(The Crown Jewel of Poetry), attributed to King
Parakramabahu II (thirteenth century). These works
are classical in style, and present stories of the past
births of the Buddha.
The oldest extant prose work in Sinhala is on
rhetoric, the Siyabaslakara(The Ornaments of One’s
Language), ascribed to King Sena I (r. 832–851). The
Dhampiyatuvagätapadaya(Commentary on the Blessed
Doctrine), a commentary on words and phrases in the
Pali DHAMMAPADA,was composed in the tenth cen-
tury. The Sikhavalanda(The Mark of Sign of the Pre-
cepts) and Sikhavalanda vinisa(An Examination of the
Signs of the Precepts), a summary of precepts on priestly
discipline, also belong to this period.
Sinhala prose works from the twelfth and thir-
teenth centuries can be described as “intermediate
texts.” Though still classical in form they were closer
in idiom to the spoken vernacular. The Saddhama-
ratnavaliya(The Jewel Garland of the True Doctrine)
by the monk Dharmasena, the Amavatura(The Nec-
tar Flowor The Flowing Nectar[of the Doctrine]) and
Dharmapradlpikava(The Light of the Doctrine) by the
monk Gurulugomi, the Butsarana(The Protection[or
Refuge] of the Buddha) by Vidyacakravarti, the Sinhala
Thupavamsa(The Chronicle of the Stupas), the Dal-
adasirita(An Account of the Tooth Relic[of the Bud-
dha]), the Pujavaliya(The Garland of Worship), the
Pansiya Panas Jataka Pota(The Book of Five Hundred
and Fifty Birth Stories[of the Buddha]), the monk
Vldagama Maitreya’s Budugunalamkaraya(An Elabo-
ration of the Buddha’s Virtues), and the Loväda samgra-
haya(A Collection of Writings for the Betterment of the
World) all belong to this tradition. They are Buddhist
works intended for the edification of ordinary people
and so had the flavor and style of popular sermons.
Works on rhetoric, such as the Sidat Samgarava(A Col-
lection of Writings on Grammar), the Siyabas lakuna
(The Marks or Signs of One’s Language), and the Dan-
dyalamkara sanna(Commentary on Dandin’s Theory of
Alamkara) and works on prosody, such as the Elu-
sandäs lakuna(The Mark of Signs of the Original Sin-
hala[elu]), were also composed during this period.
If the thirteenth century saw a flowering of Sinhala
prose literature, the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
saw a flowering of poetry as the process of seculariza-
tion that had begun with prose continued into poetry.
These Sinhala poems were written by monks using
Buddhist themes, but they were modeled on classical
Sanskrit court literature and thus became more secu-
lar in content. The most famous of a spate of sandesa
(message poems) from this period were the Sälalihini
sandes ́aya(The Message Poem Carried by the Salalihini
Bird) and the Parevi sande ́ayas (The Message Poem Car-
ried by the Pigeon) by the monk Totagamuve Sri
Rahula, who also wrote the Kavyas ́ekhera(The Crown
of Poetry). Two other well-known writers of the age
were the monk Vidagama Maitreya, who wrote the
Budugunalamkaraya, and the monk Vëttëve, who
wrote the Guttila Kavya(The Poem of Guttila). In-
creasing secularization resulted in a shift away from
the earlier heavy Sanskritization of the language.
Unfortunately, Sinhala literary and linguistic cre-
ativity was short lived. The arrival of Western Euro-
pean powers and subsequent colonial conquest by the
Portuguese, Dutch, and British in succession from the
sixteenth to the twentieth centuries resulted in a period
of decadence in Sinhala literature. The only poet of sig-
nificance during the sixteenth century was Alagiya-
vanna Mohottala, who wrote the Kusa Jataka(The Story
of the Birth of the Bodhisattva as King Kusa), the Da-
hamsonda kavya(The Poem on the Good Doctrine), the
Subhasita(Auspicious Thoughts), and some panegyrics.
In the mid-eighteenth century there was a brief lit-
erary and religious revival in the central kingdom of
Kandy, which had not yet been conquered by West-
ern powers. It was spearheaded by the monk Welivi-
tiye Saranakara, and produced a considerable body of
work in Pali, Sanskrit, and Sinhala. This literary re-
naissance was short lived, however; the British con-
quered the entire island in 1815, colonial rule was
established, and Sinhala language and literature be-
came stagnant once again.
When the first stirring of political nationalism oc-
curred in the late nineteenth and early twentieth cen-
turies it took the form of a literary and religious revival,
and the long-standing Sri Lankan connection between
religion, literature, and the national identity resur-
faced. The phenomenal increase in literary activity was
at first entirely religious, but eventually newer genres
influenced by Western contact came to prominence,
and a modern secular literature was born.See also:Pali, Buddhist Literature in; Sri LankaBibliography
Geiger, Wilhelm. A Grammar of the Sinhalese Language.
Colombo, Sri Lanka: Royal Asiatic Society, 1938.
Godakumbure, C. E. Sinhalese Literature.Colombo, Sri Lanka:
Colombo Apothecaries, 1955.SINHALA, BUDDHISTLITERATURE IN