Focus on books:

Understanding the aspects of Sinhala letter

Professor Sunanda Mahendra

BOOKS: Though quite a number of books and learned articles have been written on the subject of grammar, linguistics, and other related subject areas pertaining to the structures of words and letters in Sinhala language, most of them have been confined to learned individuals connected with those fields over the years, especially those who claimed themselves as erudites of grammatical rules and tools in etymology, phonetics, linguistics and graphology.

Though we are constant users of words, phrases and terms in various manifold verbal patterns over mass media and other channels of communication to address our own companions or recipients, we little know the intrinsic meanings therein and the developments taken over the years as to how we use demarcating them into groups and the ways and means of understanding some of the latent rhetoric linked with the particular uses.

As such I presume the subject area called linguistics from its original patterns paved the way to many more categories such as socio linguistics psycholinguistics. It is the duty of the linguists to help the scholars to obtain knowledge as to how the uses came to be, and the changing aspects connected with them.

Professor J. B. Disanayaka has been engaged in this venture over the last four decades or more as a teacher of linguistics at the university levels and trained as a researcher in the most modern techniques at home and abroad dedicating his lifetime to this study with a holistic view on the uses as connected in the fields of folklore uses and other aligned areas perhaps untouched by other scholars.

His intention is to clarify scientifically how the Sinhala letter evolved and is placed in its modern context undergoing the changes over the years.

Repertoire

The latest addition to the repertoire of books written by him on this subject is titled Sinhala Akshara Vicaraya [which he titles in English as Sinhala Graphology, 2006, Sumitha Publication].

This is an attempt in ten chapters split into small units for the sake of better and clear understanding with examples to outline the areas such as the origin of language, development of a language, etymological and structural aspects of words, the types of letters, the evolution of an alphabet in comparison with other linguistic groups the special terminologies denoted to letters as they change from time to time and the changing aspects of words depending on the situations, events, experiences and patterns and the resultant uses and the formations of new letters and how they came to be written.

All these are taken into consideration with special reference to the use of Sinhala letter and the formation of verbal patterns via this evolution. He makes the reader feel at the outset that the subject is not at all a high-flown pedantic exercise though some have tried to make it look so, indicating it as a specialised area in darkness confined to pundits.

He raises some of the common issues pertaining to the use of the words and phrases and examines them in this background and tries to respond to such issues as to the origin of the Sinhala language examining the verbal patterns over the centuries to address whether it has any connection to Indian languages or stemming out of an Indian language or solely originated in the Sri Lankan soil by the pre-Vijaya generation of settlers.

For this, he makes use of the various available sources, such as rock edicts and inscriptions, and earliest textual writings. His mainstay of opinion seems to be the liberal acceptance of the change of linguistic patterns from time to time, as a neutral phenomenon giving vent to many new words and mixed verbal patterns, which cannot be made to look a purified from its original stance.

Thus the term ‘living language’ [jivabhashava] is introduced more meaningfully to the modern day reader. In this venture he compares the various ways and means of the change of other languages in their respective social conditions in a historical perspective. Thus the changes that took place in Latin and Roman context are traced side by side with those of the Indian context.

He categorises some words into groups as used in Pali, Vanga [Bengali], Oriya and Sinhala, and examines subjectwise how this phenomenon takes place. For example, he takes the term Suriyo [sun] in Pali, Surjo in Vanga, Surjiya in Oriya, Suriya or Hiru in Sinhala.

Linguistic groups

In this manner he subdivides words into linguistic groups connecting them to nature [svabhadhramaya] parts of the body [sariranga] animal world [satva lokaya] human world [manushya lokaya] plants [vraksha lata] colours [varna] indicating that the development of a letter depends on the cross cultural aspects as well.

As the lineage of the Sinhala letter is of Indian origin, it is inevitable that it has this inter cultural aspect of affiliation which inevitably becomes a significant factor in this study.

He also makes use to the full, some of the views held over the years as to the use of the mixture of Pali and Sanskrit words in Sinhala language as against the pure Hela terms, making references to the pioneer findings of scholars such as Geiger [A grammar of the Sinhalese language] and Paranavitana [Early Brahmi Inscriptions].

He focuses attention on the uses of words and the changing nuances of the same as they come to be used by special groups of people in professions and social categories.

This book too gives new insights to such areas as morphology [pada vicharaya] syntax [vakya vicharaya] semantics [artha vicharaya] a subject which is becoming more popular in the field of mass communication as linked to the use of language and semiotics [sagnavedaya] and the modern use of words and letters for the computer era.

Perhaps some other scholars of allied areas could take over from Disanayaka some of these aspects as intensive research areas in creative communication meanings in literature, a study which is now stagnant with pseudo-modernistic trends misunderstood by the trend setters especially via newspapers and minor iconoclastic groups called ‘kandayam’.

Disanayaka takes the reader into a classification of the Sinhala letters and the uses of Sinhala language as observed in the earliest stages of its evolution in our country tracing the forms as found in the earliest texts to Sigiri Graffiti where a clear cut creative use of the poetic diction is observable. This he names as Sigiri Sinhalaya.

Then he turns to more modern aspects which cover provinces such as the dialect used in the hill country naming them as Udarata Sinhalaya. He also classifies the uses of words and phrases into two broad categories such as the more poetical uses or rhetorical uses called kavlekiya and more prosaic and worldly verbal usages termed as levlakiya.

Then his attention is drawn towards the contemporary use of language where mass media play a vital role called Samakalina Sinhalaya.

While classifying the language structures as utilised by the masses over the years in this manner Disanayaka enters into a more modernistic territory taking the contemporary uses as most controversial from a puristic standpoint where he makes the reader feel that it is the duty to face the computer and internet technology resourcefully and place them in that perspective without turning the clock back and shows how it could be done illustratively [pp349 - 380].

Though a lot of hard linguistic searching had gone into the contents of this book to illuminate the graphological aspects of the Sinhala letter which is the focal point, is not only a contribution to the main subject of linguistics, but also to the allied areas such as folklore, ritual, communication, sociology and creative expressions in popular culture.

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