270 Terms of address in use 



The Tika has the following explanation, to which we 

 append a Translation ; and it fully bears out the correctness 

 of the text and the conjecture of Dr. Mill. 



Tambapannayato ahuti — yato, yasma tainba bhumi-rajehi pliutthatta 

 te"sanpani tambawanno ahosi; tatotasma sopadesdcha evasaddena gahita- 

 metta nagarancha ayan dipochati ime" sabbe tambapanina maka ahesunti 

 attho. 



That is : — Tambapanni yato ahuti, &c— -signifies " Since by 

 reason of touching the dust of copper-coloured earth, their 

 palms became copper coloured; by reason thereof was this 

 province, the city (built therein), and this Island, designated 

 Tambapani? &c. 



Having thus ascertained the origin of this classic appel- 

 lation for Ceylon, I purpose, before concluding, to advert to 

 an important topic suggested by the following remarks on 

 the subject by Dr. Mill:— - 



" 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 of the Kandian and Maritime 

 provinces of Ceylon,) resemble most closely the Sanscrit original 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, — showing evidently that it was thence, 

 and not from Ceylon, that the peculiar language as well its institutions of 

 Budhism came to the Island, — as the Mahawansi 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 Mahawansi, viz. the " copper -palmed ;" in Sanscrit Tamra-pdai. 

 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 ancients and to Cosmas Indicopleustes when he visited it, viz., 

 TAPROBANE. The Greeks would be just as unlikely, to introduce 

 this r where it did not exist, as any other languages of India, besides 

 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, 



