| Eḷu | |
|---|---|
| Helu | |
| Region | Sri Lanka |
| Era | Evolved into Sinhalese and Dhivehi |
| Ashokan Brahmi[1] (Dhammalipi) | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
| Glottolog | None |
Eḷa, also Elu, Hela or Helu Prakrit, was a Middle Indo-Aryan language or Prakrit of the 3rd century BCE, that was used in Sri Lanka. It was ancestral to the Sinhalese and Dhivehi languages.
R. C. Childers, in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, states:
[Elu] is the name by which is known an ancient form of the Sinhala language from which the modern vernacular of Ceylon is immediately received, and to which the latter bears is of the same relation that the English of today bears to Anglo-Saxon...The name Elu is no other than Sinhala much succeeded, standing for an older form, Hĕla or Hĕlu, which occurs in some ancient works, and this again for a still older, Sĕla, which brings us back to the Pali Sîhala.[2]
The Pali scholar Thomas William Rhys Davids refers to Eḷu as "the Prakrit of Ceylon".[3]
The Hela Havula are a modern Sri Lankan literary organization that advocate the use of Eḷu terms over Sanskritisms. Eḷu is often referred to by modern Sinhalese as amisra, Sanskrit and Sinhalese term for "unmixed".
A feature of Eḷu is its preference for short vowels, loss of aspiration and the reduction of compound consonants found frequently in other Prakrits such as Pali.