The Sinag Sri Lanka Foundation of New Zealand has coordinated the donation of 76 books to Palmerston North City Library.

The books cover a wide range of genres, from novels, educational books, children’s stories and Jataka stories.

Jataka stories are Buddhist stories of the past lives of Siddhartha Gautama before he became the Buddha in his final life. These stories illustrate different teachings of relating to Buddhism. Each story features the Buddha, but in diverse forms: he appears as an animal, a king, a wandering ascetic, a monkey and more!

The donated books come in a mix of English, Tamil and Sinhala. Tamil and Sinhala are official languages of Sri Lanka. The variety of languages allows more people can discover the work of Sri Lankan authors, and so speakers of Sinhalese can access books in the language. All of the Jataka books are in English.

The books were donated by the Martin Wickramasinghe Trust Fund and Samudura Publishers. The President of the Sinag Sri Lanka Foundation of New Zealand, Mr Tishan Sampath Dissanayake helped coordinate the donation with help from the Sri Lankan High Commission in Canberra.

The books were presented to Mayor Grant Smith by Tishan Dissanayake from the Sinag Sri Lanka Foundation on Friday 24 September. A big thank you to the Sinang Sri Lanka Foundation of New Zealand and the Sri Lankan High Commission for the donation to the Library and Palmy residents!

The books will be processed and added to our collection before becoming available to borrow in the future. The library currently has around 40 books in Sinhala and Tamil for the Sri Lankan community, and this donation offers more variety, especially for children.

Kia ora rawa atu to the Sinag Sri Lanka Foundation, the Martin Wickramasinghe Trust Fund and Samudura Publisher for your kind donation!

Postscript: this post was updated on 27 September following updated information from the donors. Our apologies for the errors.