Sri Lanka, formerly known as Ceylon, mainly uses Sinhala.
The earliest existing Sri Lankan poetry can be traced back to AD 1 century. These earliest poems have only about six groups of rhyming antitheses, carved on rocks. One set of even sentences is to commemorate a royal stonemason who died in the line of duty forever. Although there is evidence that this tradition of poetry continues to exist, no samples of the works have been found so far. The samples of early Sri Lankan poetry obtained now were made in the 5th and 6th centuries. Poems carved on the mirror wall of Sigiria can be traced back to the 5th century to13rd century. These poems are basically lyric poems. This is what tourists feel when they watch some famous murals in a small hole in the rock wall. These poems use a variety of metrical forms, including empty sentences and rhyming quatrains. This rhyming quatrain later became a popular style in Sri Lankan poetry.
However, the earliest existing complete long poems in Sri Lanka can be traced back to 10 century. This long poem discusses rhetoric, focusing on various poetic artistic skills and figures of speech. This poem even uses rhyming sentences.
Then three more poems appeared: The Story of Rabbit Birth, The Story of Deer Birth and The Poet's Crown, all of which adopted blank couplets. The first poem was written during the reign of Li Xinyu Lawati (1197-1200). The poem Crown is dedicated to Bogama Hu Ba II (1234— 1269). The author of the story "The Birth of Deer" is unknown, but it is generally believed that this poem was written after the story "The Birth of Hare" and before the poem "The Crown".
These three poems are all based on the story of the birth of the Buddha, and they are classics about the story of the Buddha's past life. The authors of these poems tried to strictly follow the poetry theory formulated by Indian writers, but as a result, many irrelevant descriptions appeared in these poems, which just destroyed their own organic unity.
/kloc-In the middle of the 0/4th century, Sri Lankan poets adopted a new poetic style called "bird poetry". In this new poetic style, the author usually uses birds such as peacocks or parrots as messengers to send books to gods or monks and ask them to bless the emperor or ministers. In this kind of poems, the authors often describe the villages, towns, rivers and temples that the messengers saw and passed along the way. Birds poetry has been widely circulated in Ceylon poetry circles, with rich works. Even now, new poems about birds are published occasionally. Although the authors of bird poems generally abide by the rules of this poetic style, this new literary format provides Ceylon poets with the opportunity to express their experiences and impressions for the first time. Among these poems, there are many excellent works with high literary value.
During this period, there were other rhyming four-character poems that described life and preached Buddhist moral norms.
Since then, Sri Lanka has experienced a period of intense internal struggle. Portugal, the Netherlands and Britain invaded Sri Lanka one after another. In this turbulent period, literary activities were affected and fell into a trough. The works of araki Vana (65438+the second half of the 6th century) and matala School (65438+the second half of the 8th century) in this period are decadent and depressing.
Modern and contemporary poetry in Sri Lanka is characterized by the integration of ancient poetry and new poetry in form and content. Some works show the tendency of social realism. Especially in the works of contemporary poets influenced by radical ideas, this tendency is more obvious. An important feature of contemporary Sri Lankan poetry is the emergence of free verse with neither rhythm nor melody.