Browsing by Author "Sameera, M.A.G.J."

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    Education Structure in Medieval Chinese Society depicted in Bājin’s novel ‘The Family’
    (Centre for Chinese Studies, Department of Modern Languages, Faculty of Humanities, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2016) Sameera, M.A.G.J.
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    An Examination on the Semantic Adversation of the Sinhalese Language
    (Department of Linguistics, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2016) Sameera, M.A.G.J.
    As a living language, the Sinhalese language has come to its present status after going through a numerous number of changes to all its components. Any given word of a language has a meaning of its own, which cannot be easily changed. However, it is not entirely impossible to change the given meanings of the words of a living language since it is infinitely modifiable and extendable according to the changing needs of its speakers. Any change that happens to the meaning of a word is known as semantic change. Semantic adversation which can be defined as acquiring a meaning entirely opposite to the existing one is one of the processes that can be seen under this. This study is an attempt to examine the semantic adversation in the Sinhalese language. Data has been collected through a comparison between classical Sinhalese and contemporary Sinhalese. The older meanings given to words were identified from their usage in selected classical Sinhalese literary work and it was evident that though many words used then are still being used, many of them are affected by semantic change in a number of ways. Since the range of this study is limited to semantic adversation, other processes of semantic change such as semantic expansion were not examined. Accordingly, a considerable amount of words in relation to which semantic adversation has happened is identified. However, exact reasons that can be pointed out as responsible for the semantic adversation or distinguishable processes of semantic adversation are not identified, which leads to the judgment that semantic adversation in the Sinhalese language is purely an accident of history.
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    The influence of the western painting traditions on southern coastal drawings of Sri Lanka
    (Faculty of Humanities, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2016) Sameera, M.A.G.J.
    The objective of this research is to pay special attention to the distinctive characteristics of the influence on paintings of the Southern coastal belt of Sri Lanka. Most of the Buddhist viharas and temples destroyed by Portuguese and Dutch in the southern coastal belt were reconstructed by King Keerthi Sri Rajasinghe with the patronage of the chief Buddhist priest Rev. Welivita Sri Saranankara Thero, during the late 19 th century. Due to this renovation process, the Kandyan art tradition expanded towards the Buddhist viharas and temples of the Southern coastal belt of Sri Lanka. Although the art tradition of the paintings of the upcountry, Sabaragamuwa and the NorthWestern provinces was preserved by the paintings of the Southern coastal belt, the paintings evolved in the low country developed slightly different characteristics. The main theme of upcountry and southern painting tradition was the illustration of the incidents related to Jathaka stories. A common feature of the southern painting tradition was the application of a brilliant colour scheme in their paintings. Another special feature observed in their paintings was the enrichment of the spaces and the background with environmental objects. Special characteristics that were observed in the Buddhist paintings of the Southern coastal belt was that they had a keen influence of the painting tradition of the western world. It was noticed that during this period, the western religious, social and cultural influence had an impact on the painting tradition of viharas and temples of Sri Lanka. These characteristics could be observed in the paintings of the temples namely Mulkirigala, Shailabimbaramaya of Dodandoowa, Poorwaramaya of Kathaluwa, Thelwatta Rajamaha viharaya of Totagamuwa, Samudragiri viharaya of Mirissa, Sunandaramaya of Ambalangoda, Kande viharaya of Aluthgama, Rajamaha viharaya of Kumarakanda and Rajamaha viharas of Kotte and Kelaniya. It could be concluded from the research that although the Southern tradition of paintings was as the evolution of the Kandyan painting tradition, the paintings of Buddhist viharas in the southern coastal belt depict mostly the western tradition of drawings. Books and articles related to literature on the tradition of art and paintings of Sri Lanka were associated along with the sources of the field study for this research.
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    "Yavahan error" in Sinhala Prosody
    (Department of Sanskrit, University of Kelaniya, Kelaniya, 2016) Sameera, M.A.G.J.
    Prosody inherits a longstanding history and it is believed that it had emerged from Vedic literature. Origin of Sinhala prosody is also the Sanskrit prosody. While there is a separate grammar system for prosaic literature and poetic literature, grammar is afforded for poesy from prosody. Prosody and rhetoric are necessary to produce a poem of high quality. While rhetoric applies to generate sapidity of a poem, prosody helps to arrange characters and syllables properly in a sentence. Prosody is related to the composition of lines in a verse of a poem while characters are related to the composition of words. Ancient educators believed that a poem should compulsorily consist of rhetorics.They evinced that prosody is essential to create a proper poem dispelling the errors that generate in the composition of poems. The first ever text composed describing rhetoric was "Elu Sandes Lakuna" composed by a Buddhist priest called "Badra" during Dambadeniya period. Special attention of this research is paid towards Yavahan errors generating in composition of poems as mentioned by ancient educators. Objective of this research is to describe as to how; poems could be composed without Yavahan errors. It could be identified that ancient poets have paid special attention to compose verses without Yavahan errors, that certain erudite poets have composed poems with Yavahan errors, that the modern poet has not paid much attention to dispel Yavahan errors, and that sometimes folk poets have created poems without Yavahan errors. Acording to this research , it could be concluded that Yavahan errors are a special poetic rule that is taught in prosody and that Sinhala prosody has been originated and nurtured by Sanskrit language and also that Yavahan errors are a poetic rule inherited Sinhala prosody with no reference or relevance to Sanskrit prosody. It is important to mention that a lot of primary and secondary literary sources were associated for this research.
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