From: m1pkd00@fed.frb.gov (Prasad K. Dharmasena)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.sri-lanka,soc.culture.indian
Subject: Re: Sinhala script.....
Keywords: script
Date: 30 Sep 92 15:43:07 GMT
Followup-To: soc.culture.sri-lanka


Vicky <uunet!ecs.umass.edu!vigneswa> writes:

> Kathiravan Krishnamurthi writes:>>

> >>The school system teaches that Buddha gave Srilanka to Sinhalese. 
> >>But the real history is Vijaya, a king of Orissa came, mixed with 
> >>the tribes and the Sinhalese language uses the same script as bengaali.

> 	I am not sure what school system Kathiravan talks about.  About
> Vijaya, as far as I remember, Kathiravan is close. Vijaya was a naughty
> prince and was left in the sea with his 700 friends by his grand father.

As the story goes, and as far as I remember these tales, it was 500
friends (princes?  Where do you find that many princes, anyway?  Ah, they
used to have harems in those days.  I forgot. ;-)) and it was Vijaya's 
father who kicked him out, though he may have been "grand."  (I may be 
wrong on both counts.)

> Vijaya  married to a tribal  princess and crowned.  Later  he drew  her 
> away and married to a princess from Pandya kingdom. Also there were 700
> other girls from Pandya kingdom sailed to the island for Vijaya's group.
> (This from a translated Mahavamsa story).  The Sinhala race is not from
> a tribal origin, but a royal one.

Well, Vijaya & Co. came to Sri Lanka by chance.  But their proposal 
marriage wives came knowing where they were going.  [This again shows
that even in 500 B.C. (?) Men didn't stop to ask for directions and 
just went along thinking that they knew the way, but Women always 
*found* their way.  Go figure. :-)]  So, by deductive reasoning, 
it wouldn't be a surprise if others (other than these two groups)
had come to Sri Lanka before and after the Vijaya's cruise ships,
from other parts of the mainland.  I guess, what I'm trying to say is
that the Sinhalese may not come from the direct descendants of 
501 spoiled prince brats.  :-)

Then there is the "Ramayana."  You know the one with Ravana (the 
Lankan king with a peacock-helicopter), Rama, Sita, Hanuman (Charles
Darwin may have gotten the idea from this guy... er... person.... er..
character.)  So, according to that story, Sri Lanka already had 
some sort of an organized society.  Organized enough to have a king
and a helicopter, at least. 

> There is a tribal group 
> in Sri Lanka, by name Veddhas. They are still in jungles and live there
> in the "old" style.  They are "dark-skinned" people.

Sinhalese are dark-skinned people.  In some old literature (Mahawamsa?) 
there is a general reference to Sinhalese as "Maha Kalu Sinhalaya~."
(Big Black Sinhalese)  Hmm.... didn't I talk about this dark/light
skin thing a while back?  I guess, I'm having amnesia and de ja vu at
the same time, thanks to Steven Wright.

Yep, Va^ddhas live in the jungles in the old style.... with TVs,
radios and if some of these ministers get their way, possibly
with microwaves too. :-)

> 	I was told that Sinhala language is a mix of Sanskrit and  Pali. 
> That may  be the reason why Pali is popular among buddhist monks.

Pali is popular among monks because most of the Buddhist Gatha/Sutra/etc
are still written in Pali with Sinhala script.  Don't tell a Buddhist
monk that Pali is a dead language, they get very pissed off.  But
I've never heard them conversing in Pali, though.  %-)


> K Srinivasan writes: >
> >Sinhalese script is very similar to Kannada and Telugu scripts,
> >which are Dravidian scripts of south India. Any Indian outside
> >the southern region can not distinguish Sinhalese script from
> >Telugu/kannada script. The script similarity has nothing to do with
> >language similarities.

> 	Sinhala scripts are "round" in shape.  That may be a reason for
> one to come to the conclusion  that Sinhala scripts are VERY similar to
> some South Indian scripts (they are somewhat similar though).  This may
> be as good as concluding on the similarity between Chinese/Japanese and
> Korean  scripts.

You know, there *are* similarities between Chinese/Japanese (Kangi)/
Korean scripts.  But those are altogether different family of 
scripts based on pictures.  (That's all I learned from my *one* East
Asian Studies class, so don't ask me to explain things.)  Since I
haven't seen Telugu or Bengali scripts, I can't comment on that.  But,
I have not seen much similarity between Tamil and Sinhala scrips.  It
would be surprising, however, if there is none.  BTW, do all Indo-Euro-
Dravidian-etc languages lack the sounds F and Z?

> BTW, did anyone
> in the net see the Thai scripts?  Similarities....!

Yep, Thai script is somewhat similar to Sinhalese (and Tamil?).  But
my contact with Thai script has been limited to dinner menus so I guess
this observation has to be taken with an extra large grain of salt.
It might be useful to learn to write Roast Duck Curry in Thai, but
that's another story. ;-)

> 	Any Indian outside the southern region can not distinguish Sin-
> hala from  Telugu/Kannada scripts?  Well, most(?) of  them still  think 
> that people in the south speak "madharasi", right?  Ignorance...

That's better (?) than people asking me if I speak Indian.


prasad
++ Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain. 
		-- Lily Tomlin ++
--
Prasad Dharmasena      Internet: <pkd@fed.FRB.GOV>     UUCP: <uunet!fed!pkd>
Newsgroups: soc.culture.bosna-herzgvna