A Sinhala–Sinhala dictionary compiled by Welivitiye Sorata Thera, the Buddhist monk and scholar whose name appears on title pages and in catalogues in several forms — Ven. Panditha Soratha Himi among them. The work was first published in Colombo by the Maha Bodhi Press; this printing comes from Godage International Publishers.
Both sides of the dictionary are Sinhala. Headwords are Sinhala and the definitions that follow them are written in Sinhala, so the book assumes a reader who already reads the language and wants to look a word up rather than translate it. There is no English in it. International buyers who do not read Sinhala script should know that before ordering: this is a reference book for Sinhala readers, students of Sinhala literature, and anyone working with Sinhala texts who needs a monolingual dictionary to hand.
Sorata Thera belonged to the generation of monastic scholars who carried out much of the twentieth century's lexicographical and textual work in Sinhala, and the Sri Sumangala Shabdakoshaya is the dictionary his name is attached to. It has been reissued by Sri Lankan publishers over the decades since its first appearance, and remains in use on reference shelves in schools, universities and libraries in Sri Lanka.
Godage International Publishers is an established Colombo house with a long list in Sinhala and English, including reference titles, scholarship and literature. Copies of a Sinhala dictionary of this kind are not easy to come by outside Sri Lanka, which is the main reason people order one from here rather than locally — readers in the diaspora keeping up their Sinhala, university departments with Sinhala holdings, and translators who need a Sinhala definition rather than an English equivalent.
- Author: Ven. Panditha Soratha Himi
- Publisher: Godage International Publishers
- Language: Sinhala
- Pages: 535
- ISBN: 9789552013997
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