54 CEYLON BRANCH— -ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY. 



the consonant sounds in pairs, a spiritus lenis and a spiritus 

 asper, a soft vowel sound and an asperated one. And had 

 this double power of the letters been expressed by some 

 uniform letter, as is done in the Hindostanee alphabet, or by 

 a little accent, turned one way in one case, and the other 

 way in the other case, as it is in Greek printed books, it 

 would have been a great beauty. But when we consider 

 that the asperated letters, have in general forms of their own, 

 bearing no resemblance to the same letters when unasperated, 

 we are tempted to ascribe some truth to the charge, that the 

 inventors of such alphabets, wished them to be complicated, 

 that the reading of books, which at first are always the 

 sacred books, to the exclusive knowledge of which they owed 

 their pre-eminence, might be as inaccessible as possible to 

 the common people. In the Singhalese language, as has 

 been already stated, these asperated letters do not play the 

 important part which they do in the Pali and Sanskrit, nor 

 are they given in the Elu alphabet at all. Still they exist 

 in the hodya, adding to the number about 14 of the worst 

 characters in it, having in no case any resemblance to the 14 

 unasperated letters which they follow, though they differ 

 only in the more expulsive breathing, with which the accom- 

 panying vowel is uttered. In the use of the Roman alpha- 

 bet, we get rid of them altogether, by the simple introduc- 

 tion of the letter h, between the consonant and the vowel, 

 which completes the syllabic letter. Thus the sounds which 

 a crow emits, according as it kaws less or more urgently, are 

 represented in Roman characters, by the letters ka or kha, 

 which shew at once the true composition of the sounds 

 and the relation of the two sounds to each other. In the 

 Singhalese alphabet, however, they are represented thus 3»3 

 and q)d, in which the more complicated sound has the simpler 

 symbol to express it : and though the sounds in so far as 

 they are articulate, are identical, the symbols have no re- 



