Eḷu, also Hela or Helu, is a hypothesized language Middle Indo-Aryan language or Prakrit of the late 2nd century BCE. It is ancestral to the Sinhalese and Dhivehi languages. R. C. Childers, in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, states: The Pali scholar Thomas William Rhys Davids refers to Eḷu as "the Prakrit of Ceylon". 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. Eḷu in comparison with Pali and Sanskrit Being a Prakrit, Eḷu is closely related to other Prakrits such as Pali. Indeed, a very large proportion of Eḷu word-stems are identical in form to Pali. The connections were sufficiently well known that technical terms from Pali and Sanskrit were easily converted into Eḷu by a set of conventional phonological transformations. Because of the prevalence of these transformations, it is not always possible to tell whether a given Eḷu word is a part of the old Prakrit lexicon, or a transformed borrowing from Sanskrit. Vowels and diphthongs Sanskrit ai and au always monophthongize to Eḷu e and o, respectively Examples: maitrī → met, auṣadha → osada Sanskrit avi becomes Eḷu e (i.e. avi → ai → e) Example: sthavira → thera Sound changes Initial ca in Sanskrit and Pali becomes s or h Examples: canda → sanda, handa P if not omitted becomes v Examples: rūpa → ruva, dīpa → diva The Sanskrit sibilants ś, ṣ, and s merge as Eḷu s Examples: śaraṇa → saraṇa, doṣa → dosa The Sanskrit kti becomes ti or vi Examples: bhakti → bätiya, shakti → saviya Compound consonants At the beginning of a word only a single consonant can remain Examples: dharma → dahama Examples: prāna → pana In the middle of a word no group may exceed one consonant Examples: artha → aruta Examples: danta → data List of Elu words with their Sanskrit and Pali equivalents References See also Linguistic history of the Indian subcontinent Southern Indo-Aryan languages Sinhala language Languages of Sri Lanka Prakrit languages Languages attested from the 3rd century BC