Eḷu, also Hela or Helu, is a Middle Indo-Aryan language or Prakrit of the 3rd 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".