Sinhala Majjhima Nikāya uploaded

I’ve also uploaded the Sinhala translation of the Majjhima Nikāya. With special thanks to Janaka from http://pitaka.lk/
https://suttacentral.net/si/mn1

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Thanks so much, Ayya.

This and other texts that Ayya is uploading now are the updated version of the AP de Zoysa translation. Here I will give a brief history.

AP de Zoysa was a leading left-wing intellectual and Buddhist scholar of the early-mid 20th century. As just one of his many accomplishments, he supported the translation and publishing of a fairly complete translation of the Pali Canon. In line with his political leanings, this was made in a relatively accessible language that could be understood by those who were not experts. A variety of Sri Lankan Pali scholars worked on this, including some of the monks who later worked on the Buddha Jayanthi edition.

During the 90s, Ven Mettavihari decided to publish a Sinhala translation of the Pali canon on his website, metta.lk. He gathered a group of Sinhalese friends, who assessed the various versions, and decided on the AP de Zoysa edition, as it was the most readable. They then started a project to digitize this text. This is published on metta.lk, and was converted to Unicode for pitaka.lk, then published on SC. However, this project was never finished. There are many suttas missing, and in addition, the proofing is not complete.

In 2013, I started searching for a Sinhala translation for SuttaCentral. The two main complete translations, it seems, are the de Zoysa edition and the “official” Buddha Jayanthi edition. While the latter is very complete and accurate, it is regarded by most native speakers as difficult to read, and, in addition, at the time there was no digital text that I could find. (This is being rectifed by our friends over at http://www.thripitakaya.org/) While discussing this, I learned from my friend Amaradasa Liyanagamage in Sydney that a new edition of the de Zoysa text had just been published. The publication was organized by Amaradasa’s friend and de Zoysa’s daughter, the third-wave feminist scholar Kumari Jaywardhana, and published through the Sri Lankan publisher Godage’s.

Obviously it would be desirable to publish digitally the revised, complete, and corrected text. I asked Kumari for her permission to publish this text online, which she graciously gave. But we needed the actual files from the publisher.

I made contact with Janaka of pitaka.lk, who also publishes the de Zoysa edition on his site, as well as Ven Mettavihari. Joining them in Colombo was our friend from Sydney, Maithri Panagoda. They visited Kumari to obtain a written permission for the use of the revised text, and then met with Mr. Godage the publisher. He kindly supplied them with the relevant pdf files.

Janaka then undertook the far from trivial task of extracting the text from the pdfs, which he published on pitaka.lk. Finally, @blake and @vimala adapted the text for SC. It is now almost three years since my first approach to Kumari, and finally we can make this work available. I am very happy that this is in line with the original vision of AP de Zoysa, who sought to make the Dhamma available to the ordinary people.


As a final footnote to this story, I might add that, while the circumstances of this particular edition are specific, it is far from unusual. For each of the translations and editions published on SC, there is a story behind it. Sometimes the process of acquiring and adapting texts for SC is a simple one, often not. But underlying each text and translation is an effort made by people to convey the Dhamma, openly and without limit.

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May all these Good Karma help you to attain the Nibbana.
Sadhuu… Sadhuu… Sadhuu…

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