CHAP. I.] SOURCES OP SINGHALESE HISTORY. 



313 



the government of the district of Saflragam, and resided 

 at Katnapoora near the foot of Adam's Peak. He 

 was enabled to pursue his studies under the guidance 



From this 



pathy of the government officers, 

 ajor Forbes, who was then the 



aries then existed to assist in denning 

 the meaning of Pali terms which no 

 teacher could he found capable of ren- 

 dering into English, so that Mr. Tur- 

 nonr was entirely dependent on his 

 knowledge of Singhalese as a medium 

 for translating them. To an ordinary 

 mind such obstructions woidd have 

 proved insurmountable, aggravated 

 as they were by discouragements 

 arising from the assumed barrenness 

 of the field, and the absence of all 

 sympathy with his pursuits, on the 

 part of those around him, who re- 

 served their applause and encour- 

 agement till success had rendered 

 him indifferent to either. 

 a 



Major 



resident at Matelle, was honour- 

 ably exempt ; and his narrative of 

 Eleven Years in Ceylon shows with 

 what ardour and success he shared 

 the tastes and cultivated the studies 

 to which he had been directed by the 

 genius and example of Tumour. So 

 zealous and unobtrusive were the 

 pursuits of the latter, that even his 

 immediate connexions and relatives 

 were unaware of the value and extent 

 of his acquirements till apprised of 

 their importance and profundity by 

 the acclamation with which his dis- 

 coveries and translations from the 

 Pali were received by the savans of 

 Europe. Major Forbes, in a private 

 letter, which I have been permitted 

 to see, speaking of the difficulty of 

 doing justice to the literary cha- 

 racter of Tumour, and the ability, 

 energy, and perseverance which he 

 exhibited in his historical investiga- 

 tions, says, " his Epitome of the His- 

 tory of Ceylon was from the first 

 correct ; I saw it seven years before 

 it was published, and it scarcely re- 

 quired an alteration afterwards." 

 Whilst engaged in his translation of 

 the Mahawanso, TURXOTJR, amongst 

 other able papers on Buddhist History 

 and Indian Chronolo/jy in the Journal 



of the Bengal Asiatic Society, v. 521, 

 vi. 299, 790, 1049, contributed a 

 series of essays on the Pali-Buddhis- 

 tical Annals, which were published in 

 1836, 1837, 1838. Journ. Asiatic 

 Soc. Bengal, vi. 501, 714, vii. 686, 

 789, 919. He published at various 

 times in the same journal an account 

 of the Tooth Relic of Ceylon, Ib. 

 vi. 856, and notes on the inscriptions 

 on the columns of Delhi, Allahabad, 

 and Betiah, &c. &c., and frequent 

 notices of Ceylon coins and inscrip- 

 tions. He had likewise planned 

 another undertaking of signal im- 

 portance, the translation into En- 

 glish of a Pali version of the Bud- 

 dhist scriptures, an ancient copy 

 of which he had discovered, unen- 

 cumbered by the ignorant commen- 

 taries of later writers, and the fables 

 with which they have defaced the 

 plain and simple doctrines of the 

 early faith. He announced his in- 

 tention in the Introduction to the 

 Mahawanso to expedite the publica- 

 tion, as " the least tardy means of 

 effecting a comparison of the Pali 

 with the Sanskrit version" (p. ex.). 

 His correspondence with Prinsep, 

 which I have been permitted by 

 his family to inspect, abounds with 

 the evidence of inchoate inquiries 

 in which their congenial spirits had 

 a common interest, but which were 

 abruptly ended by the premature de- 

 cease of both. Tumour, with shat- 

 tered health, returned to Europe in 

 1842, and died at Naples on the 

 10th of April in the following year. 

 The first volume of his translation 

 of the Mahaicamo, which contains 

 thirty-eight chapters out of the 

 hundred which form the original 

 work, was published at Colombo 

 in 1837 ; to which, apprehensive 

 that scepticism might assail the 

 authenticity of a discovery so 

 important, he added a reprint 

 of the original Pali in Roman 

 characters with diacritical points. 



