The pen and the trowel

Reviewed by Daya Dissanayake

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Title: Urban Origins in Southern Sri Lanka
Author: Dr. Raj Somadeva

Urban Origins in Southern Sri Lanka by Dr. Raj Somadeva, is a book that should be considered as a ‘must read’, by one and all who are interested in our history and our culture.

It is of much greater importance to most of us who hail from the Ruhuna ‘marginalized from the national development programs in the country throughout the 20th century’.

Ruhuna had always been marginalized, throughout our recorded history resulting in the myth that the Ruhuna has always played a secondary role in our history, first to Rajarata and then to the Western Province.

This is a doctoral thesis in archaeology at Uppsala University, which is the outcome of four years of field research in the Lower Kirindi Oya basin, covering the period 900 BC to 600 AD.

The research has covered an area of 300 km, with a record of 127 sites and 8 excavations. It has incorporated textual data with archaeological data to make a synthesis on the social history of the settlements. It also focuses on the wider Indian Ocean Region to give a context to the development of the pre-modern urbanism in Sri Lanka on a pan-regional scale and southern and southeastern Sri Lanka on a regional scale.

Having followed his field research since 1999, as a layman, working with his team of dedicated students of archaeology at their excavation sites, under the harsh and arid conditions in Southern Sri Lanka, I got a glimpse of a true archaeologist, with a genuine yearning to seek out what lay beneath the soil in the deep South of Sri Lanka, so he could add some knowledge about the people who had lived here from about 3000 years ago.

The dedicated field archaeologist belongs to an universally endangered species, as few could survive without the modern-day evils of electricity, running water, airconditioning and instant communications.

Dr. Somadeva has used his feet to walk miles and miles of shrub jungle in the hot sun, used the trowel and the brush, crowbar and shovel, and he also was handy with GPS mapping and use of the SPOT 7 satellite imagery. He stretched the funds available to him for the project to the maximum. He did not hesitate to travel by bus, to sleep on the floor on a reed mat, to cook his own meals or share it with a farmer in his chena.

His toil was rewarded in many ways. One was the discovery of the probably ‘Pit Dwelling’ at a site in Walgapattuwa. There are no records of the discovery of any pit dwellings in Sri Lanka, and if so this is the first such discovery. Because I had the good fortune to be at this site during the excavation, I believe that if not for the painstaking attention to detail stressed upon by Dr Somadeva upon his team, nothing would have been possible.

The book touches on Urbanism in general, then Urbanism in the South Asian context, before coming to Urbanism in Sri Lanka.

It leaves the reader with more questions, yet to be answered someday after more research. Let us hope that Dr Raj Somadeva would be able to find the answers for some of his own questions, in his future research projects in the area.

The glory of the Nanthi flag

Reviewed by Chelvatam Maniccavasagar

Book: Nanthi Kodiyin Mukkiyathuwamum Perumai Galum (The Significance and Glory of Nanthi Flag)
Author: “Vidaikody Chelvar” Sinnadurai Dhanabalaa
Publishers: Manimekalai Perasuram, Chennai

The book on “Nanthi Kodiyin Mukkiyanthuwamum Perumaigalum” (The Significance and Glory of the Nanthi Flag compiled by “Nidaikody Chelver” Sinnadurai Dhanabalaa is an enriching and stimulating volume which creates an awareness about the importance of the Nanthi in Saiva philosophy and religious practice.

“Vidaikody chelvar” Dhanabalaa, the author of this book has taken tremendous effort with unyielding determination, dedication, devotion and bubbling enthusiasm to promote the hoisting of the Nanthi flags in Temples and at religious functions.

In fact, in the ancient Hindu texts the NANTHI is described as Nandikeshwara. Further, the Nanthi worship goes back to the Indus Valley civilization in which Dairy farming was a key component of the economy. The Nanthi has since been worshipped as “PA SUPATI”. It has a major role in Hindu mythology.

Indeed, Nanthi stands for selfless work, devotion and ability to be calm. It represents saivism in its essence. In fact, in the history of the world every nation has stood for a particular idea which it has sought to weave into the fabric of the lives of the people.

The Germans made the concept of beauty essentially their own, the rule of law moulded the pattern of the Britishers. Likewise, long before the Greeks and Britishers the saivites were told to govern their lives by the norms of Dharma, which combine all the excellences, which make for an ideal humanity. Dharma is an internal discipline by which a given social order is protected. It is by Dharma that civilization is maintained.

Therefore “DHARMA” may be defined as a social norm or moral law. Since Nanthi or the Sacred Bull is said to be the vehicle of Lord Shiva, it also means that DHARMA is the vehicle of LORD SHIVA. According to the puranas, the “DHARMA devatha” or the “God of Dharma” is said to be of the form of a Bull.

As such, the Nanthi Flag encapsulates the essence of Hindu Siva thought. It portrays Reality. Further, the Nanthi Flag is an apt representation of the saivites who are passive yet perceptive, hale yet humble and deep, devout and detached.

Indeed, “Vidaikody Chelvar” Sinnadurai Dhanabalaa who is the vice-President of the All Ceylon Hindu Congress and Senior Vice-President of World Saiva Council (Sri Lanka Branch) should be highly commended for the invaluable service he is rendering for the saivites not only in Sri Lanka but world over by way of promoting the hoisting of the Nanthi Flag and also for releasing his book on “Nanthi Kodiyin MukkiyathuwamumPerumaigalum not only in Sri Lanka but also in Mudurai in South India, Australia (Melbourne and Adelaide), Toronto (Canada), London Luciam Sivan Temple, Abudabi and Dubai.

The All Ceylon Hindu Congress and the World Saiva Council have given profound support, unstinted Co-operation and assistance to promote the programme of spreading the conceptual and ritual significance of the Nanthi Flag.

“Vidaikody Chelvar” Dhanabalaa should be highly commended for his tremendous unselfish service to saivites and to bring about peace and establishment of “Dharma” which the “Nanthi flag” or “Shivakody” stands for.

Lexicographical longing

By Virginia Heffernan

When I was 19, my father gave me an Oxford English Dictionary, the 1971 compact edition with the 1987 supplement. Citations for every English word since the eighth century were crammed into three bulky volumes of minuscule print. I hallucinated before the speckled onion-skin pages until I discovered that the dictionary came with a magnifying glass.

This O.E.D. was forever. Wasn’t it?

No.

The future is here, and the immortal O.E.D., the one that lives in bound pages last published micrographically in 1991, is obsolete - at least according to the folks who publish it. As of now, Oxford University Press has no official plans to publish a new print edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.

Let’s go back. As lexicography geeks know well, Oxford’s magnum opus appeared in 10 volumes in 1928, after some 70 years of work by generations of editors and about 2,000 volunteers. (The volunteers displayed much the same gratis fanaticism of today’s Wikipedians.) A supplement with new words appeared in 1933, with additional supplements showing up at regular intervals between 1972 and 1986; in 1989 the whole dictionary was published anew in 20 volumes that collated the ‘33 edition and its supplements. Since virtually the day that that last biggie was published, Oxford University Press has been overhauling and revising entries in the dictionary and adding many more. (Oh, “mullet,” “carbo-load,” “six-pack,” “hazmat,” “pole dancing,” “doh!” - what would we do without you?)

But these revisions are now suspended in cyberspace. The lexicographers are uploading their work to the O.E.D. online. Their revisions sit cheek-by-jowl with old entries, some of which haven’t been touched in 150 years. A chicken in the online O.E.D. is therefore “the young of the domestic fowl; its flesh,” which seems poetic and factually not bad but also ambiguous and barely idiomatic in the 21st century. (Whose home, for one, is intended by that “domestic”?) For some reason, the prospect of a Web-only O.E.D. made me nervous. Talking on the phone with Jesse Sheidlower, editor at large for the Oxford English Dictionary, I fished for reassurance. “Um, are you even just going to print out the new dictionary, like on your laser printer or at Kinko’s or something? Just to have a hard copy?” I asked.

“I’m not sure we have printed it out,” he replied coolly. “In any case, we’ve only finished from volume ‘M’ to ‘quit shilling.’ We have about 20 years’ more work to do revising and adding entries. Who knows what will happen with technology in 20 years? We certainly don’t.”

I subscribed in a hurry to OED.com. After all, as book-positive as I pretend to be, I haven’t consulted the 1971 compact or the 1987 supplement in years.

When I need a definition, I use the dumb dictionary that came with my Mac operating system. (“Just this once,” I tell myself as I do with guilty Wikipedia look-ups.) When I need a spelling, I’m alerted by spell-check to both the error and the solution.

But there’s another virtue to a dictionary, online or otherwise: guidance in the finer points of usage. Subtly alerting readers to which words might suit them, and which they shouldn’t try at home, is not only in the original charter for the O.E.D.; it is also a service with new relevance for people who use e-mail, blogs and message boards. On the Internet, idioms, dialects, jargons and languages from around the world collide. Corresponding with people of varying degrees of literacy in competing dialects of disparate languages means that we must commit most of our linguistic resources to getting up to speed in the rapidly evolving lingua franca. That’s only reasonable; we’re like new immigrants to polyglot neighborhoods. But so much chatting in the Babel-like public sphere means we can let our commitment to maintaining our particular vocabulary go slack.

I asked Sheidlower if the O.E.D. ever hinted to readers that a word is cool or jerky. “We certainly indicate if a word is ‘racially offensive’ or ‘coarsely vulgar,’ “ he said. Otherwise, the O.E.D. has a whole system for gently protecting users from imbecility. “That’s what the usage quotations are for,” Sheidlower explained. Those quotations, which give examples of how a word has been used over time, are a hallmark of the O.E.D. (the online edition contains nearly three million of them). If the people who have used your chosen word are Henry Miller, D. H. Lawrence and Mobb Deep, you should at least know you’re in their company when you start typing.

Dictionary.com, the popular online dictionary that draws from a range of American dictionaries, offers a much more limited selection of usage quotations. When I looked up “lenity” on Dictionary.com, I found four citations with the word. One was from Shakespeare, undated, and the other three appeared between 1998 and 2000. Of those, fully two instances of “lenity” had come from the pen of Richard Posner, the judge and legal theorist. My takeaway? “Lenity,” whatever it means, is, above all, “a word used by Richard Posner at the very end of the 20th century.” If you still feel like using it, by all means, it’s yours.

- New York Times

“Without whom this work may not have been possible”

By Aditha Dissanayake

[email protected]

Sometime last week I was more than thrilled when an erudite scholar called me and said he had bought and read my first book “My Mind is Made Up, I’m Afraid its You”, thought it ‘just great, and asked me if I could sign it for him. When I told him it is not worth all that bother to come see me simply to get my signature on the book, he assured me this is not so. He said I may one day become famous and that signed copies of my books will become a rarity. He also gave another, “better reason” and said that “an inscription, especially with the reader’s name included, establishes a remote bond with the author, making the book a collector’s item unlikely to be thrown or given away”.

This triggered me to wonder, if this is so, shouldn’t writers give more attention to the printed dedication page, aiming it not just to a specific “dedicatee” but personally relating it to all of his or her readers?

This would surely help take off the tedious, unimaginative salutes to family members and ends with”with out whom this work may not have been possible” as found on the Dedication page of most books.

History has it that the dedication page began in ancient obeisance of authors to their royal patrons or ecclesiastical protectors, then bogged down in platitudinous salutes to family members.

But, Ben Jonson, the often-panned playwright who was Shakespeare’s contemporary, was having none such obeisances. He dedicated his work “To the Reader, if thou be such, I make thee my patron, and dedicate the piece to thee.. . .Fare thee well, and fall to. Read.”

Benjamin Disraeli, in his 1826 “Vivian Grey,” is said to have added a note about his readership: “To the Best and Greatest of Men, I dedicate these volumes. He for whom it is intended, will accept and appreciate the compliment. Those for whom it is not intended, will do the same.”

Here is Mark Twain in 1897, writing self-mockingly in a copy of his “Following the Equator”: “This book is affectionately inscribed to my young friend Harry Rogers, with recognition of what he is, and apprehension of what he may become unless he form himself a little more closely upon the model of The Author.”

According to William Safiree who writes in an article in the New York Times titled “Are you Good?” even as the printed dedication page shows a lack of creativity, now and then a personal inscription shows a flash of personality.

The director Alfred Hitchcock signed a biography about him with a cartoon of himself; the poet Ogden Nash, master of the unexpected rhyme, signed a collection of his poems “to an interviewer whose heart is pure.” (The author of a book about mistakes in grammar signs his “with every best wishes.”)

But when it comes to dedicating and autographing books the final word surely goes to James Michener. When someone once asked him to sign the first edition of “Tales of the South Pacific,” his first book, he said “I’ll be glad to, but there’s something you should know. What you have here may be a great rarity - the only unsigned copy.”