CHAP. X.] LITERATURE. 521 



said, that their compositions, however satirical or 

 familiar they may be, are entirely free from the 

 licentiousness which disfigures similar productions in 

 India; and that if deficient in imagination and grace, 

 their verses are equally exempt from grossness and 

 indelicacy. 



The Singhalese language is so flexible that it admits 

 of every description of rhythm ; of this the versifiers 

 have availed themselves to exhibit every variety of 

 stanza and measure, and every native, male or female, 

 can recite numbers of their favourite ballads. Their 

 graver productions consist of poems in honour, not of 

 Buddha alone, but of deities taken from the Hindu 

 Pantheon, Patine, Siva, and Ganesa, panegyrics 

 upon almsgiving, and couplets embodying aphorisms 

 and morals. 



A considerable number of the Sutras or Discourses 

 of Buddha have been translated into the vernacular 

 from Pah, but the most popular of all are the jatakas^ 

 the Singhalese versions of which are so extended, that 

 one copy alone fills 2000 olas or palm leaves, each 

 twenty-nine inches in length and containing nine lines 

 in a page. 



The other works in Singhalese are on subjects con- 

 nected with history, such as the Bajavali and Eajarat- 

 nacari, on grammar and lexicography, on medicine, 

 topography, and other analogous subjects. But in 

 all their productions, though invested with the trap- 

 pings of verse, there is an avoidance alike of what 

 is practical and true, and an absence of all that is in- 

 ventive and poetic. They contain nothing that appeals 

 to the heart or the affections, and their efforts of 

 imagination aspire not to please or to elevate, but to 

 astonish and bewilder by exaggeration and fable. 

 Their poverty of resources leads to endless repetitions 

 of the same epithets and incidents ; books are multiplied 

 at the present day chiefly by extracts from works of 



