About the developer
Made by an engineer,
for the community.
ඉංජිනේරුවෙකු විසින්, ප්රජාව වෙනුවෙන්.
I’m a software engineer, and I built this site because a poem this good should be easy to love.
The Salalihini Sandeshaya has been read in Sri Lanka for almost six hundred years, but its Elu Sinhala can feel like a locked door, even to people who speak Sinhala every day. I wanted a way in: the original verse, a plain explanation in Sinhala and in English, and a world around it that makes you want to keep going.
Why it exists
A gift, not a product
Engineers spend their days building things for companies. This one is for everybody else: students facing the poem for an exam, expatriates reconnecting with a language they miss, curious readers who have never opened a sandesa, and anyone who simply enjoys beautiful things on the web.
It is deliberately a little over the top, with a sky that changes with the story, a starling that flies while you read, and a 3D map of the route from Kotte to Kelaniya. A poem about a bird’s journey deserves to feel like one.
Free to read
නොමිලේ
No paywall, no sign-up, no accounts.
No ads, no tracking
දැන්වීම් නැත
The only thing remembered is your language and calm-mode choice, stored on your own device.
Honest about its limits
අඩුපාඩු පිළිගනී
The explanations are learner's aids, and verses that are hard to read are marked as such.
How you can help
It gets better with the community
I am an engineer, not a scholar of Elu Sinhala. The verse text comes from an open edition and the explanations are my best attempt, so they will have mistakes. If you can fix one, you are making it better for everyone who comes after you.
Check an explanation
අර්ථ පරීක්ෂා කරන්න
If you read Elu Sinhala, you can spot what a machine and an engineer miss. Verses marked “General sense” need you most.
Share it with a student
ශිෂ්යයෙකුට බෙදා දෙන්න
A teacher, a pirivena student, a grandparent who loves the poem. Every verse has its own link to share.
Tell me what is broken
දෝෂ දන්වන්න
A typo in a verse, a place on the map that is wrong, a screen where it runs badly. All of it helps.
Open source
Yours to read, fix and share
The code is open under the MIT licence, and the poem text and explanations are open under CC BY-SA 4.0. You can read how everything works, fix a verse, add a feature, or take any of it for your own project, as long as you give credit and share alike.
Under the hood
Built with
The sky, the valley, the starling and the map are all drawn in code, in one faceted style. The poem’s text and the background of the story are credited on the About the poem page.