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24-453: The Meeran Jumma Mosque ( Sinhala : ගාලු කොටුව මීරාන් ජුම්මා මස්ජිදය ), commonly known as Galle Fort Mosque , is a mosque located within Galle Fort , Southern Province , Sri Lanka . The current two-storey building was commissioned in 1904 by Ahamed Haji Ismail, allegedly on the site of a Portuguese catholic church. Although it is claimed that it was the original site of a mosque built in

48-783: A supposed former abundance of lions on the island. According 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 . 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 . This influx led to an admixture of features of Eastern Prakrits. The development of Sinhala

72-653: A Dravidian origin for this word. ), dola for pig in Vedda and offering in Sinhala. Other common words are rera for wild duck, and gala for stones (in toponyms used throughout the island, although others have also suggested a Dravidian origin). There are also high frequency words denoting body parts in Sinhala, such as olluva for head, kakula for leg, bella for neck and kalava for thighs, that are derived from pre-Sinhalese languages of Sri Lanka. The oldest Sinhala grammar, Sidatsan̆garavā , written in

96-433: A building or structure in Sri Lanka is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Sinhala language Sinhala ( / ˈ s ɪ n h ə l ə , ˈ s ɪ ŋ ə l ə / SIN -hə-lə, SING -ə-lə ; Sinhala: සිංහල , siṁhala , [ˈsiŋɦələ] ), sometimes called Sinhalese ( / ˌ s ɪ n ( h ) ə ˈ l iː z , ˌ s ɪ ŋ ( ɡ ) ə ˈ l iː z / SIN -(h)ə- LEEZ , SING -(g)ə- LEEZ ),

120-722: A period of prior bilingualism: "The earliest type of contact in Sri Lanka, not considering the aboriginal Vedda languages, was that which occurred between South Dravidian and Sinhala. It seems plausible to assume prolonged contact between these two populations as well as a high degree of bilingualism. This explains why Sinhala looks deeply South Dravidian for an Indo-Aryan language. There is corroboration in genetic findings." In addition to many Tamil loanwords , several phonetic and grammatical features also present in neighbouring Dravidian languages set modern spoken Sinhala apart from its Northern Indo-Aryan relatives. These features are evidence of close interactions with Dravidian speakers. Some of

144-481: Is a conspicuous example of the linguistic phenomenon known as diglossia . Sinhala ( Siṁhala ) is a Sanskrit term; the corresponding Middle Indo-Aryan ( Eḷu ) word is Sīhala . The name is a derivative of [[[:wikt:सिंह|siṁha]]] Error: {{Transliteration}}: transliteration text not Latin script (pos 9) ( help ) , the Sanskrit word for 'lion'. The name is sometimes glossed as 'abode of lions', and attributed to

168-584: Is an Indo-Aryan language primarily spoken by the Sinhalese people of Sri Lanka , who make up the largest ethnic group on the island, numbering about 16 million. Sinhala is also spoken as the first language by other ethnic groups in Sri Lanka, totalling about 2 million speakers as of 2001. It is written using the Sinhala script , which is a Brahmic script closely related to the Grantha script of South India. Sinhala

192-479: Is divided into four epochs: The most important phonetic developments of Sinhala include: According to Wilhelm Geiger , an example of a possible Western feature in Sinhala is the retention of initial /v/ which developed into /b/ in the Eastern languages (e.g. Sanskrit viṁśati "twenty", Sinhala visi- , Hindi bīs ). This is disputed by Muhammad Shahidullah who says that Sinhala Prakrit branched off from

216-573: Is now Bihar . Many texts in Kharoṣṭhi script have been discovered in the area centred on the Khyber Pass in what was known in ancient times as Gandhara and the language of the texts came to be called Gāndhārī. These are largely Buddhist texts which parallel the Pāli Canon, but include Mahāyāna texts as well. The language is distinct from other MI dialects. Elu (also Eḷa , Hela or Helu Prakrit )

240-412: Is one of the official and national languages of Sri Lanka, alongside Tamil . Along with Pali , it played a major role in the development of Theravada Buddhist literature. Early forms of the Sinhala language are attested as early as the 3rd century BCE. The language of these inscriptions, still retaining long vowels and aspirated consonants, is a Prakrit similar to Magadhi , a regional associate of

264-465: Is thought to have spanned more than a millennium between 600 BCE and 1000 CE, and is often divided into three major subdivisions. The Indo-Aryan languages are commonly assigned to three major groups: Old Indo-Aryan languages, Middle Indo-Aryan languages and Early Modern and Modern Indo-Aryan languages. The classification reflects stages in linguistic development, rather than being strictly chronological. The Middle Indo-Aryan languages are younger than

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288-700: The Middle Indian Prakrits that had been used during the time of the Buddha . 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 . It has two main varieties, written and spoken, and

312-576: The UNESCO National Commission of Ceylon According to Wilhelm Geiger , Sinhala has features that set it apart from other Indo-Aryan languages. Some of the differences can be explained by the substrate influence of the parent stock of the Vedda language . Sinhala has many words that are only found in Sinhala, or shared between Sinhala and Vedda and not etymologically derivable from Middle or Old Indo-Aryan. Possible examples include kola for leaf in Sinhala and Vedda (although others suggest

336-464: The 13th century CE, recognised a category of words that exclusively belonged to early Sinhala. The grammar lists naram̆ba (to see) and koḷom̆ba (fort or harbour) as belonging to an indigenous source. Koḷom̆ba is the source of the name of the commercial capital Colombo . The consistent left branching syntax and the loss of aspirated stops in Sinhala is attributed to a probable South Dravidian substratum effect. This has been explained by

360-621: The 1750s, predating the Portuguese occupation. The numerals painted on the front wall of the mosque state the year 1325 Hijri , which supports the notion that a prayer space existed here before the 20th century. Ismail was a devout wealthy Muslim, who also commissioned mosques in Weligama and Poruwa. The mosque is named in honour of Meeran Saheb of South India who is buried in Nagore Nagapattinam District , Tamil Nadu , India , and

384-700: The Eastern Prakrits prior to this change. He cites the edicts of Ashoka , no copy of which shows this sound change. An example of an Eastern feature is the ending -e for masculine nominative singular (instead of Western -o ) in Sinhalese Prakrit. There are several cases of vocabulary doublets , one example being the words mæssā ("fly") and mækkā ("flea"), which both correspond to Sanskrit makṣikā but stem from two regionally different Prakrit words macchiā (Western Prakrits) and makkhikā (as in Eastern Prakrits like Pali ). In 1815,

408-712: The Old Indo-Aryan languages but were contemporaneous with the use of Classical Sanskrit, an Old Indo-Aryan language used for literary purposes. According to Thomas Oberlies, a number of morphophonological and lexical features of Middle Indo-Aryan languages show that they are not direct continuations of Vedic Sanskrit . Instead they descend from other dialects similar to, but in some ways more archaic than Vedic Sanskrit. The following phonological changes distinguish typical MIA languages from their OIA ancestors: Note that not all of these changes happened in all MIA languages. Archaisms persisted in northwestern Ashokan prakrits like

432-546: The Sutta-nipāta contain many "Magadhisms" (such as heke for eke ; or masculine nominative singular in -e ). Pāli continued to be a living second language until well into the second millennium. The Pali Text Society was founded in 1881 by T. W. Rhys Davids to preserve, edit, and publish texts in Pāli, as well as English translations. Known from a few inscriptions, most importantly the pillars and edicts of Ashoka found in what

456-498: The features that may be traced to Dravidian influence are: ඒක ēka it අලුත් aḷut new කියලා kiyalā having-said මම mama I දන්නවා dannavā know ඒක අලුත් කියලා මම දන්නවා ēka aḷut kiyalā mama dannavā it new having-said I know "I know that it is new." ඒක ēka it අලුත් aḷut new ද da Q කියලා kiyalā having-said මම mama I දන්නේ Middle Indo-Aryan languages The Middle Indo-Aryan (MIA) stage

480-590: The island of Ceylon came under British rule . During the career of Christopher Reynolds as a Sinhalese lecturer at the School of African and Oriental Studies, University of London , he extensively researched the Sinhalese language and its pre-1815 literature. The Sri Lankan government awarded him the Sri Lanka Ranjana medal for his work. He wrote the 377-page An anthology of Sinhalese literature up to 1815 , selected by

504-451: The meaning of the main verb or adds a shade of meaning to it. Subsequently, the second verb was grammaticalised further into what is known as a light verb , mainly used to convey lexical aspect distinctions for the main verb. The innovation is based on Sanskrit atmanepadi (fruit of the action accrues to the doer) and parasmaipadi verbs (fruit of the action accrues to some other than the doer). For example, पका दे (pakā de) 'give cook' has

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528-495: The result of the action (cooked food) going to someone else, and पका ले (pakā le) 'take cook' to the one who is doing the cooking. Pali is the best attested of the Middle Indo-Aryan languages because of the extensive writings of early Buddhists. These include canonical texts, canonical developments such as Abhidhamma , and a thriving commentarial tradition associated with figures such as Buddhaghosa . Early Pāli texts, such as

552-584: The retention of all 3 OIA sibilants, for example, retentions that would remain in the later Dardic languages. The following morphological changes distinguish typical MIA languages from their OIA ancestors: A Middle Indo-Aryan innovation are the serial verb constructions that have evolved into complex predicates in modern north Indian languages such as Hindi and Bengali . For example, भाग जा (bhāg jā) 'go run' means run away, पका ले (pakā le) 'take cook' means to cook for oneself, and पका दे (pakā de) 'give cook' means to cook for someone. The second verb restricts

576-471: Was widely regarded as the patron saint of sailors to and from Sri Lanka. Jumma Mosque literally means "Friday Mosque" or commonly the principal mosque. The mosque was constructed in a mixture of Victorian / Baroque architecture styles, with Islamic detailing. This article about a mosque or other Islamic place of worship in Asia is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This article about

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