CEYLON BRANCH — ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY. . 51 



formed. Of these, two however are seldom used, and are 

 not even given in the Elu alphabet, while all of them are 

 occasionally represented by the single symbol (o) bindu, just 

 as they may be in the Roman alphabet, by the single letter 

 n, the consonant in apposition determining, whether the 

 nasal is to have a guttural, palatal, or dental sound ; by 

 which also any one, who desires to transfer into Singhalese 

 characters, a Singhalese word now in Roman characters, 

 would be enabled to know which nasal letter he is to choose 

 in replacing n by it. If however, it is thought desirable to 

 indicate more directly in the Roman alphabet, which nasal 

 occurs in the Singhalese or Tamil, four n's, one simple, the 

 other three with one, two, and three dots beneath, as is done 

 in Bengal, or some such simple addition, will do the business 

 far better than the four voluminous and awkward Singhalese 

 nasal letters, having as usual no resemblance to each other, 

 though their sound is nearly the same. We have occasion 

 to regret, however, in reference to the Singhalese alphabet, 

 that the Roman does not supply us with a letter bearing to 

 j, (as used in English,) the same relation that k does to g, or 

 t to d, that is, the acute or surd of which j is the grave or 

 sonant. The sound does not occur, nor is there a letter for 

 it in Elu, but in Sanskrit, and especially in Pali, it holds a 

 conspicuous place. It is the of the Singhalese alphabet, 

 generally represented in English by ch, sounded as in the 

 word church, in German by tch, as in the word deutsche, 

 and in Italian simply by c, when the sound of occurs at 

 all in that language, as heard in the word cicerone. How 

 then are we to represent in Roman letters ? Ch as in 

 church, has been generally adopted, but unfortunately this 

 is exclusively an English value of these letters. It is a com- 

 bination, which does not occur in German at all, and its 

 value in French is sh, and in Italian k. All but English- 

 men, therefore, must have serious objections to representing 



