"Yavahan error" in Sinhala Prosody

Abstract

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.