#sinhala — Public Fediverse posts

[Sihigiri graffito no. 568; first half of the ninth century; in yāgī metre]

සුලුවැ සීහිමියන්‌ ගෙ බුදල්මි ම ගී
බෙයන්දහි සිහි වේ ලී බණතුද්‌ නො මෙ බෙණෙත එය
කෙසෙයිනි තුති ද ත මෙ කී වී ද ගිය තොස් වන් වී

Suluvæ Sī-himiyan ge Budalmi ma gī:
Beyandahi sihi ve lī baṇat=ud no me beṇeta eya
Keseyini tuti da ta me kī vī da giya tos van vī

"I am Budal of the house of Lord Sī of Suluvæ. This is my song:

How has this exaltation been uttered by you
that the lithe lady on the mountainside
will be remembered—
even though when spoken to
she does not speak?

Did it happen? The coming of rejoicing?"

#Sigiriya #SihigiriGraffiti #SigiriGraffiti #Sinhala #SriLanka #poetry

Another quite intricate poem, from the second half of the ninth century, written in yāgī metre.

Sihigiri graffito no. 371:

බෙයදහි උඩුගලැ පැහැ රනවනුන් දුටුමො
බලා ගලා ගලා බසි ම සිත බැන්දැ ලන්නා සෙයි

Beyadahi uḍu-galæ pæhæ rana-vanun duṭumo
Balā galā galā basi ma sita bændæ lannā seyi

The first line is fairly straight-forward, something like "On top of the rock on the mountain-side, the radiance of the golden-coloured ones appeared to us."

But the second line, with both the balā galā galā piece and exactly how to take bændæ lannā (this last is a compound verb, thus why I'm looking at it, putatively), is complicated.

In order to fit the metre and also to invoke word-play and multiple meanings, word orders are sometimes different from normal prose order. So balā galā galā basi is probably actually balā gal ā galā basi and to be read in normal prose order as gal balā ā galā basi, that is something like "I am one who has come (down) having looked at the rock, (it=the radiance) having flooded, descends" and then ma sita bændæ lannā seyi "as if to bind my mind". (Though bænda is also the verb used for composing poetic verses.....)

And so the second line as: "(That radiance) comes down in a flood, as if to keep fettered the mind of me who is come (down) having looked at the rock."

But also balā galā galā basi could be read as "having looked (at it=the radiance), having flooded, having flooded, it descends", and so balā galā galā basi ma sita bændæ lannā seyi could also be something like "having looked at (that radiance), it descends in a flood, in a flood, as if to compose verse of my mind".

So the poet is intentionally invoking different meanings, different readings simultaneously.

And thus maybe an attempt to capture some of this in translation:

On top of the rock on the mountain-side,
the radiance of the golden-hued ones appeared to us:
having looked I am come down

flooding, flooding after looking at the rock
it comes down,
as if to bind up my mind in verse.

#Sigiriya #SigiriGraffiti #SihigiriGraffiti #Sinhala #SriLanka #poetry

repeated old post:

Sigiriya, the Lion Fortress of #SriLanka.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigiriya

(My dissertation was partially concerned with the graffiti found on the Mirror Wall at Sigirya, much of which is addressed to the painted frescos of women.)

[original at: https://types.pl/@emacsomancer/106734465446319459 ]

#Sigiriya
#SihigiriGraffiti
#SigiriGraffiti
#Sinhala
#SriLanka

I've been working on a project on the historical evolution of compound verbs in South Asian languages (like what one finds in Hindi उस ने खाना खा लिया us ne khānā khā liyā "he/she ate up the food"), and looking at Old Sinhala (poetic) graffiti (written on the Mirror Wall at Sigiriya (The Lion Rock Fortress) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigiriya ) since this is some of the earliest text that has the sort of constructions I'm investigating.

Sigiriya (සීගිරිය) [or Sinhagiri or Sihigiri or Sigiri] itself has a fascinating history: built as a combination fortress/pleasure palace by Kashyapa I, King of Sri Lanka (AD 477–495), in the middle of Sri Lanka on a rock jutting out of the landscape, carved into the shape of a lion.

The lion's head has collapsed, but the lion's feet remain, with a staircase leading up between them, past the Mirror Wall, a bit of the rock polished, it is said, so that the king could see his reflection as he walked past.

Kashyapa, the son of King Dhatusena by a non-royal consort, murdered his father and seized the throne, following a coup assisted by Migara, the King’s nephew and army commander. The legitimate heir, Moggallana, fled to South India, and, Kashyapa, nervous about his return, relocated his court from the traditional capital of Anuradhapura to Sigiriya.

Eighteen years later, Moggallana did return from South India with an army, and managed to defeat Kashyapa, and moved the capital back to Anuradhapura, and Sigiriya became (again) a Buddhist monastery retreat, and also a tourist attraction for many centuries. Sometime after the 13th century it was largely abandoned, and seems to have been reswallowed up by forests and forgotten by the 17th century, and only rediscovered in the 19th century.

The whole face of the hill appears to have been a gigantic picture gallery at one point, with painted frescoes, largely of not-very-well-clad women, apparently over 500 originally, though only 22 remain now.

The Mirror Wall seemed to have presented itself as the perfect place for the many tourists who visited Sigiriya from the 8th to 10th centuries to write graffiti, in the form of poems, largely about their experience of Sigiriya, especially their reactions to the painted frescoes.

Since sometime in the late 2000s, I've worked sporadically off and on with these texts (via Paranavitana's 1956 publication of about 700 graffiti). I've been looking more closely at them again recently and have (again) been struck by the beauty of some of the poetry. And have felt prompted now to try to translate some of it in such a way to capture some of the brilliance of some of the poems. And so I will post some in this thread from time to time (hopefully).

(I hasten to add that Paranavitana himself offered translations for all of the graffiti he transcribed, and provided copious notes and commentary and glossary and other apparatus, so none of this is at all me working from scratch.)

#Sigiriya #SihigiriGraffiti #SigiriGraffiti #Sinhala #SriLanka #poetry