Tale
සද්ධර්මාලංකාරය
Not translated into English
Jayabahu Dharmakirti · 1400
Synopsis
The collection takes up, in expanded form, the tales of a thirteenth-century Pali collection, many of which come from India and others from the island. In it we follow King Dutugemunu's campaigns against the Chola invaders, or Prince Saliya's love for a girl of a caste held to be impure; each tale carries a moral lesson.
Context
The book is an expanded translation of the Rasavāhinī, a Pali prose collection of the thirteenth century: it keeps its structure, places the verses roughly where the Pali text puts them and follows its letter closely. Its readings, which it shares with Southeast Asian manuscripts absent from the island's collections, are used today to correct the Pali text itself. A revised edition by Makuludūvē Piyaratana appeared in Colombo from M. D. Gunasena in 1971.
Who it is for
A long collection in classical Sinhala, with no French or English translation, which is read story by story.
Prizes and reception
Held by philologists to be an indispensable witness to its Pali source, whose text it helps to establish.
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The pages consulted to check this page.