Chap. 1 1.] ABOEIGIXAL IXIIABITA^'^TS OF CEYLOX. 329 



Though not based directly on either Sanskrit or Pah, 

 Singhalese at various times has been greatly enriched 

 from both som'ces, and especially from the former ; 

 and it is corroborative of the inference that the ad- 

 mixture was comparatively recent ; and chiefly due to 

 association with domiciliated strangers, that the further 

 we go back in point of time the proportion of amalgama- 

 tion diminishes, and the dialect is found to be purer 

 and less alloyed. Singhalese seems to bear towards 

 Sanskrit and Pah a relation similar to that which 

 the Enghsh of the present day bears to the combination 

 of Latin, Anglo-Saxon, and Norman French, which 

 serves to form the basis of the lano;ua2;e. As in our 

 own tongue the words applicable to objects connected 

 with rural hfe are Anglo-Saxon, whilst those mdicative 

 of domestic refinement belong to the French, and those 

 pertaining to religion and science are borrowed from 

 Latin ^ ; so, in the language of Ceylon, the terms apph- 

 cable to the national religion are taken from Pah, those 

 of science and art from Sanskrit, whilst to pure Singha- 

 lese belong whatever expressions were required to denote 

 the ordinary wants of mankind before society had attained 

 orQ-anisation.'-^ 



Wliatever momentaiy success may have attended the 

 preaching of Buddha, no traces of his pious labours long 

 sm^vived him in Ceylon. The mass of its inhabitants 

 were still aliens to his rehgion, when, on the day of 

 liis decease, B.C. 543, Wijayo^, the discarded son of one 



companions, "svhicli, as they came 

 from Bengal, was in all probability 

 Pali. Several centuries aften\"ards, 

 A.D. 339, the dialect of the two races 

 was still difterent, and some of the 

 sacred ■wa-itings were obliged to be 

 translated from Paii into the Sihala 

 language. — Blahmcanm, ch. xxx\ii. 

 xxxviii. p. 247. At a still later period, 

 A.D. 410, a learned priest from Ma- 

 gadha translated the Attah-Katha 

 from Singhalese into I'ali. — Ih. p. 253. 

 See also De Axwis, Sidath-Sanyara, 

 p. 19. 



^ See Tkexch on the Studij of 

 Words. 



2 See De Alwis^ Sld<tth-Sa)ujara, 

 p. xlviii. 



^ Sometimes spelled TT-^C/rtya. TuR- 

 NOTiR has demonstrated that the al- 

 leged concuiTeuce of the death of 

 Buddha and the landing of Wijayo 

 is a device of the sacred annalists, in 

 order to give a pious interest to the 

 latter event, which took place about 

 sixty years later, — Introd. 3Iahu- 

 jvanso, p. liii. 



