{"id":106010,"date":"2020-08-28T15:54:26","date_gmt":"2020-08-28T22:54:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=106010"},"modified":"2020-08-28T15:54:26","modified_gmt":"2020-08-28T22:54:26","slug":"pure-tamils-sinhalized-tamils-in-sri-lanka-a-theory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/08\/28\/pure-tamils-sinhalized-tamils-in-sri-lanka-a-theory\/","title":{"rendered":"Pure Tamils + \u2018Sinhalized-Tamils\u2019 in Sri Lanka: a theory"},"content":{"rendered":"

C. Wijeyawickrema, LL.B., Ph.D.<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

Where is Lanka, a spot with lowest gravity on\nearth, located on these two maps of the ancient world?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Sinhala [language]\u2019s s<\/em><\/strong> survival as a clearly Indo-Aryan language can be considered a minor miracle of linguistic and cultural history\u201d<\/strong> –James W. Gair, Studies in South Asian Linguistics: Sinhala and other South Asian languages, 1998, Chapter 14: How Dravidanized was Sinhala phonology? Pages 185-199). <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

[Vigneswaran,\nis known for his unusual habit of uttering some sloka in Sanskrit, before he starts\nhis prepared speeches aimed at audiences in the Sinhala South. Of course, no\none, but he only understood, what it meant! \nHe deviated from this practice, in his maiden talk at the 2020\nparliament. The strategy behind this change of behavior could be multiple. One,\nis to pick up a verbal fight with others in the parliament, so that he is ahead\nof others such as Abraham Sumanthiran or the Ponnambalam grandson, in competition\nfor the Tamil genocide claim in Sri Lanka. And, this way, he could go home (not\nin Jaffna but in Colombo) to his two Sinhala daughters-in-law, and in turn using\nthem as body guards, take a psychological revenge from his two sons for polluting\nhis Tamil race, by their repetitive acts of love is blind. After all, his\ngranddaughter wanted to be with her mother\u2019s father and not with Vigs at the\nparliamentary party photo op!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As\nthe proverbial, holding the tiger\u2019s tail goes, Vig\u2019s strategy is going to boomerang\non him, because he will face a constant barrage of counter attacks, destroying\nhim ideologically, the likes of which the island has not seen since Ponnambalam\nArunachalam initiated Tamil separatist agenda in 1923\/4. Vig is instrumental in\nintroducing a new Great Panadura Debate (1873) into the well of the 2020\nparliament, no matter what the black-white remnants and the dollar agents in it\nthink. In this connection, I was able to uncover an essay, I wrote over a\ndecade ago (which I know needs updating with the new ideas now propping up on\nRavana and the island of Lanka), which is relevant to this Vigneswaran\u2019s love-hate\ncontroversy]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PART-I<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his opinion page letter (Island, 1\/14\/08), the American-living anthropology professor H. L. Seneviratne (HLS) stated\nthat (1) Sinhalese are a variety\u201d of Tamils and (2) that Sinhala language is\nTamil, in its grammatical and syntactic structure, with a 20% Tamil vocabulary.\nOn opinion number 2, no one denies Tamil influence on the Sinhala language. The\ntraditional question has been the extent of this influence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are about 30 (?) Tamil words in Sinhala. This is\nnot even half the number of Portuguese and Dutch words, respectively, in use in\nSinhala. If 30 words are 20% then Sinhala has a total of how many words? Does\nborrowing words make the borrower the lender? Over 50% of English common words\ncame from non-Anglo-Saxon stock (The mother tongue English and how it got that\nway, Bill Bryson, 1990).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The disunity and jealousies amongst the Kandy chiefs were\nthe reasons to have a Tamil king in the first place. Just like Muttu\nCoomaraswamy\u2019s dress impressed Queen Victoria, those Kandy chiefs must have taken\nTamil tuition to impress their Tamil king and his queens. When Karawa and\nGovigama English-educated were fighting between them for the new Colombo seat,\na Tamil got elected. I give these examples to show that as a professor HLS\nshould not have cited such high-class behavior to support his theory. Could he\ngive examples from folk songs or from Pal Kavi? Sinhala language belongs to\nvillagers and not to feudal or Colombo chiefs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1932, the late Theodore G. Perera (TGP) published a\nbook titled, the Sinhalese Grammar\u201d to dispel the theory in vogue at that time\nthat the source of Sinhala language was Tamil. He presented evidence to show\nits Indo-Aryan origin. In more recent times, at least two American linguists\nstudied Sinhala in depth and one of them, James Gair considered it a linguistic\nmiracle that Sinhala language thrived despite a massive Tamil onslaught. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

HLS\u2019 opinion number 1 above, is too simplistic and provocatively\nEelam-oriented. It goes beyond the usual India-based explanations on Sri Lankan\nhistory given by the English-educated, Western-oriented ruling elites in the\ncolonial Ceylon. Thus, the late professor G. C. Mendis, a Christian, divided\nthe pre-1505 history of Ceylon into four periods of North and South Indian\nhistory. Michael Roberts\u2019 doctoral research-based book on the history of the\nKarawa caste in Ceylon showed how more recent South Indian migrants settled\ndown on the western coastal areas subsequently became the Karawa and Durawa\ncastes. When the last Tamil king of Kandy was captured in 1815, the two natives\npresent at the scene happened to be ancestors of SWRD and JRJ who had\nnon-Sinhala origins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sinhalese must have had a lot of Tamil and even\nPortuguese blood in them. The mother of either the king Vijayabaahu I or the\nParaakramabaahu, the great, was a Tamil. The word urumaya\u201d of JHU is a Tamil\nword. But a blanket extension of this Tamil influence to theorize without facts\nthat the Sinhala-Buddhist heritage was actually a Sinhalized-Tamil heritage is unprofessional\nand unreasonable. England was populated by Germanic tribes (the Frisians, the\nSaxons, the Jutes and the Angles) beginning in the 5th<\/sup> century A.D.,\nbut Englishmen today do not become Germans (map on page 6 in the Cambridge\nEncyclopedia of the English Language by David Crystal, 1995).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The purpose of this reply is to present to the reader\ninformation available out there which does not support HLS\u2019 theory. In fact,\nthe new information uncovered by researchers about the Sinhala language could\nprovide a basis for a new paradigm. Instead of the blind belief that everything\ncame from India to Sri Lanka\u201d it is perhaps time to ask whether it was\npossible that Sinhala went from Sri Lanka to India or even to\nAsia\/Europe?\u201d  The origin of Sinhala could\nbe Indo-European or older, and not Indo-Aryan. Such questions got buried under\nan anti-Mahavamsa movement deployed in the guise of a theory of Sinhala\nBuddhist chauvinism as fodder for international consumption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PART \u2013 II<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anti-Mahavamsa movement in\nSri Lanka<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The humiliation of native Sinhala-Buddhist culture\nbegan after1505, until a resistance movement slowly emerged by way of revival\nof Buddhism in the 1840s-1880s of which the Great Panadura Debate in 1873 was a\nclimax event. An anthropology guru of HLS, Gananath Obeysekara, called this\nProtestant Buddhism.\u201d The behavior of Christian colonial masters and their\nlocal supporters, the Christian-born\/converted local elites, adversely affected\nthe Sinhala-Buddhist heritage in the island, but one cannot say there was an\norganized anti-Mahavamsa movement in Ceylon at that time. White rulers and\nwhite archeologists did not have any reason to distort island\u2019s history. But with\nthe introduction of universal franchise and the territorial representation to\nthe State Council in 1931, replacing communal representation which began in\n1832, the majority Sinhala-Buddhists gained voting strength after 450 years of\ndiscrimination and oppression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the Legislative Council debated the motion\npresented by a Hindu Tamil (P. Ramanathan) to make Vesak a public holiday in\nthe colonial Ceylon (1885), with the backing of an American Olcott, the Sinhala\nrepresentative A. L. de Alwis, a Christian, opposed it. The Governor Gordon,\nwho was for the motion said he was embarrassed by de Alwis\u2019 behavior. Colombo\nruling families opposed the grant of universal franchise, free education,\nlabour rights and other welfare measures, but 1931 was the end of 100 years of\ncommunal governance. Those who held power under colonial patronage began to\norient and emerge themselves as an anti-Mahavamsa movement in the\nsoon-to-be-freed colony. The constitutional coup of the English-educated locals\nwith the backing of governor Manning in 1923-24, and the Christian who reverted\nback to Hinduism, GG Ponnambalam\u2019s demands, were the early tips of this\niceberg. A long-awaited reaction to this arose in the 1960s as Buddhist National\nForce (BJB) spearheaded by the late L. H. Metthananda who focused on an\nofficial church document titled Catholic Action.\u201d By the early 1970s, traces\nof a theory of Sinhala Buddhist Chauvinism began to appear, first in the\nwritings of Mrs. Vishaakaa Kumaari Jayawardhana (daughter of an English\nmother). It spread like wildfire all over the world after the government\nblunder in1983 when the president of the country told the people to defend\nthemselves. Thus, Prabakaran and his web sites could freely propagate against a\nMahavamsa mentality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eelam politics and\nBoston-area professors<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a follower of HLS\u2019 political anthropology works in\nprint, I am not surprised by his new theory. HLS, his principal guru S. J.\nTambiah, the late political science professor A. J. Wilson, history professors\nC. R. de Silva and Michael Roberts (Australia), (K. Indrapaala is a recent\naddition), could be grouped as a network of Boston area professors who suppressed\u201d\nhistorical facts in their professorial public writings. For example, SJT in his\nBuddhism betrayed book mentioned in detail, the1967 Dodampe mudalali coup and\n1968 Colvin-Leslie Kollupitiya march against the Tamil Language Reasonable Use\nRegulations, but ignored completely the real coup by the Chritian-Tamil police\nand navy officers in 1962 and the infamous Imbulgoda march by JRJ in 1958\nagainst the Reasonable Use of Tamil Language Bill. To give another example, in\nhis book the work of kings\u201d (which he dedicated to his guru SJT) HLS alleged\nthat the mess of ethnic clash in Sri Lanka was due to the actions of two\nsolitary monks, Vens. Yakkaduwe Pragnaraama, and Walpola Raahula. HLS thanked\nWR for help given to him in writing his book, but WR died before his book was\npublished, thus, losing an opportunity to respond. The Boston group was\ninfluential enough to convince the Massachusetts Legislature to pass a\nresolution against the government of Sri Lanka for allegedly oppressing the\nTamils (Massachusetts House Journal for 1979, page 977 reads: \u2026 Resolution memorializing the President and\nthe Congress to protest and utilize the powers of their offices to rectify the\ngross injustices which have been inhumanely inflicted on the Tamils of Sri Lanka\u201d<\/em>).\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Colombo black-whites\n(coconuts – white inside, brown outside) <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most culpable conduct of these professors and\ntheir Colombo contacts was their hiding the fact that the problem in Sri Lanka\nwas a problem of mismanagement by the Colombo ruling families, who created and later\nbenefitted from a clash between the Tamil and Sinhala languages. If in India,\nGandhi was for a unifying language despite Hindi was spoken by only 30-40% of\nthe people, making Sinhala the unifying language could not be a disaster for\nTamil-speaking people in the island. By 1948 there were two countries in Ceylon\u2014the\nEnglish-speaking Colombo country and the Sinhala-Tamil-speaking village\ncountry. The ruling elites and their officer agents made sure the continued\nexistence of this division by converting English versus Swabhasa clash into a\nSinhala-Tamil conflict. Ironically, Col. Karuna finally exposed this game by a\nsimple demand\u2014Give us what Colombo gets. He did not ask for a homeland. The\nlate Kumar Ponnambalam, (a Christian?), on the other hand felt that Tamils have\naspirations.\u201d The destruction of Sri Lanka since 1948 could be explained not\nby a Sinhala-Buddhist chauvinism paradigm but by a Colombo black-white paradigm.\nBecause the professors, officers, peace mudalalis, UN agency officers, foreign\nambassadors in Colombo and the human rights INGOs are predominantly, if not 100%,\nChristians they failed to understand that a Sinhala Buddhist cannot be a\nviolator of human rights. Unlike faith-based Christian and Islam where human life\nis uni-directional (linear) in Buddhism life is cyclical and everything is\nimpermanent (sabbe sankaara aniccaa<\/em>).\nThis was the basis for a harmony of different faiths at the Buddhist village\nlevel. This was why 50% of the Tamil population in Sri Lanka lives among\nBuddhists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the church organization run like a corporate\nbusiness, and the last Pope\u2019s desire to convert Asia into Christianity in the\n21st<\/sup> century,\u201d I am only pointing out the bad behavior of Christian politicians,\nthe powerful and the Colombo ruling families. I am not blaming in this essay\nthe average Sinhala or Tamil Catholic or Christians who have suffered along\nwith the Sinhala Buddhists in the Non-Colombo country of the island. For example,\nthe Marxists brains at least from 1935 to 1964 were active in anti-Mahavamsa\naffairs irrespective of their ethnicity. A section of the JVP is still\nstruggling to overcome its anti-Mahavamsa mind set. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

PART \u2013 III<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Types of evidence against\nHLS\u2019 theory<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. Ven. Ellawala Medhananda\u2019s\nresearch<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The history of Sri Lanka and its North and East that Ven.\nEllawala Medhananda Thero has painstakingly constructed after forty years of\narchaeological field work (Our heritage of the North and East of Sri Lanka,\n2003) is radically different from a Tamil rooted ethnic origin of its settlers.\nThe scripts found on hundreds of rock caves that he was able to trace and\nrecord, did not support a Tamil theory. Some donors of these cave dwellings (to\nBuddhist priests) had Tamil names. If all donors at that time had a common\nTamil origin, then all of them must have had Tamil-based names. These cave\ndonations span from the 3rd<\/sup> century B.C to 5th<\/sup> century\nA.D. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The oldest Brahmi scripts were found in Anuradhapura\n(5th<\/sup> century B.C.) which was not Tamil Brahmi. Recently, Brahmi\nscripts were found in Tamil Nad at Adichanallur near Tirunelveli (www.hindu.com\/2004\/05\/26\/stories<\/a>).\nIt would be interesting to see if they are older than what was found at\nAnuradhapura. The Indian archaeologists expect that the carbon-14 dating would\ntake Adichanallur ruins to 7th<\/sup> or 8th<\/sup> century B.C. HLS\u2019\ntheory may have to wait until these results are out and analyzed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Theodore Perera and Sinhala\n(1932)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second source is the Sinhala Grammar book written\nby Theodore G. Perera (TGP), published by M.D. Gunasena Co. Ltd. in 1932. This\nwork was supported by Maha Mudaliyar J. P. Obeyesekere. In a chapter titled,\nHistory of the Sinhalese language\u201d TGP summarized facts known by him at that\ntime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TGP mentioned the purpose of his book was\nto dispel the theories in vogue at that time that Sinhala was a derivative of\nTamil. At that time no one dared to say that the Sinhalayas were former Tamils!\nWhile admitting the influence of Tamil on Sinhala, TGP provided evidence to\nshow the dissimilar origins of Tamil and Sinhala. For example, he supplied a\ntable with 16 Sinhala words comparing them with Sanskrit, Maagadhi (Pali),\nGreek, Latin and English (example: nama (Sinhala)-naaman (Sanskrit), naama (M),\nonoma (G), nomen (L), name (E), peyar (in Tamil). Only word that matched was\nata (eight) which is ettu in Tamil. The archaeological commissioner of Ceylon\nat that time, Dr. Goldschmidt concluded Sinhalese is now proved to be a\nthorough Aryan dialect, having its nearest relations in some of the dialects\nused in Asoka\u2019s inscriptions.\u201d TGP felt that Sinhalese is decidedly an Aryan\nlanguage not only on the side of its vocabulary, but in its orthography,\ngrammar, rhetoric, and prosody.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

TGP thought that by the time of the arrival of Ven.\nMahinda (son of King Ashoka) Sri Lanka had a language based on some north\nIndian language which he called Sinhala. This language was also taken to the\nMaldives and Lakadive Islands (the language of the Maldives Islands (Divehi) is\na Sinhala dialect). TGP said that the commentaries to the Pali Tripitaka were\nfirst written in Sinhala at the time of Ven. Mahinda, which (commentaries) were\nlater translated to into Pali by the Ven. Buddhaghosha. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

TGP pointed out that the Thonigala inscription\n(B.C. 161-137 or B.C. 88-76) used the same Brahmi script found in the Ashoka inscriptions\nin India. He thought these Brahmi letters as well as the Devanaagari and other\nnorth Indian language letters were based on Semitic-Phoenician letters. If\nTamil was the source language of Sinhala, then Sri Lankan inscriptions should\nhave had Tamil scripts. For number of centuries, Sinhalese language did not\nseem to have had any connection whatever with Tamil.\u201d Only after the eleventh\ncentury A.D. one could see the first traces of Tamil words appearing in Sinhala\ninscriptions or books. The first Sinhalese grammar written in the middle of the\nthirteenth century A.D. was mainly based on Pali and Sanskrit grammar.\nTherefore, under an Indo-Aryan language framework, similarities one finds\nbetween Sinhala and Tamil could possibly be due to the fact, that both\nlanguages borrowed them from Sanskrit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TGP showed the evolution of the Sinhala hodiya using\nsix rock inscriptions. (hodiya is a chart of phonemes, alphabet is a list of\nsymbols for writing). He concluded that despite the fact that Sanskrit was in use\nfrom an earlier time and that Pali was introduced with Buddhism in 307 B.C.,\nSanskrit or Maagadhi (Pali) sounds were not used in the inscriptions written in\n200 B.C. Until 100 A.D. they were not used with Sinhala. All this leads us to\nunderstand that Sinhala is a language first developed in the island.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. James Gair and Sinhala<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the map reproduced on page 187 of Gair\u2019s book indicates,\nSinhala, Tamil, Persian and a few dialects found above the Telegu language\nregion in India do not have an aspiration (mahappraana- eg., t as in ata\n(eight) versus th as in Gothaabaya) contrast. The rest of India has some form\nof aspiration recognition. Germanic languages also do not have an aspiration\ncontrast but at least they have certain aspiration sounds as in the case of the\ndifference between the two words pin and spin. In pin p is an aspiration. Sinhala\nhas no aspiration whatsoever, in speech or writing (those like Gothaabaya are\nSanskrit). Therefore, in pronouncing the English word pin as well as the\nSinhala word piti we say it as in the word pitisara (rural).  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gair also pointed out the overwhelming left-branching\nsyntactic character, in particular, the exclusive or overwhelmingly dominant\nuse of preposed relativized clause structures found in Sinhala and Tamil, not\nfound in the rest of India.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unlike Tamil which has only consonant p, since the 13th<\/sup>\ncentury A.D., Sinhala has had p, b, d and g. Thus, in Tamil balla (dog) is\nvalla and sudu (white) is suthu; sudda (a white man) is suththa. If Tamil was\nthe source language how did this happen?     \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On page 189 of his book Gair reproduced a list\ncomparing Sinhala with Tamil and other Indo Aryan (IA) languages. Thus:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Sinhala\nhas fewer phonemes (about 30) than in IA (though more than in Tamil)<\/li>
  2. In\nSinhala, the volume of opposition of cerebrality (i.e., retroflexion) is less\nthan in the rest of IA<\/li>
  3. The\nabsence of dipthongs in Sinhala, unlike in eastern IA<\/li>
  4. The\nabsence of nasalized vowel phonemes<\/li>
  5. The\npartial neutralization of s and h in Sinhala, because of the change s > h\nalready at work in Sinhalese prakrit\u201d (eg., \nhanda > sanda (moon)<\/li>
  6. The\nopposition of long and short vowels, common in Tamil, less so in IA<\/li>
  7. The\nloss of aspiration in Sinhala commonly retained in IA <\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    4.<\/strong> The\nRigveda and Sinhala<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The word vatura (water) is not only closely cognate to\nthe Germanic words and Hittite water,\u201d but it represents a form which is\nimpossible to explain on the basis of Sanskrit or Indo-Aryan etymologies (The\nRigveda,\u201d a historical analysis by Shrikant. G. Talageri, 2000, New Delhi).\nThis means that Sinhala could be an Indo-European language and not an\nIndo-Aryan one. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Talageri\u2019s original purpose was to demonstrate that\nIndo-Aryan languages (Sanskrit and Paali etc.) evolved in India and went\nwestward to Asia. Under the prevailing European-white-based scholarship,\nSinhala came out of this I-A branch of parent I-E. But when Talageri stumbled\non vatura  (or eliya (light) which Geiger\ndismissed as insignificant) and other unique Sinhala words such as oluva, bella,\nkalava and kakula, as an impartial scholar he had to adjust or re-examine his\nown thesis. The new question is was it possible that Sinhala was indigenous to\nSri Lanka and went north (to western India) and west (to Iran, Asia Minor and\nEurope)?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    As the paragraphs quoted verbatim below from Talageri\nindicates, Geiger could not come out of his western or Asia Minor (religious\nheartland called the Levant) thought box. Our own S. Paranavithana thought of a\nSinhlala link with western India but he could not think that perhaps the\ndirection could have been not from Punjaab or the Lata region (Gujarat) to Sri\nLanka but from Sri Lanka to India.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    <\/em><\/strong>The\nSinhalese language of Sri Lanka is generally accepted as a regular, if long\nseparated and isolated, member of the Indoaryan\u201d branch of Indo-European languages;\nand no linguist studying Sinhalese appears, so far, to have suggested any other\nstatus for the language.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    However, apart from the fact that Sinhalese\nhas been heavily influenced not only by Sanskrit and (due to the predominance\nof Buddhism in Sri Lanka) Pali, but also by Dravidian and the near-extinct\nVedda, the language contains many features which are not easily explainable on\nthe basis of Indo-aryan. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Wilhelm Geiger, in his preface to his study\nof Sinhalese, points out that the phonology of the language is full of\nintricacies\u2026 We sometimes meet with a long vowel when we expect a short one and\nvice versa\u201d, and, further: In\nmorphology there are formations, chiefly in the verbal inflexion, which seem to\nbe peculiar to Sinhalese and to have no parallels in other Indo-Aryan dialects\u2026\nand I must frankly avow that I am unable to solve all the riddles arising out\nof the grammar of the Sinhalese language.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    However, not having any particular reason\nto suspect that Sinhalese could be anything but an Indoaryan\u201d language\ndescended from Sanskrit, Geiger does not carry out any detailed research to\nascertain whether or not Sinhalese is indeed in a class with the other Indo-Aryan\ndialects.\u201d  In fact, referring to an attempt by an earlier scholar, Gnana\nPrakasar, to connect the Sinhalese word eLi (light) with the Greek hElios\n(sun), Geiger rejects the suggestion as the old practice\nof comparing two or more words of the most distant languages merely on the\nbasis of similar sounds, without any consideration for chronology, for\nphonological principles, or for the historical development of words and forms\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    However, there are words in Sinhalese, of\nwhich we can cite only one here, which cannot be so easily dismissed: the\nSinhalese word watura, water\u201d, is not only closely cognate to the Germanic\nwords (which includes English water\u201d) and Hittite water, but it represents a\nform which is impossible to explain on the basis of Sanskrit or Indoaryan\netymologies. Geiger himself, elsewhere, rejects an attempt by an earlier\nscholar, Wickremasinghe, to derive the word from Sanskrit\nvartarUka as improbable\u201d; and although he accepts the suggestion of another\nscholar, B. Gunasekara, that the original meaning is\n\u2018spread, extension, flood\u2019 (M. vithar)\u2026 Pk. vitthAra, Sk. vistAra,\u201d he notes\nthat vocalism a.u. in vatura is irregular, cf. vitura\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    M.W.S. de Silva, in his detailed study of\nSinhalese, points out that Indo-Aryan (or Indic) research began with an effort\ndevoted primarily to classifying Indian languages and tracing their\nphonological antecedents historically back to Vedic and\nClassical Sanskrit\u2026 Early Sinhalese studies have followed the same tradition.\u201d\nHowever, Sinhalese presents a linguistic make-up which, for various reasons,\ndistinguishes itself from the related languages in North\nIndia\u2026 there are features in Sinhalese which are not known in any other\nIndo-Aryan language, but these features, which make the story of Sinhalese all\nthe more exciting, had not received much attention in the earlier studies.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    He also points out: Another area of\nuncertainty is the source of the small but high-frequency segment of the\nSinhalese vocabulary, especially words for parts of the body and the like: eg.\noluva \u2018head\u2019, bella \u2018neck\u2019, kakula \u2018leg\u2019, kalava \u2018thigh\u2019, etc. which are neither\nSanskritic nor Tamil in origin.  The native\ngrammarians of the past have recognized that there are three categories of\nwords – (a) loanwords, (b) historically derived words and (c) indigenous words\u2026\nNo serious enquiry has been made into these so-called indigenous words\u201d. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    In his preface, de Silva notes that there is a growing awareness of the significance of Sinhalese as\na test case for the prevailing linguistic theories; more than one linguist has\ncommented on the oddities that Sinhalese presents and the fact\u2026 that Sinhalese\nis \u2018unlike any language I have seen\u2019.\u201d Further, he quotes\nGeiger: It is extremely difficult, and perhaps impossible, to assign it a\ndefinite place among the modern Indo-Aryan dialects.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    But, it does not strike de Silva, any more\nthan Geiger, that the reason for all this confusion among linguists could be\ntheir failure to recognize the possibility that Sinhalese is not an Indoaryan\nlanguage (in the sense in which the term is used) at all, but a descendant of\nanother branch of Indo-European languages. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    From the historical point of view, a vast\nbody of material has been gathered together by way of lithic and other records\nto portray the continuous history of Sinhalese from as early\nas the third century BC.\u201d163<\/a><\/sup> in Sri Lanka, and attempts have been made to trace the origins of\nthe earliest Sinhalese people and their language either to the eastern parts of\nNorth India or to the western parts\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    But de Silva quotes Geiger as well as S.\nParanavitana, and agrees with their view that the band of immigrants who gave\ntheir name Simhala to the composite people, their language and\nthe island, seems to have come from northwestern India\u2026 their original habitat\nwas on the upper reaches of the Indus river\u2026 in what is now the borderland\nbetween Pakistan and Afghanistan\u201d, and quotes Paranavitana\u2019s summary of the\nevidence, and his conclusion: All this evidence goes to\nestablish that the original Sinhalese migrated to Gujarat from the lands of the\nUpper Indus, and were settled in LATa for some time before they colonised\nCeylon.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    A thorough examination, with an open mind,\nof the vocabulary and grammar of Sinhalese, will establish that Sinhalese\nrepresents a remnant of an archaic branch of Indo-European languages [not\nIndo-Aryan]\u201d. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    5. Jayantha Ahangama\u2019s silent\nservice<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    JA was working at his father\u2019s printing press in the\n1960s before he came to study computer science in America. Unlike the new\ngeneration of computer science Ph.Ds, JA was well versed in the Sinhala\ngrammar. He found Sinhala Hodiya as a highly scientific sound system arranged\naccording to the movement of lips and tongue from front to back in the mouth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    While working on a project to convert the Pali\nTripitaka into Sinhala and English, in order to place it on the internet for\nanalysis and research, JA uncovered some innocent errors that crept into the\nEnglish transliteration pioneered by the late Rhys Davids in the early 1900s. Thus,\nin Rhys Davids English translation, Namo\nThassa<\/em> (as in tharu, stars) became Namo\nTassa <\/em>(as in takaran, tin sheet).  JA\nsolved this problem by borrowing three letter sounds from Icelandic (language\nof Iceland, which is similar with Sinhala and the Old English). The sounds are\ntha (as in thana, grass), da (as in datha, tooth) and ae (as in  aeta in aetaya, seed). In the process he also\nmade Sinhala language Internet compatible in the most efficient and effective\nmanner. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    With electricity replacing paper as the medium of\nwriting and storing data (filing cabinets versus removable disks of the size of\na finger), thirteen European languages including the Icelandic formulated an\ninternet\u2019s Brahmin club, placing them at the front end of the Unicode system (Latin\n-1). JA, invented a system called Romanized Sinhala to take Sinhala into this\nclub as its 14th<\/sup> member. The club uses Latin letters and because\nSinhala is also using Latin letters borrowed from the Old English\/Icelandic,\nfor this purpose he named it Latin Sinhala.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    He has been doing this work single-handedly and\nwithout any support, encouragement or any appreciation by the Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri\nLanka (ICTA). On the Internet use of Sinhala,\nhe is without doubt a modern-day Munidasa Cumaratunga, facing roadblocks from vested\ninterests in the computer domain (please visit his website, www.Ahangama.com).\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    In English language, a letter is just a letter. This is\nwhy, a spelling bee contest is possible among the English-speaking. Thus, u is\nused in put and but with different sound effect. This is not so in Sinhala.\nThis is why, school children play with English letters as if they are words! For\nthem, the four English letters I-O-C-A, could convey the sound Ayyo Seeye (Oh!\nGrandfather, as if he narrowly escaped a hit by a fast-moving car when he was\ncrossing the road carelessly). JA capitalized on this unique ability of native\nSinhala speakers in inventing a Romanized Sinhala or Latin Sinhala.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    JA used his American-living friends as a laboratory in\nperfecting his new invention. A Sinhalaya cannot pronounce the word bicycle\u201d\nthe way an Englishman pronounces it unless of course the Sinhalaya goes to a\nColombo elocution class. The American companies using Indians for telephone\ncustomer services do this by giving them intensive accent training. The most\nrevealing difference between Tamil and other Indian languages on the one hand\nand Sinhala on the other, is the inability of Sinhalayas to use retroflex\nconsonant na\u201d (as in tana kola<\/em>\n(grass, not breast) and la\u201d (as in mala (dead, not flower). Yes, they are in\nwritten Sinhala, but we cannot curl our tongue and say them as Indians do. As\nsuch, the ta vargaya in the hodiya is muurdhaja group in Indic. Thus,\npronouncing the word bicycle the way an Englishman does is not a problem for a\nTamil but impossible to the Sinhalese. Also, we do not use mahapparana\n(aspirants) at all while North Indians do it without any extra effort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    JA suggests an out-of-the-box thinking on Sinhala, and\nquestions the west-worshipping thinking of English-educated professors.\nEncouraged by new discoveries by Talageri, and his own \u2018field work\u2019 JA proposes\na new theory.  In his book Talageri\nsuggests that Indo-European languages went from India to Asia Minor. Then he\nstumbled on to the word vatura in Sinhala and the other unusual words such as\noluva (head), bella (neck), kakula (leg) and kalava (thigh). These words are\nnot found in Sanskrit, Pali, Tamil or any other language. So, JA asks, is it\nnot possible that a Sinhala language went north and west from ancient Sri\nLanka? After all the Yavanas mentioned in the Mahavamsa are present-day\nIranians. He disagrees with TGP\u2019s suggestion in 1932 that Sinhala had more\naffinity with the Semitic and Phoenician script.  He says Semitic and Phoenician scripts which\nwrite from right to left does not have all the sounds that the Sinhala and\nBrahmi scripts shared in common.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Malayalam is a new language, and the remarkable\nsimilarity between Sinhala and Malayalam letters makes one wonder if Sinhala\nletters influenced Malayalam letters. The reason for this is the possibility\nthat Sinhala could be even older than Sanskrit or Pali. The Sinhala words\nvatura (water) and hakuru (jaggery) are found in Germanic languages and not in\nIndo-Aryan languages. Why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    If one looks at the oldest world maps available, in\none map (Map 2 above, by Eratosthenes, 276-194 B. C.) the British Isles and Sri\nLanka take a prominent place. So much detail of the latter is shown in\nPtolemy\u2019s map (Map 1, by Ptolemy, 150 A.D.). As a tropical resplendent island\nlocated on the path of seasonal Monsoon winds, compared to the dry and barren South\nIndia, people who lived in Lanka for example, during the Raavana time, could\nhave had contacts with lands now known as Iran and Europe. Why would King\nAshoka send both his son and daughter to Sri Lanka, unless it was the most\nimportant land outside India at that time? It is like who the president of Sri\nLanka sends to Somaliya and USA as his ambassadors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Denis Fernando in an essay Indian ocean should be\nnamed the Asiatic ocean,\u201d (Island, 2\/23\/07) presents a post-colonial approach\nto world history and geography by a Sri Lankan researcher. Perhaps, HLS\nunintentionally contributed to this new way of thinking with his politically biased,\nMarxist theory of Sinhalized-Tamils. I hope this topic would generate research\ninterest among both Sinhala and Tamil students\/scholars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    C. Wijeyawickrema, LL.B., Ph.D. Where is Lanka, a spot with lowest gravity on earth, located on these two maps of the ancient world? Sinhala [language]\u2019s s survival as a clearly Indo-Aryan language can be considered a minor miracle of linguistic and cultural history\u201d –James W. Gair, Studies in South Asian Linguistics: Sinhala and other South […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-c-wijeyawickrema"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106010\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}