A Sinhala-language study of the folk literary tradition, written by Herson Dias, Senior Professor in the Department of Sinhala at the University of Kelaniya. The title translates as "Tradition of Folk Literature", and the book is published in Colombo by S. Godage and Brothers.
Readers outside Sri Lanka should note before ordering that the text is entirely in Sinhala. There is no English translation within the book and no parallel text, so it will be of use to those who read Sinhala comfortably — students of Sinhala literature, teachers, and researchers working in the language.
Folk literature in the Sinhala tradition is the body of material carried orally rather than through manuscript and print: the songs, verses and narrative forms that belonged to village life, work and ritual before they were written down and studied. Dias has worked on this material across several books. His other published titles include Piriniwan Jataka Kavyaya and Mahanuwara Matara Janakavi Sahityaya, a study of folk poetry of the Kandy and Matara periods, alongside further research on the Sinhala folk literary tradition.
Godage International Publishers, the English imprint of S. Godage and Brothers, is an established Colombo house issuing work in both Sinhala and English, with a long list in Sri Lankan literature, history and scholarship. Academic studies of this kind are typically printed for a domestic readership and circulate mainly within Sri Lanka, which makes them harder to find elsewhere.
Suited to anyone building a Sinhala-language collection on literature and oral tradition, and to university readers following the study of folk material in Sri Lanka.
- Author: Dr. Herson Dias
- Publisher: Godage International Publishers
- Language: Sinhala
- Pages: 216
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