Sahitya month and Vishva Sahitya

by Daya Dissanayake

Every year, we ‘celebrate’ a Literary month in September. We have an “International Book fair” without any International publishers or even publishers, from the neighbouring countries, participating. We have ceremonies for Literary Awards, both by the Ministry of Culture and several other organizations. Then at the end of September, we forget all about books and literature for the next 11 months.

We have our own Sahitya, spanning over two thousand years, written in Sinhala, Pali and Sanskrit. We have our modern literature in Sinhala, Tamil and English for over a century. There have been State Literary Awards for novels, short stories, poetry and works in translation for over half a century. But none of our literary works have been accepted into Vishva Sahitya or even into SAARC Sahitya, except for the works of diaspora writers, writing about their imaginary homelands to please the western reader. We cannot consider diaspora writers as Sri Lankan writers.

We can understand why our Sinhala writing has not entered Vishva Sahitya. But even our writings in English are still unknown around the world. In many Indian universities SAARC literature is a popular subject with students. But the only Sri Lankan books available to them are the few books by the diaspora. The teachers and professors are not aware of any Sri Lankan writers, not even about Ediriwira Sarachchandra, who was hailed as Sri Lanka’s “most distinguished man of letters and leading twentieth-century novelist in English” by Prof. D. C. R. A. Goonetilleke. Prof. Ashley Halpe felt that Sarachchandra’s novel about the 1971 southern insurgency ‘Curfew and the Full Moon’ “could well be called the most important novel written in English, by a Sri Lankan up to that time…’

“His erudition was legendary, and his influence on generations of students as well as the public, has made him a household word in the country…perhaps the foremost intellectual, scholar, teacher, and creative artist of 20th century Sri Lanka,” said Prof. Ranjini Obeysekere, at the UNESCO commemoration of the Sarachchandra centenary, in Paris, in June 2014.

‘Foam Upon the Stream’ was published in Singapore by Heinemann for UNESCO under the ‘Collection of Representative Works,’ in 1987, and the two Sinhala novels, were translated into Japanese by Tadashi Noguchi. The novel was reviewed by Alan Moores for Asiaweek in July 1987. Rajini Ramachandra reviewed ‘Foam Upon the Stream’ for The Literary Criterion, a Mysore publication, in 1987.

And yet what had our Ministry of Culture done to promote his writings abroad? The international fame he received was forgotten even during his lifetime. In our own country, his three English novels were reprinted by Vijitha Yapa several years ago. But we have just forgotten or ignored them. We have completely forgotten his translation of Charitha Thunak. We cannot blame the Indian universities for ignoring our literature when our own universities have ignored them. A few years ago, the organizer of the Jaipur Literary Festival visited Sri Lanka. She had not heard of any Sri Lankan writer, or had not bothered to find out about our writers before she arrived.

If we cannot promote our English writings, we do not have any chance to promote our Sinhala writings. There are very few Sinhala novels translated into English, and what has been translated are unknown outside our country. The fate of the Gamperaliya trilogy is an example, even though all three translations won the State Award for the best translation.

Probably that is why our publishers, and the copyright holders of our great Sinhala writers, are not interested in getting some of our great novels, poetry and short stories translated into English. In India and Bangladesh, their Sahitya Academies are doing a great service by promoting the their writing, translating and encouraging writers. Sri Lanka, boasting about a 2,000 years of literary greatness have not yet even thought of a Sahitya Academy, though the idea has been proposed many times over the years.

We are not members of any international organizations, like the Comparative Literature Association or PEN. We are supposed to have a branch of the Association for Commonwealth Literature, though it appears to be as dead as the SAARC Cultural Centre, based in Colombo.

Instead having an “International” book fair, amid the pandemic threat, if we could have an online book fair, we could reach out to all the readers around the world, including all the Sri Lankans living around the world. We are having an annual Literary oration organized by the Cultural ministry, in Sinhala only. If we could organize three lectures online in the three languages, it could reach everyone, including Sri Lankans living abroad.

We are talking about post-colonial literature, because we are still in a colonial mindset, that is why we are clingin

g on to a dead Commonwealth. If we look back we have been in a colonial mindset for over two millennia. Even though we have developed a language of our own, about which we take great pride, Sinhala has always been the second language in our country, at least since the 5th century, when Buddhagosha arrived from India and translated the Buddhist writings from Sinhala into Pali, and then the Sinhala books disappeared mysteriously. Had we retained our Buddhist literature in Sinhala, then Sinhala would have been the international language of Theravada Buddhism instead of Pali.

After Pali came Sanskrit, which became more elite than even Pali. Since then it has been English. We still study British literature. Even our Sinhala scholars quote from British writers and poets. We face literary chauvinism. If our writers are to be internationally recognized, we have to write in English and publish overseas. If not our literature will continue to be known only in this tiny island.

The earliest surviving Pali writing is Dipavamsa, written around 4th or 5th century CE, followed by the other chronicles. However, literary works in Sinhala would have been created much earlier, as our people were literate, evidenced by the rock and cave inscriptions, and the highly advanced poems found at Sigiriya. We just promote Sigirya as a tourist attraction showing the few paintings remaining. Paranavithana’s ‘Sigiri Graffiti’ should have been promoted to all universities and academics around the world. The two volumes have been out of print for several years.

Many of the literary works had been done in Sanskrit, the most famous, and probably one of the earliest being ‘Janakiharana’, written by king Kumaradasa, around the 6th century CE. He is believed to be a contemporary of Kalidasa. ‘Janakiharana’ was translated into English by K. N. Joglrkar in 1908, from the edition by Narayan Vasudev Nigudkar. It had been prescribed as a text book at Bombay University in 1908. For us in Sri Lanka Valmiki’s Ramayana has always been more important.

Kumaradasa would have used Sanskrit, for the same reason we are using English today, so that it could reach a far wider readership than if it had been written in Sinhala.

Since the Cultural Ministry and the publishers are not interested in taking our literature beyond our shores, we have to consider very seriously about publishing our work as e-books and sharing them in cyberspace. As very few writers make a living from their books, making the books available for free is the best option. Through on-line booksellers we can still get a better payment as royalty and better sales.

COVID-19 has made all of us think out of the box, to accept many things that we had been refusing or ignoring for a long time. I have been promoting e-books and e-newspapers for over two decades. I have been promoting the use of a phone instead of a car to be able to work from home, and webinars instead of international seminars for over a decade. But most of us had more than one excuse to oppose these ideas. Yet the pandemic made most of us read the newspapers online, read books online, work from home using the laptop and phone, instead of driving to office. In most other countries, the universities are organizing webinars and online lectures.

Let us try to use all available technology to take our books into Vishva Sahitya.

*Mahakavi Rabindranath introduced the term Vishva Sahitya in a speech delivered at the Jatiya Sikhsa Parishad 120 years ago.