![]() This influx led to an admixture of features of Eastern Prakrits. In the following centuries, there was substantial immigration from Eastern India, including additional migration from the Vanga Kingdom (Bengal), as well as Kalinga and Magadha. History Īccording to the chronicle Mahāvaṃsa, written in Pali, Prince Vijaya of the Vanga Kingdom and his entourage merged in Sri Lanka with later settlers from the Pandya kingdom. The name is sometimes glossed as 'abode of lions', and attributed to a supposed former abundance of lions on the island. The name is a derivative of siṃha, the Sanskrit word for 'lion'. Sinhala ( Siṃhala) is a Sanskrit term the corresponding Middle Indo-Aryan ( Eḷu) word is Sīhala. Main article: Names of Sri Lanka § Sinhala These poems are believed to have been composed by pilgrims who came to visit the Buddhist monastery of Sigiriya, which was active at this time. There are 1,500 poems written in the 6th-10th centuries on the Sigiriya Mirror Wall. It has two main varieties, written and spoken, and is a conspicuous example of the linguistic phenomenon known as diglossia. The most closely related languages are the Vedda language (an endangered, indigenous creole still spoken by a minority of Sri Lankans, mixing Sinhala with an isolate of unknown origin and from which Old Sinhala borrowed various aspects into its main Indo-Aryan substrate), and the Maldivian language. The language of these inscriptions, still retaining long vowels and aspirated consonants, is a Prakrit similar to Magadhi, a regional associate of the Middle Indian Prakrits that had been used during the time of the Buddha. Įarly forms of the Sinhala language are attested as early as the 3rd century BCE. Along with Pali, it played a major role in the development of Theravada Buddhist literature. Sinhala is one of the official and national languages of Sri Lanka, alongside Tamil. It is written using the Sinhala script, which is a Brahmic script closely related to the Grantha script of South India. ![]() Sinhala is also spoken as the first language by other ethnic groups in Sri Lanka, totalling about 2 million speakers as of 2001. ![]()
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