By Rohana R. Wasala

Sadly, outside Sri Lanka, little known are the Sinhala language and the ethnic community known as the Sinhalese who have spoken it as their native tongue over the millennia. Both have been eclipsed by Sri Lanka’s huge northern neighbour India with its teeming millions speaking diverse languages, with none of which Sinhala has any dialectal relation (i.e., Sinhala had its own distinct historical origins and evolved in an entirely different geographical location, the small island of Sinhale or Ceylon, today called Sri Lanka). A natural concomitant of Yohani’s rise to stardom is that, for most people in the world, it opened a window on the Sinhala language and the Sinhalese who are the majority in Sri Lanka. Yohani is an ethnic Sinhalese. My purpose here is to provide some background information, or add a kind of footnote to this additional advantage that Yohani earned for her motherland.

SHIDDAT – JOURNEY BEYOND LOVE” is a Hindi language film made under the banners of T-Series and Maddock Films Pvt Ltd in India. Yohani is reported to have signed a contract with the first. The film was released on October 1, 2021 (a week ago). The official female version of the theme song of this film was sung by Yohani de Silva of Sri Lanka. 

My daughter learnt some Hindi at school and later on she picked up a bit more of it on her own.  She translated Yohani’s Shiddat song into Sinhala for me. And I have here put it into English, also with her help. I wish to share it with those of  my interested readers, who like me, have little or no Hindi. (Both translations – Sinhala and English – like all translations are only approximations. But our attempts, I think, are close enough in literal meaning and suggested imagery to the original for them to recapture at least some of the Hindi song’s mysterious magic. Yohani’s singing is emotionally captivating. The unique mesmerizingly ethereal quality of  her gently lilting voice emanating from her slender svelte sylphlike figure is, I think, her chief strength as a singer. Her melodies, lyrics and singing (she often accounts for all three elements), while being avante-garde,  echo the classic Sinhala  musical rhythms.

මා ඔබ පුදන්නම් 

ඔබ මාගේ දෙවියන් කොට මා ඔබ යදින්නම්. 
මා යදිමි, ඔබ සමගම සිටින්න,
එවිට මගේ හිස ඔබ උරතලයේ රඳන්න ලැබේවි 

හුයක් ගැට ගසා භාර වෙන්නම්
ඔබේ රුව මා හදවත නම් කඩදාසිය මත අඳින්නම්
ඔබ තුල වාසය කරන්නම්, නික්ම නොව කිසිදා
මා වෙත ආ මැන, මා ඔබ පුදන්නම්

ඔබ මාගේ ඉරණම කරගන්නම්
ඔබ මාගේ ප්‍රේමය, පැතුම කරගන්නම්
ඔබ මාගේ හදවතේ යාඥාව කරගන්නම්
ඔබ තුල වාසය කරන්නම්, නික්ම නොව කිසිදා
මා වෙත ආ මැන, මා ඔබ පුදන්නම්

ඇයි අප අතරේ දුරස් බවක්?
අපේ  ගමනාන්තය එකමයි
නමුත් අපේ මං වල ඇයි මෙතරම් වෙනසක්? 

මා ඔබ හට පෙම් කවියක් ලියන්නම්
ජලයේ පවා අත් අකුරින් ලියන්නම්
මාගේ හඬ හැමවිට ඔබට අනුනාද දේවි
මා වෙත ආ මැන, ඔබ මාගේ ආශාව කරගන්නම්

මේ මුලු සාගරය මාගේ හෘද සාක්ෂිය වේ
මේ මා ආදරය දෝ මා දවන පාපය දෝ
ඔබ මාගේ උසාවිය වී, දඬුවම ද ඔබ වන්න
මා වෙත ආ මැන, මා, ඔබ පුදන්නම්

Shiddat – Votary of Love

I’ll make you my divinity and pray to you
I pray, I want you to stay with me
Then I’ll be able to rest my head on your shoulder

I will tie a thread and give myself up to you
I will draw your image on the paper of my heart
I will reside in you, never leaving you,
Please come to me, I will revere you!

I will make you my destiny
I will make you my love and hope
I will make you the prayer in my heart
I will reside in you, never leaving you
Please come to me, I will revere you!

Why is  this big difference between us?
Our destination is the same
But why is this difference between our paths?

I will write a love poem for you
I will write it even in water
My voice will always ring to you
Please come to me, I will make you my desire!

All this ocean is my conscience
Is this my love or my sin burning me?
You be my court of justice, and my sentence as well
Please come to me, I will exalt you!

Although, the Sinhalese are the majority (numbering just over 16 million) within Sri Lanka, they are a global minority of about 17 M. The Sinhalese and their language – in spite of their very long history and their still vibrant existence – are being overshadowed by the adjacent India with its huge multilingual population of nearly 1.4 billion; Hindi being the most common tongue in that country. Hindi is taught, at least in some Sri Lankan schools as a subject in higher grades (OL and AL). Ordinary Sri Lankans also pick up some Hindi from Hindi films and film songs. Classical Sinhala music has also been heavily influenced by North Indian musical genres. Yohani’s ‘Manike Mage Hithe’ and other songs display classic Sinhala rhythms interlaced with Hindustani musical elements. 

Sinhala is the mother tongue of the ethnic Sinhalese who account for well over 75% of Sri Lanka’s population. They are indigenous to the island and have a written history of over 2500 years. That recorded history dates from the time some sort of invasion seems to have come from Vanga Desh in north-eastern India, and initially subjugated them. A Vanga prince by the name of Vijaya who led the invasion was considered the progenitor of the Sinhala race. In excavations carried out in the inner city (Atul Nuwara) of Anuradhapura, the ancient capital of Sri Lanka, in 2009, under the supervision of the late Dr Shiran Deraniyagala (who died on October 5, 2021, at the age of 79), once the Director-General of Archaeology in the Department of Archaeology, prehistoric evidence (potsherds with Brahmi writing, fragments of gold jewellery, horses’ teeth, pieces of broken bricks, an underground channel, etc) was found that suggested that there had existed an earlier civilized society that predated the alleged arrival of Vijaya by about three hundred years. Dr Deraniyagala showed that the indigenous people who comprised that pre-Vijayan community were the Yakkhas, who were the real ancestors of the Sinhalese. The local woman Kuveni that Vijaya befriended according to the legend was actually a Yakkha princess. The Yakkhas’ prehistoric beginnings in the island are lost in the mists of time.  The language of  those people was the prototype of the Sinhala language. That was the language that Thera Mahinda, who officially introduced Buddhism to Sri Lanka under emperor Asoka of Bharatha (India) during the reign of king Devanampiya Tissa of the island of Lanka  in 236 BCE, used to explain the doctrine to the native people, the Yakkhas.

So, Sinhala is a very old language with a separately evolved script. The sacred scriptures of Buddhism which are in the Pali language, the language spoken by the people of Magadha of ancient India  – The Three Pitaka or the Three Baskets – which had come down orally were committed to writing at a Buddhist monastery called Alu Vihara (Aloka Vihara or Shrine of Light) in Matale in central Sri Lanka in the first century BCE, i.e., more than two thousand one hundred (2100) years ago, during the reign of king Valagambahu (89-77 BCE). The script used for that purpose was Sinhala, because Pali did not have a script of its own. Even today Pali texts are transliterated in different orthographies (Sinhala, Thai, Burmese, Khmer, Roman, etc.) In its long history, the contact with Pali, Sanskrit and other Indo-Aryan languages has greatly influenced the vocabulary of Sinhala. The Sinhala sound system (vocal sounds – consonants, vowels, semi-vowels, etc., are unique to it, which makes Sinhala sound entirely different from Dravidian languages like Tamil and Malayalam, which also have borrowed from Sanskrit (the language of Hindu sacred texts like the Bhagavad-gita). But Sinhala usually sounds close to Hindi. Many ordinary Hindi words are comprehensible to Sinhala speakers like Yohani. Sinhala is even closer to Bengali in its phonological and lexical aspects. The Indian national anthem Vande Mataram I bow to thee Mother) is in heavily Sanskritised Bengali. Hindi and Bengali speakers seem to have understood the Sinhala word Ma” (which actually means I”) in Yohani’s Manike Mage song as meaning Mother”; so lyric writers have composed songs on Mother India using the melody of Yohani’s Sinhala song. This linguistic kinship with North India is one reason why Yohani’s songs are catching on in India so fast.