830 Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. [Dec. 



very language* in which all these books are written : and that it originates 

 with what is undoubtedly the most striking and important moral phenomena in 

 the history of Eastern Asia, the rise of Buddhism from the centre of that great 

 Gangetic kingdom. And it is observable, that the same dynasty of sovereigus 

 of that large district, reigning at Pataliputra, or Palibothra, the present Patna, 

 — from the midst of whom Gautama Buddha arose nearly six centuries before 

 our Lord, — presents us not two centuries afterwards, in the age of Alexander 

 and Sandracottus with the one solitary point in which the history of India 



* The P&li in which these historical books are written, and which is the language 

 of Buddhist literature and religion, as well in Siam, Ava, Nipdl, and Tibet, as in 

 Ceylon,— is in fact no other, as Mr. Turnour shews, and the text of his originals 

 exhibits to every Sanscrit scholar, than the Magadha Pracrit, — the classical form in 

 ancieut Behar, of tbat very peculiar modification of Sanscrit speech which enters as 

 largely into the drama of the Hindus (though in a different way) as did the Doric 

 dialect into the Attic tragedy in ancieat Greece. Now, all the variations of Sanscrit 

 words that occur in these Pracrit dialects, answer closely to the forms which the 

 same words exhibit in the vernacular Hindui of that province, and the yet more 

 northern districts of India, as far as the Himalaya: (e. g. the omission of the r, 

 the changing of bh to h, &c. &c.) and are totally unlike the forms of the same words 

 even in the province of Bengal, or as infused into the languages of the Southern 

 peninsula, and of Ceylon itself. And whenever corresponding words in the Pali and 

 Singhalese occur, as they do every where, I believe it will be invariably found that 

 the latter, (the vernacular words of the people oftheKandian and maritime provinces 

 of Ceylon,) resemble most closely the Sanscritoriginal of both : — whereas the former, 

 the sacred language, takes in all words that admit of it, the same sort of peculiar 

 variation which belongs to the tongues of northernmost India, — shewing evidently 

 that it was thence, and not from Ceylon, that the peculiar language as well as insti- 

 tutions of Buddhism came to the island, — as the Mahdvansi itself distinctly asserts. 

 To take but one out of the many instances that might be alleged, we may give one 

 of the most remarkable and early names of the island, viz Tamba-pannyo, as the 

 Pali name is given in p. 35 of this specimen of the Mahdvansi, viz. the " copper- 

 palmed ;" in Sanscrit Tamra-pdni. Now this Sanscrit form, so different from 

 the Pali, is actually the present Singhalese for the same thing, as I was assured by a 

 competent scholar on the island : and a very convincing proof that it has ever been 

 so, may be seen in the name by which the island was universally known to the an- 

 cients and to Cosmas Indicopleustes when he visited it, viz. rairpo^av-n. The 

 Greeks would be just as unlikely to introduce this r where it did not exist, as any 

 other languages of India beside the northernmost ones would be to drop it where 

 it before existed : but this is a universal character of the Pracrit and of the present 

 Hindui, (as seen in this word, tamba, copper — kdm " work" for karm, &c. &c. &c.) 



This real origin of the celebrated name Taprobane (whatever may be thought of 

 the story connected with it in the Mahdvansi, and which may seem with greater 

 probability to have arisen from the tamra-varna, or copper colour, of its southern 

 cliffs near Matura, so well known to navigators)— is one of the points of curious and 

 interesting information which we owe mainly to this publication of Mr. Turnour. 

 Whatever had been before suggested as the probable origin of that name so 

 little now known except in these Buddhistic books, as one of the proper names of 

 the great island of Lanca or Singhala-dwipa, was in the highest degree forced and 

 Improbable, (ex. gr. the Hindvi Tdp&-Raban, or the island of Ra>ana.) 



