ratnavaliya and other similar works. Another notable medieval prose work is the Saddharmalankaraya (ornament of the good law) composed by Jayabahu Dharmakirti in the 14th century.
The work, like the Saddharma-Ratnavaliya has a moral objective. Amongst other tales, it contains the story of King Dutugemunu (known as Dutthagamani in Pali works) and his exploits against the Dravidian invaders from the Chola country and the romance of his son Prince Sali with an untouchable (Chandala) maiden named Asokamala for whose sake he renounced the throne.
Other notable medieval prose works include the Thupavansaya, Elu-Attanagalu vansaya and the Dambadeni asna. These works may be categorised as historical literature as they mainly deal with the history of Buddhist edifices and relics. From the Kotte period (15th century) until the late 19th century we see a decline of Sinhala prose literature and a resurgence of Sinhala poetry such as war poems (hatan kavi) and message poems (sandeshas) modelled after Kalidasa"s Meghaduta. This is perhaps attributable to the fact that this period was a turbulent one due to wars against successive European colonial powers, namely the Portuguese (1505-1658), Dutch (1658-1796) and British (1796-1815) colonialists.
Such a situation would have naturally been conducive to the growth of poetry in the form of panegyrics and romances. As would have been noticed, the vast majority of the ancient and medieval Sinhalese literary works are of a religious (Buddhist) character.
This is due to the fact that Sinhala scholarship had traditionally been the domain of the clerical establishment, which accounts for the scarcity of good secular works in the language during the olden days.
However, beginning from the late 19th century we notice a surge in secular Sinhala literature. The Sinhala novel also had its beginnings during this period. These include Albert Silva"s Vimala (1892) and Adara Hasuna (1894). Another early novel which gained immense popularity was Simon Silva"s Meena (1905). Other early novelists include Piyadasa Sirisena, Sagara Palansuriya, Munidasa Kumaratunga, Hemapala Munidasa, W.A. Silva and J.H. Perera.
This period also saw the revision of old works on medicine and other subjects of scientific interest. Even such themes as the interpretation of dreams did not go unaddressed as is evident in Hisvelle pandit"s Svapna-malaya (1865). Reputed foreign works were also translated into Sinhala during this period, a notable example being Arabinishollasaya (1891) a translation of the Arabian nights. One of the greatest modern day Sinhala novelists was Martin Wickremasinghe, whose epoch making works Gam peraliya and Yuganthaya appealed to the hearts of a generation that was just beginning to shed the last vestiges of European socio-cultural domination in the island.
Other famous modern novels include Gunadasa Amarasekara"s Yali upannemi and Depa noladdo, Ediriweera Sarachchandra"s Mala-giya ettho and Valmath vi hasarak nudutimi, K. Jayatilleke"s Apra-sanna Kathavak and Siri Guna-singhe"s Hevanella
A survey of Sinhalese poetry
from ancient times to the modern period
The Sinhalese have, of all the arts, excelled in poetry. Sinhala, the language of the Sinhalese, is a poetical language.
It lends itself easily to metre and rhyme due to its grammatical flexibility and rich vocabulary comprising of a large number of synonyms.
Sinhala itself is a mellifluous language with a high vowel content and is comparable to French and Urdu, widely regarded to be the two most romantic languages in the world.
A specimen from a late 18th century poem, the "Kalingabodhi Jataka-Kava", a versified form of the story of Prince Sulukalingu contained in the "Kalingabodhi Jataka", composed by the poet Dunuvila will bear this out. Cited below is a quatrain from the poem describing the prince"s journey to the forest.
(The prince heard the heart-captivating songs of the pretty women in the fields of rice who had arranged their long flowing hair with flowers and tucked full blossomed red lotuses behind their ears, and went away, full of joy, but not captivated by them).Nil digu varal kusuman benda gothala
Pul rathu upul mal savanata sadala
El gevi kal kiyana liyagi asala
Lol hera giye
Kumarindu mana pinala
According to Prof. Sen-arat Paranavithana (Brahmi inscriptions in Sinhalese verse Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Ceylon. 1945), the earliest extant specimens of Sinhalese metrical compositions may be dated to the first century B.C.
At least four of the early Brahmi inscriptions of Sri Lanka have been identified as poetical compositions.
As may be gleaned from literary sources such as the "Pujavaliya" (13th century) the reign of King Aggabodhi I (568-601 A.C.) was a period of great literary activity. Twelve famous poets, namely Demi, Bebiri, Kithsiri, Anuruth, Dalagoth, Dalasala, Dalabiso, Puravadu, Sakdamala, Asakdamala, Suriyabahu and Kesub-Kotha-Epa flourished during the king"s reign.
The Sigiri graffiti scribbled on the mirror wall (Kedapath pavura) of the ancient rock fortress of Sigiriya built by King Kassapa I (477-485 A.C.), may be dated to the 7th - 8th centuries.
These verses which are predominantly on secular themes are largely addressed to the Sigiri frescoes, paintings of beautiful bejewelled, bare-breasted female figures on the western face of the rock. A good many of the verses are therefore of an amorous or romantic nature. Two specimens of the graffiti are given below (trans. by S. Paranavithana and W. G. Archer).
One of the greatest literary monuments of the medieval period is the "Kavsilumina" (The crest gem of poetry), a 13th century "maha-kavya" (lengthy, ornate poem taking after the Sanskrit model) composed by King Parakrama Bahu II (1234 " 1269).We spoke but they did not answer
Those ladies of the mountain
They did not give us
The twitch of an eyelid
The girl with the golden skin
Enticed the mind and eyes.
Her lovely breasts caused me to recall
Swans drunk with nectar.
This masterpiece which contains 770 verses divided into 15 cantos is a versified form of the "Kusa Jataka" which related the story of the Bodhisattva (as the Buddha is known in his supposed previous births) born as the ugly Prince Kusa and his romance with the lovely Princess Pabhavati.
Given below are two selections from the Kavsilumina (trans. Harold Peiris and L.C. Van Geyzel):
Very often, the language of the Kavsilumina is replete with metaphors which contribute to its lucid style.This swan-king snared by the honey of drink
Played in that lake, his festal hall, where the night lilies
Were fair women, the stalks their strings of pearl,
Their eyes the darting fish, the lotuses their bowls of wine.
The face plainly seen in the bowl of wine
Given to him by a love-maddened girl, in which lay
Reflected the lily-blossoms of her eyes.
Made the king lose his reason straight.
This is all the more enhanced by the fact that the work is composed in poetic Sinhala which lends itself easily to metaphorical expression.
Compare for example, the following verses which occur in the work.
(The thunder-like beating of drums at dawn caused the swans, namely the breasts, of the courtesans, to leave the ponds, the chests, of the lovers, where they had rested during the night).Duru kele aluyam, bera me gos piya thaman
Uravil legum gos gath, abisaruvan thana hasun
Much of the medieval Sinhalese poetry has been based on the Jataka tales. Such are the "Kavya-Sekharaya" (Diadem of poetry) written in 1450 by Sri Rahula which is based on the "Sattubhasta Jataka" and the Guttilaya of Vetteve thera (15th century) based on the "Guttila Jataka".
The Kotte period (15th " 16th centuries) marks the efflorescence of Sinhalese poetry. The largely secular "Sandesha" (message) poems gained immense popularity during this period. The Sandesha poems are based on Kalidasa"s Meghaduta (cloud messenger). The essence of the Sandesha poem is the despatch of a message through the agency of a living being, very often a bird.
The oldest Sandesha poem of which we have any evidence is the "Mayura Sandeshaya" (Peacock"s message) dating back to the 13th century, if not earlier. The work no longer exists, though examples from it are cited in the classical Sinhala grammar "Sidath-sangara" (13th century).
The "Thisara Sandeshaya" (Swan"s message) is dated to the 14th century, while the "Gira Sandeshaya" (Parrot"s message), "Hansa Sandeshaya" (Goose"s message), "Parevi Sandeshaya" (Dove"s message), "Kokila Sandeshaya" (Cuckoo"s message) and "Selalihini Sandeshaya" (Starling"s message) belong to the 15th century.
Other Sandesha poems include the "Sevul Sandeshaya" (Cock"s message), "Hema Kurulu Sandeshaya" (Oriole"s message) "Ketakirili Sandeshaya" (Hornbill"s message), "Nilakobo Sandeshaya" (Blue dove"s message) and "Diyasevul Sandeshaya" (Black swan"s message).
An unusual Sandesha poem is the "Nari-Sath-Sandeshaya" of "Shiladipati" composed in 1833, describing the pilgrimage of seven women from the village of Nathagane to Dambulla.
What enamours one most to the Sandesha poems are its rhyme and detailed description of the people and places to be seen in the course of our feathered friend"s journey.
One of the most descriptive Sandesha poems is the "Hansa Sandeshaya", which purports to be despatched from Kotte to the Sangha-raja Vanaratana at Keragala (a distance of roughly 48 kilometres) beseeching him to invoke the gods and bid them protect the king.
Given below are two quatrains of the poem pertaining to water sports in the Kelani river (trans. H. Peiris and L.C. Van Geyzel):
Another class of Sinhala poetry is the war poems (hatan kavi).When, turning on their backs, the women float in the river
It gains the charm of a long garden-pool with their faces
Like lotus, dark lily-eyes, swan bosoms, brows and eyelashes
Like the bees" glistening swarms, gambolling to their hearts con-tent
Waves stole the saffron and scented paste from women"s bodies
Of red salve no trace remained on their lips when water shot upon them, their eyes closed in fear, had the charm
Of blue lilies awaiting the beams of the full moon.
These are more or less panegyrics in praise of some king or general.
One of the earliest known hatan kavi is the "Kustantinu hatana" (the war of Constantine) describing the war the Portuguese Captain General Constantine de Sa (17th century) waged, and won, against a Sinhalese rebel named Antonio.
The "Maha hatana" (Great War) tells of the defeat of Constantine de Sa and his successors at the hands of the Kandyan King Rajasinghe II (17th century). Other notable war poems include the "Parangi hatana" (War with the Portuguese) describing the famous battle of Gannoruwa (1638) in which the Sinhalese forces routed the Portuguese army and the "Ingrisi hatana" (war with the English) describing the Kandyan King Sri Wickrama Rajasinghe"s victory over the British army in 1803.
Sinhala love poetry also makes delightful reading.
Some of the most popular verses are ascribed to Gascon Adigar and the Queen-consort of the Kandyan King Rajasinghe. Gascon who was of Portuguese or French descent had been brought up as a Kandyan from infancy, and being a man of martial prowess, became a favourite of the king.
He was well versed in Sinhala poetry, but was unfortunate enough to fall in love with the queen.
The king who suspected Gascon of carrying on an affair with his queen lost no time in condemning him to death. While awaiting execution in prison, a correspondence in verse between Gascon and the queen is said to have taken place in secret.
The queen wrote to Gascon
thus:
Thun kala thumula vanaye malrasa novinda
Kanthala gajan kopulata bingu ronata veda
Kanthala pahara veni nirinduta asuva inda
Pin kala hithanuvani den thevenu kumatada
(As the honey-loving bee heedless thro" the forest flies Where the many coloured flowers tempt him with their rich supplies, And by fragrance strange
allured on the tusked head alights, Victim of the flapping ears all amid the stol"n delights, Thus adored love art thou captive of thy king and lord, Yet, dash sorrow from thy brow, cease to mourn, my dear, adored).
Gascon promptly replied.
Vises Kamalava rasa pahasa novinda ma
Dasis duni porana esa dutu pamanata ma
Veses numbe amayuru pahasa lath pema
Masis ekak giya nam numbe namata kima
Lanka"s giant king, enthralled only by beauty"s sight,
Laid down his twice five heads uncropped the flower of love"s delight,
Then why should I, a happier swain, who with the gods above
Have revelled at the banquet rare of thy ambrosial love,
Repine with my one head to atone for my bold adventure,
To gain what sweetens human lives as long as they endure
| The changing fortunes of Sinhala poetry | |||
| Sinhala poetry looses popularity that it had a few decades ago | |||
| Kavi maduwas were held occasionally in the towns and sometimes lasted a whole day. Poetry collections of well-known authors sold in large numbers. Kavi kolayas, which carried important or sensational incidents narrated in verse form, were sold at bus stands, Sunday fairs and so on by men who recited them aloud to attract customers. | |||
The changing fortunes of Sinhala poetry Even though there is no dearth of talent, Sinhala poetry does not enjoy the popularity that it had a few decades ago. THE term tests in school had ended. It was time for literary activities to begin. One of the items was a lecture by P.B. Alwis Perera, the well-known poet. After his speech someone from the audience asked him to recite a poem. Alwis Perera said that he would do so if any one in the audience inspired him with an original poem. A young man, who was the editor of a local poetry journal, stood up and recited a verse. Alwis Perera replied immediately with one of his own. This led to a kavi maduwa (an interactive poetry session where people who are present are free to recite their poems or debate with each other in verse) which lasted for about 45 minutes and in which a number of persons participated. This happened in the early 1950s in a town about 40 km from Colombo. Such events were common in the 1940s too. By 1950 there were a number of monthly poetry magazines being published in the country. Four of them, published from Colombo, were read nationwide. They were Dedunne (Rainbow), edited by P.B. Alwis Perera; Suwanda (Fragrance), edited by Kapila E. Seneviratne; Meewadaya (Honeycomb), edited by John Rajadasa; and Amba Vanaya (Mangrove) edited by Sirisena Maitipe. P.B. Alwis Perera edited the largest-selling poetry magazine and was also the most formidable figure at kavi maduwas. Poetry magazines were also published from provincial towns. Kavi maduwas were held occasionally in the towns and sometimes lasted a whole day. Poetry collections of well-known authors sold in large numbers. Kavi kolayas, which carried important or sensational incidents narrated in verse form, were sold at bus stands, Sunday fairs and so on by men who recited them aloud to attract customers. The poetry practised was metrical and the most popular metre was samudraghosha (every line has about 17 time units and ends with the same syllable and every stanza has four lines). Samudraghosha has been popular for at least 700 years. It was used in sandesa poems (the earliest model of which was Kalidasa's Meghadootam) which are supposed to have been inspired by the more recent Tamil Thudhu poems, in the Kotte period and before. (The Kotte period was the last period of Sri Lankan glory before the European invasions). The samudraghosha metre was used in most forms of popular poetry, such as pel kavi (poems sung at night while guarding fields), paru kavi (those sung while paddling boats) and goyam kavi (those sung while reaping paddy). THE important poets of the 1940s were Ananda Rajakaruna, S. Mahinda Thera and G.H. Perera. Ananda Rajakaruna was the seniormost of them. S. Mahinda Thera was a Buddhist monk, who wrote his name as 'Tibet Jathika S. Mahinda', which meant S. Mahinda of Tibetan nationality. 'S' stood for Sikkim. Apparently he called himself a Tibetan national rather than a Sikkimese national because Tibet was better known in Sri Lanka. He was ordained a monk after his arrival in Sri Lanka. A remarkable aspect of his career as a Sinhala poet was that he became an ardent nationalist. He was also a sympathiser of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP), which was founded in 1935 and which brought together the forward-looking and anti-imperialist sections of Sri Lankan society. G.H. Perera, a school teacher, was also a member of the LSSP, a nationalist and a social critic.
WHILE poetry magazines and newspapers catered to popular poetry, another poetic tradition was kept alive through its main proponent, Munidasa Cumaratunga, who died in 1944 but whose fame remains to this day. This was a more learned stream of poetry. Munidasa Cumaratunga is the foremost Sinhala grammarian of modern times. He was a teacher and later the principal of a teachers' training college. A question by one of his pupils, which Cumaratunga could not answer, set him on a voyage of study which enabled him to develop concepts of Sinhala grammar in a scientific manner. He also learnt Sanskrit on his own and gained a thorough knowledge of it. He started a magazine by the name of Subasa to promote the correct use of Sinhala. Cumaratunga was a versatile poet. He also edited and published several ancient Sinhala classics. He was a nationalist of a different order. He considered all Sri Lankans to be Helas, a term that could include all ethnic communities in the country. He and his associates founded an organisation called Hela Havula in order to promote their ideas. One of Cumaratunga's poems, "Piyasamara", written about his dead father, was considered by a distinguished contemporary, Martin Wickramasinghe, as a work fit for expansion into a mahakavya (epic). In a reinterpretation of Sri Lankan history by the Hela school, Vijaya, who is traditionally considered to be the founder of the Sri Lankan state, was no hero; he was only a usurper who temporarily seized a kingdom established long ago, one of the illustrious rulers of which was Ravana. It is interesting that Ravana is a hero of the Hela school in Sri Lanka as well as among Dravidian nationalists in India.
Another significant development in Sinhala poetry was the introduction of free verse. The most enthusiastic proponent of free verse in Sinhala was Siri Gunasinghe, a university don. Free verse was first introduced in Sinhala poetry by G.B. Senanayake in 1948. He inserted free verse between short stories in one of his collections. He did not call it poetry. He called it an intermediate composition between prose and poetry. However, Siri Gunasinghe introduced it with a vengeance in the mid-1950s. He considered metrical verse as worthless. He published two collections of verse called Mas le neti eta (Bones Without Flesh or Blood) and Abinikmana (Departure). Coming from a university academic, this criticism had a devastating effect on popular poetry. None of the earlier poets, including the erudite Munidasa Cumaratunga, had a university degree. Popular poets such as P.B. Alwis Perera tried to fight back but were unsuccessful. The decline of Sinhala poetry perhaps began with the publication of Mas le neti eta in 1956. However, this also brought in a culture of fine introspective poetry. One of the dominant poets of this tradition was Mahagama Sekara. He was also a song writer. Some of his songs enjoyed mass appeal when they were sung by the noted singer Pandit Amaradeva. Other important poets who came later were Ratnasri Wijesinghe and Gunadasa Amarasekera. Ratnasri Wijesinghe is also a song writer and some of his songs have been popularised by Amaradeva. Gunadasa Amarasekera, a dental surgeon, won literary laurels early in life. When he was 20 years old, his story was among two Sri Lankan entries selected for an international short story competition conducted by the New York Herald Tribune. Other poets who deserve special mention are Sunil Ariyaratne, Parakrama Kodituwakku, Monika Ruwanpathirana and Eric Ilayapparachchi.
Several Sinhala poets today seem unconcerned whether their poetry is actually "performed", but the effect is lost when poetry is not recited or acted out. Modern poetry is meant more to be read than recited. All these poets are talented, but they face a serious problem; Sinhala poetry has lost its mass appeal and the sales of books of poetry have dropped. A book of poetry today sells about 500 copies on an average. This is a sad situation in a country where such books sold thousands of copies a few decades ago. Perhaps Sinhala poetry needs to return to the metrical form, especially the samudraghosha metre, which today's poets appear to despise. After all, a sensitive and perceptive poet such as Wimalaratne Kumaragama wrote in the samudraghosha metre and he is a worthy model to emulate. Or is it too late in the day to save Sinhala poetry as a popular literary form? D.S.S. Mayadunne is a Sinhala journalist and translator who has rendered several classic works of Russian fiction into Sinhala. |
Poetry, in Sri Lanka
The Lost Song of the Lotus Child
"He sat down and wrote
on the reflective wall
plainly of things we could see
With no nectar in the sound
No quicksilver at the core
It can’t be poetry."
- Reconstruction of a Sigiri Graffito by Murphy Richards.
"The Mirror Wall"
Balava kara hala-la/Pehebara digu nuvan la. -‘Turn Give me a glance -And lay thy bright long eyes upon me." This is a fragment from a lost poem. There are two more shards from this poem coming to us through references in other works over a space of nearly fifteen centuries. From the slender evidence at hand, we may guess, the poem was written towards the end of the Anuradhapura period in Sri Lanka’s history. We can also infer, from a statement in the Sikha Valanda Vinisa — the oldest available text written here - that the poem may have been written by Asakda Mala, one of several poets mentioned in the quoted text, as being active in the sixth century. We also have reason to think, the poem may have been based on the Asankhawathie Jataka - one of the most beautiful stories in the Jatakapaliya; it is a fable about a beautiful child found lying on a lotus in a pond by an ascetic in the Himalayas. Rescued by the ascetic and nursed through childhood, the lotus child, blossoms into a ravishing beauty. Her very presence in the hermit’s ashram becomes an incongruity disturbing his meditation. Thereby hangs the tale, the eternal conflict between the spirit and the flesh, with the narrative moving discreetly and tantalizingly between illusion and reality. It is almost a film by the Japanese master of allegory, Kenji Mizoguchi.
In the Elu derivative of the name, Asankhawathie Jataka, becomes Asakdawa. The lost poem is thus referred to, in old classical texts, as Asakda Kava. We may infer that the poet, Asakda Mala, inherited his name from the story, he turned into a poem.
Now, fifteen hundred years later, Gunadasa Amarasekara, in a unique act of literary restoration, has reinvented the entire poem, based on the fragments available. His poem may not be a faithful replica of the original - that would be a miraculous deux-ex-machina, and therefore inconceivable - but the exercise certainly restores, we may be permitted to believe, the architecture and the verbal radiance (in Graham Gough`EDs marvellous phrase describing a certain quality in good poetry) of the original. That in itself is an achievement deserving the highest respect.
However Amarasekara’s exercise is not only one of poetry, but also of poetics. It is both a creative enterprise as well as an act of supreme scholarship. The poet in him has responded to the ‘nectar in the sound and quicksilver at the core’ of the little chips that have come to us across a vast gulf in time; he has also been aesthetically charmed and inspired, obviously, by the grace and beauty of the fable. But there is much more behind Amarasekara’s wonderfully readable poem. It is part of a search, which began in the early sixties, and has been pursued, intermittently though, because of his regular skirmishes into cultural polemics, with an evangelical passion and commitment. It is mandatory therefore, that we examine the latest creative act by Amarasekara, within this larger context.
Somewhere in 1962, Amarasekara, in an unprecedented act of literary recantation, disowned the entire canon of Peradeniya aesthetic theory in which he was nursed. With this salvo, the enfant terrible of Sinhala fiction and poetry who had laced his novels with Lawrencian erotica, and carved his verse in the anti-prosodic forms of modern western poetry, suddenly turned tables on his mentors. The critical artillery was directed with savage fury, not only against the blank verse of the Peradeniya poets, but also against the Colombo School, an earlier phase in contemporary Sinhala poetry drawing inspiration from Tagore and the Lake Poets of nineteenth century England. The free verse, spun in the precious heights of the Hantane hills - Amarasekara’s own exercise in this genre had the very self-explanatory title - Uyanaka Hinda Liyu Kavi : ‘Verses Written in a Pleasure Garden’ - were too cerebral and mechanical and lacked emotive power, according to the defector from those ranks, and the earlier metrical forms of the Colombo school, too synthetic and hollow; sawdust and tinsel from superficial versifiers, who failed to qualify as genuine poets.
The condition, central to works of both schools and which made the body of such poetry anaemic, lay, according to Amarasekara, in the deployment of a false poetic diction. Contemporary Sinhala poetry, has un-moored itself from the shores of a genuine and rooted poetic tradition, and lay adrift in a stagnant pool. The springs have dried up, and the water is polluted by spurious elements, and pale imitation. We have to rediscover and reactivate the springs of that poetic diction, cleanse the stagnant pool with the freshwater and let the river flow again. With this manifesto, Amarasekara embarked on a quest to rediscover, what he maintains, is the lost voice of the Sinhala muse.
It had been, for well over four decades now, a lone crusade, mainly because it lacked institutional support. Amarasekara began his journey, when academia was on the verge of a tragic slide into insipid political anarchy which, has now gone beyond recall. If the Peradeniya University, freshly sited in the idyllic seclusion of the Kandyan hills, provided a world of intellectual balance to inspire a renaissance in our cultural life of the fifties, Amarasekara’s call for action was echoed only by himself. In his poetry written over the last forty years, paralleling his odyssey and marking the pilgrim’s progress, ( Bhava Geetha, Sakvalihini, Amal Biso, and Avarjana), the lone crusader illustrates his principled aesthetic stance, with some pieces which remain the finest exercises in contemporary Sinhala verse.
Poetry, in Sri Lanka, has degenerated into banal lyric writing for bad music, because that is where instant popularity and the shekels lay. Other than Amarasekara, who is peerless, I can think of only three others who qualify genuinely to be called poets, and not versifiers; they are, Ariyawansa Ranaweera, Monica Ruwanpathirana, and Parakrama Kodituwakku, in that order.
For a proper evaluation of the latest poem by Amarasekara, it is crucial that we have a clear awareness of what he is after. In his survey of the evolution of Sinhala classical poetry, Sinhala Kavya Sampradaya, first published in 1996, Amarasekara has neatly synthesized into a single unbroken narrative, all the strands of his critical thinking on the issue. A central argument runs through this work of lucid reasoning and impressive scholarship. It is, that Sinhala poetry, from the earliest extant works, coming from as far back as the 12th century, and going by certain shreds of evidence dating back to a few centuries before, conforms to a broad pattern of prosody, imagery and metaphor. He claims for Sinhala poetry a textual universe, the basic contours of which, he draws through a wide network of references. In his conclusions on the subject, Amarasekara echoes, the views of Professor Paranavitana, in the latter’s monumental Commentary and Introduction to the Sigiri Graffiti.
"It is evident (therefore)," says Paranavitana, at the beginning of the section on ‘The Literary Quality of the (Sigiri) Verses’, in his long and scholarly introduction, with reference to earlier evidence he has presented the reader with, ‘that the extant literary works dating from the thirteenth century and later, more particularly the poems, were written in a language which imitated earlier models which are lost now."
Paranavitana’s treatise on the Sigiri Poems took scholarship on Sinhala verse beyond the 12th century, - where it had stopped earlier - to the verses scribbled on the mirror wall at the Lion Rock, by visitors to the place between the 6th and the 10th centuries. His awesome two-volume work opened a whole new world to scholarship and gave another dimension to the story of Sinhala verse. Paranavitana was no poet, and his translations of the Sigiri Poems into English were close to paraphrasing the originals. Yet what emerged was a startling record of a sophisticated poetic tradition, existing in the country, long before the muse begins to sing in the olas. But something more in these verses have endeared them to us over the years. They are so remarkably free of the ornate Sanskrit decor, which weigh so heavily on classical Sinhala poetry, beginning from the twelfth century. When reinterpreted today by an accomplished poet, the spare elegance of these verses, almost Haiku-like in their austere simplicity, comes across overwhelmingly, as in this exercise by Ashley Halpe:
The wind raged, denuding the trees
In their bud-time beauty -
Thousands, hundreds of thousands;
The jackals howled, the torrents
Roared down the Maleya mountains,
But the night glowed tender, the leaves
Copper-colour, in the shimmer
Of innumerable fireflies.
O long eyed ones
I read your message, but
What does it hold for me?
("SIGIRI POEMS", by Ashley Halpe, based on the translations by Senarat Paranavitana.)
Paranavitana concludes, "that it would not be correct to analyze these works of anonymous versifiers entirely on the canons of Sanskrit poetics" (Sigiri Graffiti/ Introduction/# 621)
In the Elu Sandas Lakuna, a critical work on poetics in Sinhala, extensively quoted by Paranavitana to explain his decoding of metric forms in the Sigiri Poems, there is in verse 115, a striking admission: "Innumerable are the metres in Sinhala prosody/Should we lay down the rule for poets - when a metre is not a metre?/In the dark of the treasure trove/Many are the gems/Sneaking rays of the sun reveal but few/The rest lay hidden in the unfathomable dark" (translation by the writer)
Could this mean that Sinhala poetic practice in those days had a much greater latitude of expression than the codified rules of Sanskrit poetics would permit? It is this freedom to sing, unfettered by the shackles of conventional prosody, that Amarasekara claims for Sinhala poetry. However he argues for a retreat to the common fund of imagery and metaphor; his rationale for such a return is based on the assumption, that poetic language could reach euphonic maturity and emotive power, only through continued currency.
One cannot mint poetic diction. It has to grow. In the fragments of Asakda Kava, that have survived, he had seen the glint of a poetic metal endemic to the genius of our language, and which he concludes, should form the core of our poetry. If we are to accept Paranavitana’s conclusion, that "the language in poetry in Sri Lanka, though influenced to a certain extent by current colloquial idioms and expression, nevertheless conformed broadly to a poetic idiom, which may have remained basically the same over a long period of time", it leads us to another. The Sigiri Poems, as well as Asakda Kava, inhabit a common textual universe. It is here that Amarasekara beckons us, for a rejuvenation of Sinhala poetry.
When we contemplate this well argued and clearly articulated call by Amarasekara, two major concerns surface. First is one of linguistic potency. Some, could be troubled, that a retreat to a diction, wrought in times long past, may strip language of the very qualities, which Amarasekara demands for effective poetic communication, euphonic meaning (artha dvani) and emotive power (bhavartha). In this backward longing - George Steiner`EDs beautiful expression in his essay, Silence and the Poet (‘Language and Silence’. Faber & Faber/1967) - Amarasekara repeats, the key strand in the body of work, both creative and critical, of his disowned mentor, Sarachchandra.
The latter, it would be interesting to note, began his long and illustrious career, as a poet, dramatist, social thinker, and university don, with an article written as far back as 1938, where he exhorts the Sinhala literary and art establishment, to revolt against, what he terms, the ‘Ascetic Idea’ of the Sinhala Theravada tradition. (Read Sena Thoradeniya’s well-researched Article: A critical assessment of Sarachchandra’s Ascetic Ideal, in Artscope/CDN/08 October 2003)
Sarachchandra’s entire body of work both creative and critical in the following decades, is a negation of this manifesto, presented at the dawn of his highly productive career. I may double quote from Thoradeniya’s article, some of the following pronouncements in Sarachchandra’s manifesto of 1938 (CDN Vesak Number. 1938).
"A simplification of our prose for popularity"; "an air of erudition over a literary composition, which scares the average reader"; "widening of the gap between the colloquial and the literary language will hinder an islandwide appeal"; "break from the Oriental weakness for grandiloquence and ornamentation"; "People of the twentieth century will not pause to read Sinhalese literature, if it retains the same flowery and cumbersome style of the old books"; "return back to the primitive purity and shortness of , preferring the language of artisans, countrymen and merchants before that of wits and scholars".
If the greatest Sinhala dramatist-poet of the twentieth century withdrew from this position, the reasons are not to be sought in his individual capacity as a creative artist. They are inherent in his thinking as a critic, and that in turn is a result of his misreading of the dynamics of Sinhala culture. It was here that Sarachchandra’s contemporary and senior colleague, Martin Wickremasingha, became the supreme master and interpreter. The Theravada discipline faulted by Sarachchandra as inhibiting the growth of the performing arts in this country, is the very source wherein lay the virtues of simplicity valued by him and later celebrated by Wickremasingha and almost codified into a credo. At the heart of Sarachchandra’s assertion, is this fatal contradiction, which made his seminal work in theatre, poetry, and criticism, a complete antithesis of his initial stance on aesthetics.
In the last century, Sinhala literature faced a dilemma; in forging a diction of poetic and critical discourse, if it abandoned its moorings with past tradition for a contemporary vigour and validity of subtext, where should it turn for nourishment? The spoken idiom and journalistic currency were still underdeveloped to be effective instruments of heightened communication. The language, rooted in a Buddhist ethic, and an agrarian culture, had still not come to terms with the newly emerging urban landscape. In Sri Lankan suburbia, Sinhala was not at home still. The songs of the Tower Hall Theatre, with lyrics disfigured to synchronize with the hybrid melodies of the Parsee plays, are a good illustration of the trauma of a tongue trying to twist itself into new phonetic shapes.
Martin Wickremasingha, led the movement towards a fusion between the pastoral and the urban linguistic strains. But his mission was accomplished exclusively in the realm of contemporary Sinhala fiction, and the language of critical prose. Sarachchandra was the poet, the greatest poetic sensibility in Sinhala of our time. The language, as spoken and written, at the time he began his creative odyssey, was not tuned enough to sing in the magnificent plays that still lay in his fertile imagination. The texts of Maname and Sinhabahu are as central to our poetic diction, as Shakespearean texts are, to the English language. But unlike in the works of the Elizabethan bard, in the texts of Sarachchandra, there is no room for the sound of the spoken word.
The tones and the cadences are essentially in the great tradition of Kalidasa. In the Elu phonetics of pure Sinhala, the major chord is missing. (Sunil Shantha, the greatest musical talent in contemporary Sinhala music, paid the supreme price for interlocking his melodies with the plain, almost basic sounds of Elu Sinhala) It cannot render the grand passions of epic drama. Listen to the lament of the abandoned princess in Maname, or to the agony of the dying Lion in Sinhabahu. The libretto sings in a Wagnerian rhetoric, which is possible only in the Sanskritized idiom of classical Sinhala poetry. The mainstream Sinhala language of today, is too anaemic and adulterated, to reach the upper register of poetic feeling; it has no oratorio, no cantata. (Please Mr. Khemadasa, spare us the pain and the embarrassment) The epic scale is missing.
Sarachchandra is therefore vindicated in his regression. But Amarasekara’s is a different profile. Even though nursed in the womb of Peradeniya, his defection was not entirely unnatural. His poetry in the early stages of his career, and his early fiction (Karumakkarayo, Jeevana Suwanda) before he lost himself in the mists of Lawrencian psychology, firmly situated him in the plebian aesthetic, propounded and practised by Martin Wickremasingha. His crossover was at a time when after an initial phase of creative camaraderie, the giants, Wickremasinghe and Sarachchandra, clashed mightily.
Amarasekara’s poetry in the aftermath of his ‘metamorphosis’ was marked by some startling experiments in reworking the prosody and metric forms of the folk tradition. His wonderful ballads, and lyric pieces, in the collection Amal Biso, restored to Sinhala poetry some of its lost oral charm, and spawned two generations of imitators. However no one could match the heightened poetry in these pieces, which always gleamed under the marble arches of rigorous metric form. In his narrative poem, Gurulu Vatha, he reworked the popular folk-ballad form with a lean and spare elegance of verbal structure, a model once again widely imitated, but never surpassed or even equaled.
But it is in his Avarjana, that Amarasekara reaches full bloom as a modern poet. What though is relevant here, is not so much the poetic value of this marvellous collection, but the attempt by the poet to carve a poetic diction out of the rhythms and expressions of contemporary speech. The first steps in this search for a simpler, more colloquial voice and timbre, for Sinhala poetry, could be found even in the earliest poetry of Amarasekara, written when he was still a major star in the Peradeniya firmament.
Bhava Geetha, written in 1955, contains some pieces where the poet draws freely from the fund of the spoken word. Even though the lyrical phrasing is wrought from the pastoral idiom of the southern village familiar to Amarasekara, and may not be a complete answer to the need for a more urbane diction, some pieces in Bhava Geetha, come readily to mind as the first successful attempts at singing in a new voice. ‘The Carter’s Song’ (Andura Ape Dukha Nivavi), ‘The Ode to Rain’ (Vessa), ‘A Streak of the Sun’(Hiru Res Dahara), are both, examples of fine poetry, and pioneering exercises, conducted with a complete awareness of what poetic diction should necessarily be.
Now, almost three decades after those poems were written, it may seem, Amarasekara has abandoned his quest, and resorted like Sarachchandra, to a backward leap. Could this be another confirmation that the Sinhala language in its present adulterated state has lost its sonar capacity to provide a serious poet with the high frequencies necessary to convey heightened emotion? Or could this be a misreading of Amarasekara’s latest poem, Asakda Kava, which should be seen, not as a breach in the poet’s search for the lost voice of the Sinhala muse, but as a significant phase in its continuation? These are serious questions, and cannot be answered simply. Here we come to the second of our concerns, and it is one of poetics.
At the heart of Sinhala poetry and consistent throughout its long history and troubled evolution, there is a deep division. It is something similar, perhaps, to the Leavisian breakdown of English poetry, referred to by Regi Siriwardena in his brilliantly lucid and concise monograph, The Pure Water of Poetry. It is a clear line running between, ‘the great tradition of Shakespeare, Donne, Marvell, Pope, the later Keats, Hopkins, Eliot’ as explained by Siriwardena, and the ‘lesser tradition - the line of Spencer, Milton, the early Keats, Shelley, Tennyson, Swinburne." The difference is marked by ‘a verbal density, rich metaphorical life, keen sensuous intensity" on one side and a ‘poetry of facile verbal melody, diffusion and imprecision of language, images that were decorative rather than organic’ on the other.
However, in the division in Sinhala poetry of the classical mode, it is the great tradition that stands incriminated, under the scrutiny of modern criticism, of the aesthetic flaws of, ‘facile verbal melody’ and other inorganic decorative motifs. The lesser tradition, after centuries of institutional discrimination, has been resurrected, especially through the sweeping critical surveys of Martin Wickremasinghe (Read, Chapter III in Sinhala Sahityaye Negeema - ‘The Evolution of Sinhala Literature’). It was Wickremasinghe who led the rediscovery of the spare classical purity and integrity of form in Guttila Kavya, as against the overdressed metaphorical affluence of Kavsilumina ‘The Crest Gem of Poetry’, still considered by some as the supreme achievement of classical Sinhala verse. It was he who laid bare the grace and the charm of the Sinhala folk tradition and made us listen to its simple patterns of verbal melody. (Amarasekara dedicates his pioneering effort in reworking these metric forms and rhythms of common speech, Amal Biso, to Martin Wickremasinghe, for initiating him into the pleasures of Sinhala folk poetry)
Wickremasinghe’s critical wrath was directed with no reservation at the three earliest extant works of classical Sinhala verse, Muvadev Dava, Sasa Dava, and Kavsilumina. To him they were crude imitations of Sanskrit models, totally devoid of organic integrity, hollow duplicates which in the final reckoning, is bad poetry. His observations, made as far back as 1946, when the poems, which came under his scrutiny were considered holy icons beyond reproach, would have infuriated the Oriental scholars at the time. The three chapters on classical Sinhala poetry in his monumental survey of Sinhala literature, Sinhala Sahityaye Negeema, remained the authoritative statement on the subject, until Amarsekara developed it into a more comprehensive discourse with his Sinhala Kavya Sampradaya (The Tradition of Sinhala Verse).
The strand in Sinhala poetry, decreed as the ‘lesser tradition’ - chula sampradha - by the Oriental gurus, became, largely due to the work of Wickremasinghe, the major source of inspiration for Amarasekara and his generation and for those who followed. However reading through his dissertation on Sinhala poetry, one gets the feeling that Amarasekara is after something which lies beyond the simple and orthodox division of the ‘great tradition’ and the ‘lesser tradition’. The search seems to be for a poetic mode wherein the linguistic, metrical, and prosodic elements are seamlessly fused. Amarasekara seems to have found such an integrity in the splintered fragments of the original Asakda Kava. His first impressions are of the spare elegance of language, and (arising out of that) a simplicity of melodic line and architecture.
Paranavitana, in his study of the Sigiri Poems, observes similar qualities in the verses scribbled by anonymous poets on the mirror wall; these verses seem to draw from the common template of poetic sensibility and diction, that Amarasekara is after. It is a sensibility far more restrained than the sensuality and sonorous music of Sanskrit poetry. Paranavitana describes this restraint as ‘refinement’ and ‘good taste’. It would be more correct to conclude that it is a result of the spartan ethic of Theravada Buddhism. It is an austere simplicity that one finds consistently in Sinhala folk poetry. To confirm Amarasekara’s contention, that this unadorned, bare simplicity, has its ancestry in a poetic tradition, current as far back as the sixth century AD - the time when the Sigiri verses were first scribbled, and the original Asakda Kava may have been composed - a random sample from the mirror wall would suffice.
Asimi dun hasun - hasun se vil dut
Mula la ma sanahi - pul piyuman se bamar dut.
‘A fluttering swan who has seen a lake, was me,
As I listened to thy message,
And my bewildered heart, a crazed bee
Who has seen the lotus flowers in full bloom’ (tr. by the writer)
As I attempted to translate the original into English, I realized it would be impossible to convey in another language, the sound patterns in the Sinhala verse. The repetition of the word hasun, to convey two different meanings - the first is ‘message’ and the second means ‘swan’ - draws on a rich plurality of meaning in Sinhala, and imparts to the poem a delicate sibilance, perfectly in tune with the sentiments expressed; the expression ‘The lotus flowers in full bloom’ can never convey the sexuality inherent in the combined syllabic chord of the Sinhala expression, pul piyuman; and the English word ‘bee’ bleaches completely the full bodied resonance of the Sinhala, ‘bamar’ which practically vibrates with the mating cry of the creature it simulates so perfectly.
Amarasekara, having traced and identified this poetic diction for which he claims an indigenous root, wrought and honed in the Theravada Buddhist ethic of ascetic simplicity, now attempts, to link it firmly with a poetic form, which though coming from Sanskrit prosody, seems to have reached its peak of expressive power within the canvas of Sinhala verse.
Of the 687 verses on the Mirror Wall deciphered by Paranavitana, over 650, are in a two-line stanza form, referred to as Gee, in Sinhala poetry. Due to its wide application by the Sigiri poets, Paranavitana, in his introduction, goes into an exhaustive study of this form. Some of his conclusions, arrived at, more through the clinical approach of the most outstanding archaeological mind of our times, and therefore more acceptable in academic terms than aesthetic conjecture, do synchronize perfectly, with the views expressed by Amarasekara. (I do not rule out the possibility here of Amarasekara drawing inspiration from Paranavitana’s scholarship on the subject, first published a few years before the poet embarked on his historic search. I must add however, that Amarasekara’s views never struck me as being intellectual affectation; to me they were the genuine feelings of a poet in search of a voice, and his poetry, bears this out)
The veteran archaeologist, sifting through all evidence with the meticulous care of one digging up the past, first concludes that the Gee form, though originating in Sanskrit poetry, acquired greater importance and independence of idiom in Sri Lanka. He maintains (Sigiri Graffiti/Intro/ #597), that the difference between metres within the generic form of Gee may not be as sharp and clear cut as in Sanskrit, Geethi, from which the local version descends. He also points out that the definition given to this form in the Graffiti, differs from the definition given in the Elu Sandas Lakuna, the Sinhala text on poetics based on a Sanskrit original. He firmly rules, that a Gee, within the context of local poetry, ‘must be treated as formed of two and only two metrical lines’ as against the definitions in Esl. (SG/Intro/ # 573), where the term is applied to both the couplet and the quatrain as in Sanskrit.
Again, Paranavitana says, ‘that in the early stages of Sinhala verse, the Gee form enjoyed undisputed supremacy, but in the following centuries, it was overtaken by Sivupada (quatrain)’. (SG/Intro/ # 577) The Sandesa poems, beginning with Mayura Sandesaya, in the fourteenth century, were written essentially in the Sivupada form. The most important point made and substantiated forcefully by Paranavitana, is that the Gee form is free of metric rigidity, and gives free play for the poetic imagination. He lays much emphasis on this laxity of metric discipline, reflected in the Sigiri compositions, and there is a note of approval here.
‘A pada, is that much of a line in a Gee, which can be recited without a pause - caesura (yati). The rhythm of a pada in a Gee need not be the same as that of another - and so with length. This irregularity is the keynote of the Gee metres, but it is an irregularity which should create a pleasing sound effect’. (SG/Intro/#594)
Paranavitana also draws our attention to certain poetic values as reflected in the Sigiri Poems, both in the poetry itself as well as in certain comments within some poems. I began this article, using as epigram, a rephrasing of a Sigiri poem by Richard Murphy. I would like at this point to revert to the original translation by Paranavitana on which Murphy has based his poem. I do so because, in Paranavitana’s near paraphrasing of the original Sinhala verse, the meaning is clinically bared.
He thinks he wrote a poem,
But isn’t this an empty song?
Writing his impressions,
Just as he saw them. (Sigiri Graffiti/Verse. # 492)
To describe something as seen is not poetry says this anonymous versifier, alluding to an intertextual template, which governed his craft in those days. What then was considered poetry? Here Paranavitana goes into a long discourse on two schools of poetry that existed then. It was a debate conducted strictly within the canon of Sanskrit poetics, and the issue was between Svabhavokthi and Vakrokthi. The first, advocated a simple bare diction, to portray things as they are. The second was for the orthodox ‘cultured’ poetic diction, with its ornate figures, where ‘implied meaning’ - vakrokthi - was the soul.
Bhamaha, the great Sanskrit guru of poetics, was scornful of the ‘naturalist’ school, and called such poetry mere varta - reportage. He referred contemptuously to such poets, ‘who can do nothing but compose jati - as numerous as the dogs who bark from every house’. Mahimbatta, the guru from the opposite camp, maintained, in a spirited defence of Svabhavokthi, ‘that it is a description bringing out the very soul - svalakshana, the thing itself - of any object which the intuition of the poet grasps’. (SG/Intro/#636) In a comparative judgement of these two schools of poetics, Paranavitana, for the first, and perhaps the only time, puts his foot wrong. He slips, not due to any partiality to any one side - there is no shift in his cool objective stance - but because of a fatally wrong reading of the concept of Savabhavokthi, which he confuses with the western idea of ‘naturalism’. This misconception leads him to another.
In Sanskrit poetics, there is an adage that may sound strange today, if read out of its original context. It lays down the condition, ‘that the language of the poet should not be that of the uncultivated man of the village’. In the ancient world, the city, was the repository of knowledge, the centre from where all culture radiated, where the king ruled from. The village was the primitive backwater, the forest-ridden wilderness, or the wasteland where life was nasty, brutish and short. Here no Valmiki or Homer ever sang, no Socrates, no Kautilya, ever preached. To extract a rule from such a context and apply it to ancient Sri Lanka, where the temple in the village was the font of all knowledge and wisdom (most of the Sigiri poets were from villages identifiable even today and from rural monasteries), and the city was only a holy centre, and never one of secular wealth, could be disastrous.
But this was precisely what Paranavitana has done. The facile confrontation of ‘urban sophistication against rural rusticity’ and the total misreading of Svabhavokthi, are both applied in evaluating the poetry in Sigiri verses. Thus, into the centre of Paranavitana’s towering achievement, there falls the shadow of a tragic mistake. In failing to see that Svabhavokthi, even as propounded by the Sanskrit gurus, was not bland reportage, but a poetic attitude, a figure - alamkara, where the intuition of the poet - the gift of prathibha, reveals the inner essence of the real world - the prakurthi, the great explorer was denied a glimpse of the verbal radiance in the poems he was deciphering, with, what is now accepted as an act of legendary scholarship.
The elements Paranavitana revealed in the Sigiri poems, and the last one he missed in them, are the virtues integral to that poetic tradition Amarasekara was trying to unearth. In re-inventing the lost masterpiece, he was attempting to give concrete form to those values. Within this context, his ‘backward longing’ is integral to the main focus of his search. If Sarachcandra retreated to past forms, it was to the Maha Sampradha, the great tradition rooted in Sanskrit aesthetics. Amarasekara is essentially in search of a more local voice. However, both were forced back, in my opinion, by the inadequacies of the Sinhala language, in its contemporary form. And that is my major concern.
Whilst paying my tribute to the poet-scholar in Gunadasa Amarasekara, I would sound the alarm of my central concern all over again. Could the language of Asakda Kava, with all the poetic charms it embodies, and so full of ‘the pure water of poetry’ (the unforgettable phrase quoted by Regi Siriwardena from Ian Jack, quoted in turn according to Regi, by his English Professor, Lyn Ludowyke in describing a particular quality in the poetry of early Wordsworth, and the full line being ‘The glass seems empty, because it is so full of pure water’) sing to us today? Shouldn’t there be a rearrangement of the orchestra to create another sound, perhaps not as sweet as in the song of the lotus child, but more robust and more relevant? If the Sinhala language has, in the degenerating years of the last half a century, lost its texture, its timbre, and its soul-music, couldn’t you at least, dear poet, recharge it, or strain the water of its impurities, and make it sparkle once again? You are working at a height, few Sinhala writers in our time have ever reached. It must be pretty lonely up there. But you must continue to sing.
May the rain girls of the lion rock, keep you company.
This piece is my homage, to Regi Siriwardena - the greatest critical mind in Sri Lanka of our time - who guided me, to the higher levels of poetry, and poetics.
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ReplyDeleteThe claims of Hela Havula movement has to be seriously considered.. Yes, the claim that Sinhala was not influenced by any other languages can't be true.. But it sure is one of the oldest languages on the planet!
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