THE SINHALESE LANGUAGE. 



3 



Dravidian organs of speech can pronounce it correctly. We have 

 often been amused in our intercourse with the Tamils by their 

 ludicrous pronunciation of it. If, e. g., a Tamilian wishes to 

 say ceta 4 seed,' he would invariably express it eta. So likewise ceti 

 ' are,' he would express eti ' come;' bceri 'impossible,' beri 'very 

 ripe;' cska, 'waist,' eka 'one;' etc. etc. 



Again, we have the ' half-anusvara ' which is deficient in all the 

 Dravidian languages except the Telagu. It is true that our classi- 

 cal Sinhalese, like the Tamil, is deficient in. aspirates ; yet it will 

 be observed that the former possesses all the consonants known 

 to the Deva Nagari, whilst the latter adopts only the first and last 

 characters of each of the five classes into which the consonants are 

 divided in the Deva Ndgari Alphabet. ' Thus,' as remarked by 

 Caldwell, ' the Tamil Alphabet omits not only all the aspirated 



consonants, but also all its soft and sonant letters.' p. 96. The 



Tamil, is moreover, deficient in the aspirate ' h ' as well as the 

 sibilant ' s both which have an existence in the Sinhala as 

 may be perceived in the very name given to our language. 



The change of 5 into h is, moreover, a peculiarity w r hich is to be 

 found in some Prakrit dialects,* as in the Sinhalese.f It exercises 

 such vast influence over those languages in the formation of sounds, 

 that on this ground alone we may determine the independence of 

 the Sinhalese Alphabet, in its origin, of the Tamil. 



We may also point out four letters in the Tamil which are a& 

 much unknown to the Deva Nagari, as to the Sinhalese Alphabet. 

 These are a deep liquid 'r,' another 'r ' which is harsh and rough 

 in its sound, a peculiar 6 1 ' with a mixture of r, and an ' n,' between 

 which and the dental 6 n ' there is no difference except that the for- 

 mer is invariably used as a final. 



These differences may be attributed to the high antiquity of the 

 literary cultivation of the Dravidian dialects as compared with the 

 northern. When Wijaya arrived in Lanka, at the latter end of 



* See Cowell's Prakrit Prakasa, p. 121. 

 f See Sidatsangara cap. i. § 22. 



