50 CEYLON BRANCH — ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY. 



it is the fashion to throw into them a few vowels, so as to 

 facilitate their pronunciation. This usage is very commend- 

 able/' &c. In opposition to this, indeed, it may be said, that 

 if guttural and asperated sounds be the indication of energy, 

 surely they ought to be cultivated. True, if they imparted 

 or tended to impart energy. But the language of a people, 

 is merely the exponent of that people, and to propose to in- 

 fuse energy into a people, by forcing on them a guttural and 

 asperated language, were truly Quixotic. 



The number of consonant sounds, of which the human 

 voice is capable, is, like that of the vowels, infinite. But 

 here the variety is of course much greater, and the ear can 

 discriminate a much larger number. Accordingly, while 

 there are only five pure vowel letters in the Roman, and I 

 may add in the Elu alphabet, there is nearly four times that 

 number, of simple consonants in both. They are not alto- 

 gether the same, however. The Bom an alphabet has f and v, 

 two labial asperates, acute and grave, or surd and sonant, 

 which the Singhalese alphabet wants ; while the latter has 

 and S), a palatal t and d, which the Soman has not : for 

 though it may be said, that t and d as sounded by us, and 

 the nations of northern Europe generally, are fully as nearly 

 allied to the palatal, as to the dental t and d of the Nagari, 

 yet in the mouth of a Roman, they are so purely dental, that 

 traces of a gentle asperate or sibilant, almost always accom- 

 pany their utterance. We ought therefore to consider the 

 palatal t and d as those which require some diacritical 

 mark as a dot, in or under each, to distinguish them from the 

 other t and d, which dot will at once serve to distinguish 

 them, and to shew their affinity to each other, a far better 

 plan surely, than to have quite different characters for them, 

 as in the Singhalese alphabet. 



The Singhalese has also no fewer than four letters, to re- 

 present the open nasal, according to the region in which it is 



