Kumaratunga Munidasa:

A peerless language reformer

By Kalakeerthi Edwin Ariyadasa

I am a lover of truth, a celebrant at the altar of language purity and telerance.
Stephen Fry (1957- )
British Intellectual.
Every language is a temple in which the soul of those who speak it, is enshrined.
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841-1935)
Eminent Us jurist.

Proximity has a way of obscuring the greatness of some men, women and events. The hum and buzz of contemporary life does not allow some exceptional personalities to express the quality of their unique genius in its full compelling glory to the men and women amidst whom they routinely move about.

History is replete with endless instances.

In ancient Athens, Philosopher socrates (469-399 BC) expounded moral truths to the young people of the city, standing outside his house. His wife Xantippe, regularly screamed to remind him of the need to find food for the family. Without paying the least heed to his wife’s ‘decrees’, Socrates held forth.

Xantipple emerged from inside the house, carrying a bucket of water and poured the water over his head. Unfazed Socrates said: “Children, that is rain after thunder.” The authorities of the City State, put him to death forcing him to drink the poison – hemlock. But, his views were immortalised by Plato.

Closer home too, there have been many who suffered grievous contemporary neglect, but were restored to posthumous glory. Anagarika Dharmapala, a trailblazer of the religio-social renaissance of the 20th century Sri Lanka, is a vivid case in point.

A repentant nation, with a feeling of communal guilt perhaps, for the prolonged shabby attitude, the people had adopted towards this cultural hero, is making an attempt to celebrate the Anagarika’s 150th birth anniversary this year, under state patronage.

Today, we mark the 70th death-anniversary of a rare Sri Lankan intellectual, whose versatility, has not been adequately appreciated, in spite of the nation-wide influence his works have exerted.

His aggressive clearsightedness, about a range of views held ardently by a multitude of Sri Lankans, in relation to language and culture, had a riveting and transforming effect on a broad swath of highly – motivated enthusiasts. Their nearly frenzied adoration of this alluringly articulate social and language reform advocate was so fervent that soon he became the focus of an islandwide cult. Its echoes and traces still linger.

This one-man revolutionery-force, is none other than Munidasa Kumaratunga.

He was propelled by a perpetually turbulent inner restlessness. He was endlessly seeking new paths and avenues and untrodden terrains of thoughts and ideas.

Name change

His unceasing urge for change is quite clearly reflected in the series of name changes he went through. He was born Munidasa Kumaratunga. An uncompromising language-purist, he became Munidasa Kumaratunga. With a fresh spell of though occupying his mind, he transposed the two elements of his name, to read Kumaratunga Munidasa.

An intriguing feature of his personality, was his keenness to change the names of his disciples as well. If a name exuded a western a alien feel, he suggested a change. The fairly well-known Sri Lankan name Alwis, was reborn under his direction as “Alaw-isi”. My childhood friend George Kudachchi, was promptly converted into Anandapiya Kudatihi.

Kumaratunga was born in Dikwella in the deep South. In the late 1880s when he absorbed a rural culture, by being born in that village, his life routine was dominated by the routines of a Sinhala Village, that perpetuated the traditional ways of life scrupulously.

His father was an ayurvedic physician, a vocation that transforms a person into a reposition of indigenous cultural values.

Inward bent almost from his birth, he was spiritually inclined. At one time, child Munidasa even contemplated renouncing lay life, to become a Bhikkhu. This preoccupation eroded, perhaps due to his deep immersion in scholarship.

Eventually, when it was time to think of a livelihood, he took to government service. Initially he was a schoolteacher. He served as the principal of a training college. He retired as a school inspector a vocation that had high glamour, in the social context of that.

But, the ultra-intellectual drives that made him a national figure of exceptionally elevated profile, came into effect with his erudite redactions of Sri Lanka generations of scholars came under the spell of his commentaries of such traditional literary classics as Sasanawata and Kawsilumina.

His reform movement to priority language, took Sri Lanka by storm .

He established a system titled Hela Havula. The avowed purpose was to restore Sinhala language into its pristine glory.

This had without even the slightest exaggeration an islandwide sweep.

Branch organisations of Hela Havula studded the country.

In my childhood, Hela Havula, was set in the village of my birth - Unawatuna.

Such ‘Hela’ stalwarts as Ari-Sen Ahubudu and Ananda-piya Kudatihi, are products of this branch.

As for me I did not quite see eye-to-eye with these reformers. I could not accept their deep commitment to introduce neologisms, to replace some expressions that had been entrenched in the indigenous language for long centuries. Tradition and prolonged use, give these words a patina and an aura, while have tremendous emotive potential.

Artificial creations

The purists (Hele) ‘manufactural’ such words as rajaya (for Government) and hediya (for nurse). These are some words that have survived functionally in the Sinhala language. Most other artificial creations have vanished over the years.

Very little is spoken about Munidasa Kumaratunga’s literary creativity. He is perhaps the greatest among writers of children’s poetry due to remarkable creative vision that was capable of conjuring up the dream-world of a sleeping infant.

In one of his sensitive poems, he describes how the natural woods had got together to protect the infant’s sleep.

The poet says the gecko, as is his habit gives chase to a fly. But he catches the fly by its mouth so that his cry on being caught will not interrupt the infant’s sleep. You could see how keen and refined his lyrical imagination has been.

He had a several school text books too on language and lessons in human emotion.

When we remember Munidasa Kumaratunga, the reformistic genius, we need to resolve that scholars will make an effort to mark his massive service for the preservation of the land (desa) the nation (Rasa) and the language (Basa) a trinity he upheld.

He was an unsung hero.