[Anonymous]

I have attended a couple if Vipassana meditation courses over the years. I am intesrested in the 3 concepts of anicca, dukkha, and anatta. My understanding of the complex language/script/history is limited. However, I am trying to figure out how to write anicca, dukkha, anatta in the Sinhala script.

What I found is this. anicca, dukkha, anatta when written in Devanagari script is अनिच्चा दुक्खा अनत्ता. There seems to be a lot of info on the web to support this.

Sinhala script has been harder to track down. According to https://puredhamma.net/historical-background/misinterpretation-of-anicca-and-anatta-by-early-european-scholars/, anicca, dukkha, anatta is අනිච්ච දුක්ඛ අනත්ත. This site specifically talks about “the 3 words and 8 letters”

After some playing with http://www.kaputa.com/uniwriter/roman2.php, a unicode Sinhala script encoder, it would appear that anicha, dhukha, anata when written in Sinhala would be more like this අනිච දුඛ අනට. 3 words and 8 letters.

The problem with the encoder is how it interprets roman letters which seems to be quite arbitrary. It is not clear how to write glottal stops in roman letters for this site, and that might lead to the correct/wrong script output.

Can any one shed any light on this, and set my down the right path (excuse the pun). My end goal is to learn the correct Sinhala script for the 3 concepts anicca, dukkha, anatta.

[Lal]

Hello bornplaydie!

This is explained in a different post than the one you quoted:
Anicca, Dukkha, Anatta – Wrong Interpretations

At the top of that post:
“These three words with eight letters are: anicca, dukkha, anatta. (when written in Sinhala/Pāli: අනිච්ච දුක්ඛ අනත්ත but with last two letters in each term in the “old script” combined to become one, so the number of letters become 8 instead of 11. I was able to find only අනත්‍ථ for අනත්ත, but you can see how 4 letters become 3 there).”

If anyone can find the Sinhala word with three letters for අනිච්ච, please post it. There, the last two letters should be “combined” as in අනත්ත to අනත්‍ථ.

[Anonymous]

Yes, that was the quote I am referring to. However, it confused me because there are still 4 letters, not 3 in අනත්‍ථ unless I am missing something.

Maybe I asked my question wrong. My end goal is to learn the correct Sinhala script for the 3 concepts anicca, dukkha, anatta.

[Lal]

“it confused me because there are still 4 letters, not 3 in අනත්‍ථ ..”

No. The last two are combined and are counted as one.

“My end goal is to learn the correct Sinhala script for the 3 concepts anicca, dukkha, anatta.”

Those three words are written in Sinhala script these days as: අනිච්ච දුක්ඛ අනත්ථ (or අනත්ත).

[Anonymous]

Thank you!

[Author]

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