Do you have any difficulty in comprehension?
What makes you think I am talking without referring to any scholarly works on Sri Lankan history? I am Sri Lankan dude, I am well aware of my country and its history than an indian like you. Yes I am talking after having a very good understanding of the social and political history of Sri Lanka, so don’t ask me to refer to Sri Lankan history especially when you know next to nothing about it.
Actually, I do. Enormous difficulties. Especially when entirely phony ethno-racist propaganda is put up as genuine historical narrative.
Merely being Sri Lankan does not imply being “....well aware of my country and its history than an indian (sic) like you.” History is learnt.
Yes I am talking after having a very good understanding of the social and political history of Sri Lanka, so don’t ask me to refer to Sri Lankan history especially when you know next to nothing about it.
Having spent years correcting the incorrect historical understanding of ‘their’ own history of Pakistanis, Indians and Bangladeshis alike, your assertion that simply by being a citizen of Sri Lanka, of Sinhalese ethnic stock, you have an automatic understanding of Sinhalese history superior to those who are not Sinhalese citizens or of Sinhala stock does not impress me.
What, pray, are
your credentials?
My initial point is still valid and stands
The demand for separate state or Eelam appears in 1922 and the conflict was very much going on BEFORE Sri Lanka gains independence so the popular Tamil centric view that separatism was a result of post-colonial discrimination is both WRONG and UNJUST.
Why do you think that there was a move for a separate state of Tamil Eelam before independence, from 1922? Was it because of Tamil perversity? Or do you wish to deny Sinhala discrimination even before independence, although such discrimination did not find concrete expression in legislature?
Are you aware of the roots of the demand for Muslim separation before Indian independence? Was that based on legal and administrative discrimination, or was it based on the social and political discrimination at the hands of the majority that the minority had experienced and feared to experience in a variety of legal and administrative forms after independence?
Only an idiot would say Eelam demand came as a result of discrimination when there is more than enough evidence that it was a pre-colonial issue.
Except for Sinhala chauvinists, most of the rest of the world sees it as a dormant demand that became a live issue after independence, after Sinhala chauvinists (the kind who twist the history of the island and make nearly a thousand years of history disappear) showed their hand and started loading the dice against the minority.
Would you read what you type and see if there is any meaning?
I read what I typed. There seems to be sufficient meaning except to a chauvinist determined to defend his community turf.
Which part did you not understand?
"....there is no historical study to back what you say." Historical record to back what? Do you have any idea about the research done on Sri Lankan history?
To back what? Have you forgotten what you yourself wrote, or are you ignoring it for the sake of argument?
When you ask if someone else has an idea about the research done on Sri Lankan history, you invite the question: are you an historian yourself? Have you studied the subject? In particular, have you studied Sri Lankan history, not as an advocate of one side in a dispute, but a genuine student of history?
Are we to believe, then, that research that supports your entirely biased and Sinhala-favouring account is authentic, and that research that contradicts or modifies your account is spurious?
Isn’t that a little obvious?
It is simply the tamil egocentric deliberate misinterpretation of Sri Lankan history that has created this issue.
What, if anything, is the difference between the Tamil egocentric deliberate misinterpretation of Sri Lankan history that has, according to you, created this issue, and the Sinhala egocentric deliberate misinterpretation of Sri Lankan history that tries to destroy the actual sequence of events?
How is it that the Sinhala propaganda is dignified as history, and the Tamil account, which is equally pronounced about its sole authenticity, is denounced as propaganda?
1. Do you have any idea on Sri Lankan history?
2. Do you have any idea of the amount of research one has done regarding Sri Lankan history? The pioneers of Sri Lankan history research were actually British and not even Sinhala.
3. Do you know there is NO proper historical interpretation done by a reputed historian that backs the so called Eelam history?
Without answering to the questions I raise, it is useless to just type some words that has no meaning but simply prejudice.
1. Yes. A very good idea. An history student and teacher’s idea. And yours is?
2. Yes. I am also aware how hugely British accounts have been modified based on subsequent research, in all geographies, including India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and, yes, in Sri Lanka.
3. Untrue.
4. Sadly, and it is a sad occurrence other than the unintendedly comical outcome in some places, it is not questions that you have raised, but just majoritarian prejudices seeking to be converted to peer reviewed and authentic.
Is there any meaning in what you say?
If you are unable to follow a statement, there are three possibilities:
1. The statement is incomprehensible;
2. The reader is not entirely competent;
I leave the third to be solved by those reading this!
/Since these references to Tamil settlement pre-date any political conflict/ what settlemets and what conflict?
/these references are not confined to Tamily ethnic background authors and scholars alone//
What are those references or what are those non tamil scholars?
See
@manlion's post.
I know the categorization was done by linguists. My point is their categorization done in the earliest part of 20th century is limited and it is difficult to categorize Sinhala into any of these two.
I don’t think so at all. That is just a wholly synthetic objection, one intended to put out the wholly fabricated idea that Sinhala is some sort of a unique language that stands by itself. The only one of the sort that I know that meets that criterion is Burushaski.
Have you ever learnt Pali and Sinhala? I have learnt both. I am not saying one is a variation of another, I am saying Sinhala was greatly influenced by Pali. Do you know that even though Pali originated in India, it was in Sri Lanka that most of the Pali literature was written down? The learned Sinhalas were learned in Pali and concentrated most of their time for Pali works.
What has that to do with anything? Telling us that Sinhala was influenced by Pali is like us telling you that Urdu was influenced by Turkish, Persian and Arabic. It was, and it still remains, grammatically, a member of the Indo-Aryan language family, in turn a member of the Indo-Iranian language family, in turn a branch of PIE.
Knowing that learned Sinhalese were learned in Pali has nothing to do with the grammar and morphology of Sinhala; it only shows that the learned Sinhala of that age were learned.
Therefore the reason Sinhala is similar to other north indian langauges is Pali influence.
Oh, right.
Horse-feathers.
Etymology
Sinhala (Siṃhāla) is a
Sanskrit term; the corresponding
Middle Indo-Aryan (
Eḷu) word is Sīhala. The name is a derivation from
siṃha, the Sanskrit word for "lion"
[7] Siṃhāla is attested as a Sanskrit name of the island of in the
Bhagavata Purana. The name is sometimes glossed as "abode of lions", and attributed to a supposed former abundance of
lions on the island.
History
According to the chronicle
Mahavamsa, written in
Pali, Prince Vijaya and his entourage merged with two
exotic tribes of ancient India present in Lanka, the
Yakkha and
Naga peoples. In the following centuries, there was substantial immigration from Eastern India (
Kalinga,
Magadha) which led to an admixture of features of Eastern Prakrits.
Stages of historical development
The development of the Sinhalese language is divided into four periods:
·
Sinhalese Prakrit (until 3rd century AD)
· Proto-Sinhalese (3rd - 7th century AD)
· Medieval Sinhalese (7th - 12th century AD)
· Modern Sinhalese (12th century — present)
Phonetic development
The most important phonetic developments of the Sinhalese language include
the loss of the
aspiration distinction (e.g. kanavā "to eat" corresponds to Sanskrit khādati, Hindi khānā)
the loss of a
vowel length distinction; long vowels in the modern language are due to
loanwords (e.g.vibāgaya "exam" < Sanskrit vibhāga) and
sandhi, either after
elision of
Intervocalic consonants (e.g.dānavā "to put" < damanavā) or in originally
compound words.
the simplification of
consonant clusters and
geminate consonants into geminates and single consonants respectively (e.g. Sanskrit vistā "time" > Sinhalese Prakrit vitta > Modern Sinhalese vita)
development of /j/ to /d/ (e.g. däla "web" corresponds to Sanskrit jāla)
=====================================================================================
You may find that funny, but for a non hindi and a non Telegu speaker at times it is difficult to distinguish the two.
First, I doubt that even a non-Hindi and non-Telugu speaker would find it difficult to distinguish the two, unless he or she is extraordinarily inept at distinguishing between different languages. Something like saying that it is difficult to discriminate between French and Arabic merely from listening to the two.
I brought that out to show you that one cannot say Sinhala is similar to other Aryan langauges just by listening. Got the point?
No, I did not get the point, which is a totally mistaken one, made by an obvious stranger to the subject.
Since I am not an untutored amateur blundering around in a linguistic mine-field with no idea of what I am doing, I do not decide whether a language belongs to a larger family by
listening to it. In fact, never by listening to it; only by consulting the linguists about their analysis.
This merely underlines my lack of respect for those venturing into completely unknown areas., and yet claiming expertise.
I have seen in many many instances where Tamils and rest get into arguments because of language.
Clearly, to you, your personal reactions to the similarity or dis-similarity between Telugu and Hindi, or your observation of Tamils and ‘the rest’ getting into arguments because of language constitute scientific proof.
Interesting.
It was the womb that nurtured their language. FALSE. It was not the womb, it may have been the incubator, or the nursery in which the language and Sinhala traditions were nurtured, but not the place where Sinhala was originated.//
Then where was Sinhala originated? In india? Are you mad?
Not mad.
Just well-read.
That should read, well-read compared to you.
Sinhala was a variety of Prakrit. Where was Prakrit evolved and spoken? On the Moon?
The development of the Sinhalese language is divided into four periods:
·
Sinhalese Prakrit (until 3rd century AD)
·
Proto-Sinhalese (3rd - 7th century AD)
·
Medieval Sinhalese (7th - 12th century AD)
·
Modern Sinhalese (12th century — present)
Sinhala language’s evolution can be traced back to 3 BC using the inscriptions written in Sri Lanka.
And so? Indo-Aryan languages entered the sub-continent probably about 1500 BC, which you might be able to calculate is long before 3 BC. The Buddha spoke a form of Prakrit called Magadhi, from which linguists trace the descent of all present north Indian languages in the east: Sinhala is just a variant of Prakrit.
The stage at which Sinhala entered Sri Lanka and the inscriptions that you cite are dated was well within the scope of development that is described as Sinhala Prakrit, the form in which it was introduced to Sri Lanka.
The stages shown above show that the development of Sinhala from a form of Prakrit to its present form took some 900 years, from the 3rd century AD to the 12th century AD.
All literary works are within SL. It is not only arrogant to call Sinhala originated in India but extremely wrong and dumb. Going by your argument there are NO languages originated in India as well but languages brought by the Africans who left Africa.
Again, a complete lack of comprehension on display.
The Indo-Aryan in which the Vedas were written, or so-called Vedic Sanskrit, a hilarious contradiction, was a branch, a development from an older language called Indo-Iranian. Indo-Iranian, of which the portion that were differentiated from Indo-Aryan, gave rise to the Iranian family of languages.
Indo-Aryan itself took two forms, one a grammatically analysed, cleansed and perfected form called the ‘polished tongue’, or Sanskrit; the other, a set of vernaculars derived from Indo-Aryan, the language of the Vedas, known as the ‘natural tongue’, or Prakrit.
Prakrit was not uniform; as vernaculars tend to be, it took several dialectal forms, at least two of which are important; one was Magadhi Prakrit, considered a particularly elegant member of the set (much as we currently admire the beautiful Hindi and the even more elegant Urdu of Lucknow); the other was Suraseni Prakrit, which formed the base for the western languages – Konkani, Marathi, Gujarati, various forms of Rajasthani, Haryanvi, Punjabi, Pahari (but not Gorkhali, that later became known as Nepali, which was part of the Magadhi branch of development).
Sinhala was a Prakrit of the Magadhi Prakrit variety. It was taken away by emigrants to Sri Lanka and developed there as the phases above show.
Tamil may have developed jointly in south India and in Jaffna// Then why there are no evidences for this?
When TN was developing numerous tamil literature throughout its existence why the hell the so called Tamils did nothing in Jaffna? Were they some invisible humans? The earliest Tamil literary work in Jaffna came after 15 AD.
Do your homework. You don’t know much about the intermingling of Jaffna Tamil literature and mainland Tamil literature, or that Jaffna Tamil has its very distinct, separate character from mainland Tamil, unmistakable to a native Tamil speaker.
For your ease, I am telling you the history of SL.
Since 6 AD Sri Lanka faced numerous invasions from TN which were countered every time. However in 990 AD to 1085 AD Sri Lanka faced Chola invasions causing instability. Again the Sinhala kingdom rose back and drove out the Cholas. But with time the Sinhalese did not have a powerful king and the regional rulers started being more powerful. And we faced invasions again from TN and this time they held Jaffna as a part of Arya Chakrawarthi.
During that time we faced another invasion from Malaysia. And it was defeated by the Sinhala regional rulers but he went to Jaffna and held the power there. It was the beginning of Jaffna Kingdom. Jaffna got its name as Javaka pattanam as its ruler was of Java origin. He was again defeated by a Sinhala king with support from South India. After that it was held as a separate region under the Kotte king, Parakramabahu 6th who had power all over the island. It was the status until the Portugese come and weakened the Kotte kingdom again and creating powerful regional areas again.
There is no evidence or a historical research that supports the so called Eelam history.
Do you at least know what Eelam history is?
Some points, for the consumption of the ‘ease of use’ school of history:
· The reign of Elara and his death at the hands of Dutugamunu are clearly mentioned. The duration is also recorded. It was hardly a countered invasion.
· Sri Lanka was a part of the Chola domain, and remained subordinate. The Sinhala risings against complete Tamil domination took place during this period, and on earlier occasions, as well as on later occasions.
· The Arya Chakravarti episode was a Pandyan episode, long after both Elara and the Cholas.
· The point that has to be understood and understood well is that Sinhala rule over Sri Lanka was seldom unchallenged, and was reduced to vassal status on several occasions through history, either by mainland Tamil kingdoms and dynasties (the Chola and the Pandya prominent among them) or by local rulers in Jaffna.
the True face of Sinhala Buddhism
