CUAP. II.] ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS OF CEYLON. 



Though not based directly on either Sanskrit or Pali, 

 Singhalese at various times has been greatly enriched 

 from both sources, 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 affoyed. Singhalese seems to bear towards 

 Sanskrit and Pali a relation similar to that which 

 the English of the present day bears to the combination 

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

 serves to form the basis of the language. As in our 

 own tongue the words applicable to objects connected 

 with rural life are Anglo-Saxon, whilst those indicative of 

 domestic refinement belong to the French, and those per- 

 taining to religion and science are borrowed from Greek 

 or Latin l ; so, in the language of Ceylon, the terms appli- 

 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 

 organisation. 2 



Whatever momentary success may have attended the 

 preaching of Buddha, no traces of his pious labours long 

 survived him in Ceylon. The mass of its inhabitants 

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

 his decease, B.C. 543, Wijayo 3 , the discarded son of one 



companions, which, as they came 

 from Bengal, was in all probability 

 Pali. Several centuries afterwards, 

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

 was still different, and some of the 

 sacred writings were obliged to be 

 translated from Pali into the Sihala 

 language. Mdhaica-nso, ch. xxxvii. 

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

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

 gadha translated the Attah-Katha 

 from Singhalese into Pali. Ib. p. 253. 

 See also DE ALWIS, Sidath-Sangara, 

 p. 19. 



1 See TRENCH on the Study of 

 Words. 



z See DE Axwis, Siduth-Sangara, 

 p. xlviii. 



8 Spelled also Wejaya. See List, 

 p. 320. TURNOTJR has demonstrated 

 that the alleged concurrence of the 

 death of Buddha and the landing of 

 Wijayo is a device of the sacred an- 

 nalists, in order to give a pious in- 

 terest to the latter event, which took 

 place about sixty years later. Introd. 



Tlf 7 %.:. 



Jilanawanso, p. 1m. 



