How Sri Lanka came to be known as Serendip
Long ago when the Usenet newsgoup soc.culture.sri-lanka was actually tolerable, someone asked the following two questions. What follows are three postings that appeared on the subject.
Simple.
There was this dude, Mark, right? He started digging a hole in his backyard. (Most of you know this activity as "walak bahinawa~.") Since he took a "gal ba~gayak" he had a great time digging the hole and came out of China. You see, our hero, Mark, was in Europe, and not in not-yet-discovered Columbus, OH. (Now, that was the most excellent place of accidentally found happiness--that's why the name ends with OH) Besides, his line of digging was not quite straight down, which wasn't really his fault, but the fault of the peice of segmentation that he was standing on. Actually, this helped him because he never got the earth core dumped on him.
Anyway, the guy came out of a great well (or was it a wall?) in China. At that time, the Chinese had discovered ice cream, gun powder and paper. Mark saw that when you burn gun powder, it smoked; and this gave him an idea. Without telling anyone else what that idea was, he headed straight to the Shang-High International Traveller's House Of Loan Exchange (birthplace of donkeys and acronyms), borrowed some paintings (which he later leaned were worth more than the paper they were printed on since that was the real yenom! Chinese just wrote backwards!!), and bought some stocks of RJ Reynolds. Then he invented the first beedee by putting some gun powder in a rolled up paper. "Ah ... so... goot joint. Velly goot" said everybody. He then smoked the joint. Of course, as you all suspected, he didn't even have time to inhale (which made him eligible to wear boxers on MingTV).
Anyway, he got blown 200 yards back and into a mud pit. Naturally, he got stuck. The more he tried to get out, the deeper he sank in. Finally, he pulled himself out of the pit by pulling on his own bootstraps (first recorded case of a warm-boot). He then went back home and brought a shovel, went into the pit and dug himself out of the mud. At this point, he needed a good home bath, but since he came to China through a lattice mismatch, he didn't know how to backtrack. So he borrowed a compass from the friendly neighborhood "Peoples' Drug" store.
Unfortunately, the compass turned out to be a beta release and had a bug. So he ended up in this island with copper sands. (He didn't investigate the copper sands thread any longer due to copyright holdings by University of Guava students) He went and had the most tranquil bath of his life. An Arab travelling salesman who saw this, went and told some dining philosophers. The philosophers wanted to know who this man was. The Arab dude came back and asked Mark for his name. Mark first invited the Arab for a drink. However, being the under-$10-a-day kinda guy that he is, Mark poured very little for the Arab. Also, everytime Mark talked, he felt the consequences of his first joint. So, he said that his name was "Mark Oh!" The Arab went back to the philosophers and said that the dude was named Marko. They wanted to know his last name. The Arab, being a relative of Nixon, made up a last name. He remembered that Mark poured very little for him. So he said, "the last name is Pour-Low."
The dining philosophers argued ... "so this Marco Polo guy ... took a bath ... the most tranquil bath ... what does it mean?"
"give me a thesaurus, will ya?"
"tranquil means ... serene ... and, bath means dip"
"aaaah..... sooooo! Serene-dip ... Serendip!!"
"Serendipity Baby!"
"Most Excellent!!"
The Arab went back to the island and told the natives that they were "Serendipians." And the natives prompty elected him as the first President.
The beloved "Copper-Sands" guy sent this response to the newsgroup
From: an6470@anon.penet.fi
Organization: Anonymous contact service
Date: Thu, 5 May 1994 16:46:50 UTC
Subject: Copper Sands historians discover how the name Serendip came?
These are two questions that have occupied the minds of some of the first rate historians at the University of Avacado (formerly, University of Guava) in Copper Sands. Theories are abound. The original theory is the one described by Dharmasena in his recent paper [1]. However, recent philological investigations carried out by a group of Swedish scholars revealed new evidence that had cast a shadow over the validity of the convensional theory, and sparked a vigorous investigations by the Avacado historians.
Paul Schalk's team first became suspicious about the validity of the conventional theory in the late eighties because of its implication that "gal" was brought to Ilam by Mark. Since Mark landed in Yalpanam, "gal" should have become popular among Ilattamils. This isn't the case. Therefore, there is something wrong with the theory. Further investigations revealed that in "arab-prakrit" tranquil and serene were not synonymous. The closest word is cheese. Therefore, if the original theory were true, the Arab philosopher should have called the country cheesedip instead of serendip. In any case, there is conclusive evidence to prove that Nixon wasn't a liar.
Avacado historians, who were mainly occupied at doing field work at the university faculty club at the time, were shocked to hear these remarkable findings by Schalk's team. A team headed by K. N. O. Dharmadhosha, and funded lavishly from the presidential fund under the direction of the president Pushpakumara Ekanayeke, set out to put matters strait. After establishing that Paranavithana was in fact an honest scholar, they were able to clear the air. Mark landed in Nagadipa (Sinhala Prakrit ``nakadiva'' [2]). The Arab Philosopher was educated at Oxford, hence translated naga to serpent, which in latin-prakrit means seren. This is how the word serendip was created. This also explains why gal didn't become popular among Ilattamils. Nagadipa was occupied by Sihala monks. The head monk Na~gadi~pe^ Kabara~nanda betrayed buddhism and sold gal to the southerners. It is also unreasonable to expect that all members of the Nixon clan were as honest as Dick.
References:
--------------
Funding for this research was provided by the Copper Sands Presidential
Fund. This researcher is in a good mood these days after hearing the
news that Malkanthi Ekanayake may enter politics soon. Therefore
this research would have been carried out even without any funding.
This is my response to Copper-Sands guy's response
From: Prasad Dharmasena This is highly irrelevant for two reasons:
1) Mark had only half a bottle of "gal" at the beginning of the voyage.
As he traversed through mostly silicon (not to be confused with
silicone -- Silicon Valley is in Northern California while Silicone
Peak is in Beverly Hills, CA) he took the helpful hints from quantum
mechanics. Everybody knows that highly doped Si has plenty of holes.
[1] [2] Therefore, considering the short time it took Mark to reach the
great well of China, it is safe to assume that he used, at least, one
quarter of his beverage during the quantum tunnelling.
2) As pointed out by the Arab travelling salesman (who, incidentally,
sold buttons for long-sleeve shirts) Mark did not offer much to his
fellow drinkers. Hence, it is not conceivable to think that the
natives acquired the habit.... at least not from Mark.
This has been disproved with the writings by a visiting Japanese
scholar Nahahiro Gamakawa. According to Gamakawa, Kabara~nanda did
not sell gal to the South. He only "cut gal" with the help of A.
Biththaya. Different historians have ascribed different meanings to
the phrase "cut gal." Whatever this may mean, it could not have been
the original doping agent that Mark used as no tunnelling was involved
here. Or was there?
It is a certain Kabarase~na who developed the gal equivalent, Pol,
for the entire island. Historians have argued that Kabarase~na may
have been dyslexic. They say that Gal and Pol are the same thing.
Their argument is that Gal is what you hit *dogs* with and Pol is what
you hit *gods* with. This does not prove, however, that Mark or the Arab
was dyslexic. (Had the Arab been dyslexic, the island would have been
known as Bath-Tranquil -> Dip-Peaceful -> Deep Peace -> Deeppiss.
OhMyDog! This may be true. Serendip is also known as "tear drop shaped
island." Here, the meaning of "tear" maybe unconventional and the "drop"
maybe of something else.)
In any event, not withstanding government sponsored re-writing of the
history, I stand by the proven true story of Serendip - the land of
the tranquil baths. More arguments FOR this theory can be found on
Zubair's writings on modern bathing techniques. [6]
References:
Prasad Dharmasena
Newsgroup: soc.culture.sri-lanka
Subject: Re: Copper Sands historians discover how the name Serendip came?
In article <165302Z05051994@anon.penet.fi> an6470@anon.penet.fi writes:
>
> 1: How the name Serendipity Came?
> 2: What is the possible story behind this name?
>
> Paul Schalk's team first became suspicious about the validity of the
> conventional theory in the late eighties because of its implication
> that "gal" was brought to
> Ilam by Mark. Since Mark landed in Yalpanam, "gal" should have become
> popular among Ilattamils. This isn't the case. Therefore, there is
> something wrong with the theory.
> Further investigations revealed that in
> "arab-prakrit" tranquil and serene were not synonymous. The closest
> word is cheese. Therefore, if the original theory were true, the Arab
> philosopher should have called the country cheesedip instead of
> serendip.
You have misquoted me here. I never said that the dining
philosophers were Arabs. Moreover, what is arab-prakrit? Just
because the Arabs wrote from right to left and the Chinese wrote from
top to bottom doesn't mean that it is arab-prakrit.
> In any case, there is conclusive evidence to prove that
> Nixon wasn't a liar.
This is not true. If you look at the picture of the Nixon tomb, you
will clearly see the inscriptions that say "Here Lies Richard Nixon."
You may interpret the way Ronald R does, as he likes to use it for the
political advantages of the Republican party, but it means what it
says and it is there for everybody to see. [3]
> able to clear the air. Mark landed in Nagadipa
This could not have happened. As Zubair et al have pointed out, the
history does not support this theory. China is north of the island in
question. And north is up (95% of the time, according to the beta
release of xcompass which has the original compass dark-alpha release
with an X GUI wrapped around it. As most of the happy drivers of
Columbus, OH may know, dark-alpha is another word for beta just like
dark yellow is same as red and running a yellow is as same as
running a red.) According to Zubair et al, those who were cast out of
a certain garden from heaven, which incidentally is also in the upward
direction, landed on Adam's Peak. (What exactly is meant by Adam's
peak is debatable. [4] [5]) It was easy for Adam to land directly on the
tallest peak of the island, as he had a personalized car. (recent
excavations near Damn Victoria revealed the personalized license plate
"WE4NIK8" Silicone dating has revealed this to be as old as Eva
Adams' book itself.) However, our hero came with a beta release of a
compass and a "high" from the world's first-ever beedee joint.
Threrefore, it is conceivable to think that Mark landed on Knuckles.
> Nagadipa was occupied by
> Sihala monks. The head monk Na~gadi~pe^ Kabara~nanda betrayed buddhism and
> sold gal to the southerners.