Is this the kind of sentiment that Anagarika Dharmapala preached? As long as this sense of inferiority prevails, the Sinhala people will not be wealthy and strong.” (Sinhala Novel and the Public Sphere, Wimal Dissanayake, pp 119) As long as they do not gain modern knowledge, they will be unable to eliminate groundless fears and a feeling of inferiority. “As long as the Sinhalese are feeble and splintered into diverse castes, they will not gain modern knowledge. The following passage from one of his editorials at ‘Sinhala Jathiya’ attests to this fact: In fact, he became the literary voice of Anagarika Dharmapala. As he was an ardent follower of Anagarika Dharmapala he made use of ‘Sinhala Jathiya’ as a medium for spreading his nationalistic, anti-colonial thoughts. In 1905, ‘Sinhala Jathiya’, a daily newspaper was inaugurated and he became its editor. Then, he joined in ‘Sarasavi Sandaresa’ as a journalist and started to write his first novel, Vasanavantha Vivahaya Hewath Jayatissa Saha Roslin which was published in installments in the ‘Sarasavi Sandaresa’ newspaper. Two years later, when he finished his school education, he came to Colombo in search of employment, there he published the book. At the age of 18 he wrote his first book, a volume of poetry, titled Ovadan Mutuvela. Meanwhile, he had a great admiration for the nationalistic movement of Anagarika Dharmapala which resulted in changing his name from Pedrick de Silva to Piyadasa Sirisena. There are three schools that he took his early education which were Warahena school, Induruwa, Bentara school of Bentota and Brohier’s school at Aluthgama, a missionary school where he learned English.įrom childhood he developed an interest towards literature and started to write to newspapers. His name at birth was Pedrick de Silva, and he was the last child of five in his family. Starting from the beginning, Piyadasa Sirisena was born on Augin the village of Athuruwella, Induruwa in Galle district. Piyadasa Sirisena’s 146 birth anniversary fell on last August 31 and we think it is an ideal time to discuss his literary life. But he is a writer who deserves to be close study.
One reason for it that ProfessorĮdiriweera Sarachchandra demerited his fiction. However, until very recently the academia in Sri Lanka took him for granted as a writer. Piyadasa Sirisena was the first writer who developed vast readership around the Sinhala novel - his first novel Vasanavantha Vivahaya Hewath Jayatissa Saha Roslin (Lucky marriage or Jayatissa and Roslin) sold 25,000 copies within 10 years. If Martin Wickramasinghe is considered to be ‘father of Sinhala fiction’, Piyadasa Sirisena should be considered the ‘grandfather of Sinhala fiction’, because without him Wickramasinghe may not have been able to create the first realistic Sinhala novel, Gamperaliya, so early.
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