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The Case Against Murdhaja

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Murdhaja? Yes, Murdhaja! And that’s not the name of my neighbour. No I haven’t misspelled Mudiyanse’s name! I’m talking about Sinhala language. Murdhaja is the name of the alphabetical characters that are supposed to be pronounced from the “muduna” or the top. Wait a minute! Where on earth is this Muduna?



Now isn’t that outrageous? We don’t pronounce our language like that!

Na (න / ණ), La (ල / ළ) and Sha (ශ / ෂ) has two versions, and one of them, we were taught, is Murdhaja(ණ, ළ and ෂ). And the opposite of Murdhaja, as we were taught, is Danthaja, and sometimes Thaluja. Probably, some educated people in Dambadeni era pronounced Murdhaja’s differently, but for many ages there hasn’t been a significant difference as far as pronunciation is concerned. Since we logically see no such significant difference between the two types, most people get it all confused and mixed up. No matter how deeply you study the dead old grammar, this is difficult to get digested; and it looks absurd. In the end we write Muirdhaja’s everywhere, Danthaja’s everywhere and less than a handful number of grammar gurus (probably including myself in real life) get themselves employed to catch other people’s spelling errors. Some of them do their weekly practice of intellectual masturbation by pointing out other people’s spelling errors through newspaper columns solely dedicated to “correct” “aksharavinyasaya”. When they reach multiple climaxes, they turn their miserable columns into books! And some people still think book reviewing means catching Na, La and Sha errors ( න, ණ, ල, ළ සහ ෂ, ශ වැරදි) among other “grammatical mistakes” of an author and bashing him for his sins against the holy language of ours. And the bashing continues till the hell freezes itself. Not even Martin Wickramasinghe and Ediriweera Sarachchandra could escape these grammarians of their day. This is how one of the Hela Hawula Pundits criticized Sarachchandra’s “grammatical errors”, and declared he’s not mature enough to write a proper play :

“Sarachchandra is still not mature enough to be able to write at least a Nadagama, let alone a play… Therefore, first, learn a little bit of language and then…”
“සරච්චන්ද්‍රයන් නළුවක් තබා යන්තම් නාඩගමක් පබඳින්නටත් තවමැ බොළඳ වැඩි ය… එහෙයින්, පළමු කොට බස මඳක් ඉගෙන…”

These pundits remind me of Kapuwa’s and fortune tellers sitting under wayside trees and trying to get other people’s attention claiming that they know something important; that they have access to something auspicious that others can’t enjoy; that they know some divine truth about other people’s future; that they know how to open the secret chambers of god. Good for you grammarians. However, a language is a very much alive and ever changing entity. Grammar is not a straitjacket that prevents the free flow and development of a language.

For the future development of both online and offline Sinhala, I strongly believe these unnecessary characters should be removed from the alphabet. People should consciously stop using these dead letters. A language will continue to flourish, and will be remained protected, not when less than a handful number of people can use it “correctly”. But when a majority of Sinhala people can use the “correct” language. And also when non-Sinhala people can come and learn it with much ease with a logically intelligible grammatical structure. In future I will not use any of these Murdhaja’s on this site. When I quote other people’s writings or when I edit medieval Sinhala books, of course I will follow the original authors spelling. I wholeheartedly encourage all the others to do the same. Say no to Murdhaja!