SINHALESE LANGUAGE. 



153 



former remained, for a time, a distinct tribe; and that they wholly- 

 disappeared after 275 A. D., at which period they are for the last 

 time spoken of in History as a servile class engaged in opening 

 Tanks, etc. But whatever inferences may be drawn from the 

 mention of the Yakkhas in the early part of our history; it is quite 

 clear ' from all existing evidence,' 'that the period at which a 

 vernacular dialect was common to the Yakkhas and Vijayan Co- 

 lonists must have been extremely remote '* and that the former 

 soon disappeared either by amalgamation with or disintegration from 

 the conquerors. The last supposition is however the more reason- 

 able; since we find until very recent times a distinct tribe of people^ 

 in Ceylon, called the Veddas or Beddas, answering to the uncouth 

 " Yakkhas " or " Monkeys " of ancient writers. 



The language of our first monarch Vijaya was probably the Pali 

 or the Prakrit. He came to Ceylon shortly after Gotama, who 

 spoke the Pali or the Magadhi. He was descended through the 

 female branch of the Royal family of Kalinga, and his birth 

 place was Lala, a subdivision of Magadha. "And the position," 

 says Mr. James Prinsep (Bengal A. S. Journal vol. ii. p. 280) 

 "assumed by Mr. Lassen that the Pali of Ceylon was immediately 

 derived from the shores of Kalinga, independently of its being 

 matter of history, is supported by the evidence of the records now 

 discovered in that country:" and although Professor Lassen regards 

 this as a question involved in obscurity, yet the very name given 

 to the Island by Vijaya, and which we find was shortly afterwards 

 used by the Indian Monarch Asoka, in his rock inscriptions, would 

 lead to the inference that the Pali was the language of the con- 



her charms Vijaya had her for his mistress, and that when he had found he could 

 not according to the usages of the east be croivned without a queen consort, 

 whom a Yakkinni or 'non-human being' would ill represent, although the mother 

 of two children, he discarded them all for the daughter of King Pandiya of the 

 nearest civilized state. 



' * Sir J. E. Tennent's Ceylon p. 328, with whom I entirely concur in the 

 matter, having long abandoned a contrary opinion which I expressed in my 

 Sidatsangara, p, xxiv. 



X 



