ABSTRACT
This Indo-Aryan outlier has developed over the last 2,000 years in isolation from its New Indo-Aryan congeners, and, not suprisingly, exhibits a num ber of unusual, not to say unique, features, due in part to Dravidian influence. The earliest records of literary Sinhalese date from the thirteenth/fourteenth centur ies AD. This literary language has continued to be used into the twentieth century, and differs markedly from the colloquial Sinhalese which is described in this article. Much of classical Sinhalese literature is derivative, an ornate recycling of Indian motifs, e.g. the sandesa (‘message-poem’) model and jataka themes.
