Forms of address in our culture

The form of addressing the person before you provides a tricky situation, maybe in any society. Usually it depends on the status of the latter. Never will a person of low status (in our culture) address a higher person as umba. The address would sublimate itself to oba thuma or oba wahanse, the English equivalents of which go as 'your excellency' and 'your honour'.

The term 'your honour' is the standard term used in law courts and addressed to the one on the rostrum which in Sinhala is swamini. This is not to be confused with Himiyani, the endearing term by which an Asiatic female addresses her husband rather esoterically. Mandri Devi's emotional appeal to her husband to take her away to the Himalayan wilds seethes with this address many times as recorded in Vessantara Jathaka.

In fact, a good part of our addresses are influenced by Indian Buddhist forms, some actually laid by the Buddha Himself. After his enlightenment he visited his former pupils (Pas Vaga Mahanun) who addressed him by his personal name and the Buddha set the precedent on how to address a superior by saying, 'Do not address me by name or on equal terms'. Thus he directly pronounced his superiority to avoid future misunderstandings.

Acquaintances

How did acquaintances in our society address each other in the olden days? It is interesting to note that Machang has now got elevated to an international chain of hotels pioneered by Sri Lankan youth. It means an informal place that is entertaining too. Thamuse and thamunnanse are other forms. I had a relative who flies into a temper every time her husband calls her thamuse, reckoned as a pastoral term.

Going into extremes and reflecting the urgency of the situation are forms of greetings such as pas vaan dahasakata budu venna, deiyo buduvanta, both embroiled with our main religion,yet have no explicut meanings.

Ayubowanda is another form of greeting that means "May you have long life! that the Sinhalese considers unique since no other race takes it into especial reckoning when greeting. Minister Loku Bandara brought it into vogue in modern society. It is used as a form of address too.

Loku unnahe is another greeting, whether the one thus greeted be big or small. Baas unnahe is another that actually disregards the form of occupation. It is interesting to note that forms of addresses and greetings differ sex-wise.No woman will say, Ayubowanda to another woman unless she aspires for a sex change. Ayubowan in itself is a very popular form of greeting since it means 'May you have long life!' that the Sinhalese consider as a unique greeting since no other race seems to emphasise on ayu (long life).

Interest

My interest in the topic waned since the village-well incident as years went by and as many other topics submerged it. Anyway the interest was rekindled within me by the titles of two popular teledramas, running at present. Sakisanda Suwaris and Sabanda Subilis. Here Sakisanda and Sabanda are two forms of address used by males for their friends. I came across a funny piece regarding these forms of address which is of sociological interest too. A member of the upper class may address a member of the lower class when wishing for some favour. But it was the latter to turn around and address the one in the upper domain by those terms, that would spell his ruin.

Oya, oba, oba thuma or thumiya, mahattaya, yusmatha and yusmathiya (mostly used in courts) are other forms of address plus thaa and thee. Thee is usually used in ferocious context such as thee, mama marami (You, I will kill), reminiscent of Maname and occurs as a form of address in the English language too. Some may attribute this to coincidence while the more far fetched would go all the way to common Indo-Aryan origins of the two languages. Forms of address, I must venture to say,are no joke. Misused they can have serious repercussions and even cost you your job or any prospects you have in mind.

Sometimes one is in a quandary as to how to address the other person. Cultural patterns impede or support these. At one time, Amme was used to address women, but now it has gone out of use as it incurred the wrath of many a dame of the upper class or upper middle class. There seems to be a paucity of forms of addresses among the females except for oya, methiniya, oba thumiya and yusmathiya. Naane or sister-in-law fills the genre.

Propensity

Koheda naane, hisa peeran panawa?' (where is the comb, sister-in-law? A youth courting a female too has the propensity to call the latter, naane. This arises mainly from the fact that naanas or cousins are those often courted and encouraged by elders to ensure non-breaking up of land inheritance.

The forms of address used by the lower humans crawling in society, when they want to get a favour from one in the upper echelons may need one whole article or chapter. They are enmeshed in alankara or beautiful rhetoric too. Some reach the limits as, pasvaan dahasakata budu wanna, hamuduruwane (May you live up to 5,000 years).

Wishing the impossible. Hamuduruwane (Oh! Bhikkhu) is used for any human in the upper segments of society, a very illogical form of address as it relates to a robed one. Sree too can be reckoned as a form of address. Hamu too beats the odds. It was used very loosely in the days of the supremacy of the aristocracy. Some reckon it as a shortened form of Hamduruwane while others, sarcastically say it owes itself to a sociological factor that the upper class in our society got mixed up or mixed with the Whites. Appo! is also a term used for those considered to belong to the upper class till some party thought of an ingenious attempt to demean it by aligning it to the lowest strata.

And here was a form of 'Self introduction' by an ordinary citizen in the time of Rasingh Deiyo, the mighty Rajasinghe 11.

Deiyo buduwanna, mama obe balu geththa ('May gods end up as Buddha - No explicit meaning). I am your humble dog.) But those were the days before the Magna Carta and Declaration of Human Rights on American and French soils. As for gross violation of human rights, read the legend, of Rasingh Deiyo who had a youth beheaded, for laying hands on his sacred royal physique. And what was the context? It was in the act of rescuing him as he was nearly getting drowned in the Mahaweli waters in a spree of swimming. Anyway better to take the story with a pinch of salt or regard it as fabricated matter for the legend comes in a book written by Robert Knox,a White man bearing a grudge against his captor, the mighty Rasingh Deiyo who lorded it over the island in the 17th century engaged in ousting two White powers.