THE SINHALESE LANGUAGE. 



9 



But all the words in the Sinhalese that maybe directly traced to 

 the Dravidian, are so few, that if collected, they will not, I am 

 persuaded, shew a larger proportion than one to nine. And, it is 

 very significant that the writer of the Sidatsangara does not, in 

 giving examples of his three classes, mention one single word which 

 is derived from the Dravidian. 



Though, however, so far as the dictionary goes, it is perhaps 

 generally difficult to determine the relation of a language which is 

 composed of different elements, as, for instance, the English;* yet, I 

 believe, it may be affirmed that there is no language, like the Sinha- 

 lese, which has ' nine-tenths' of its vocables clearly derived from a 

 Sanskrit source, that may be traced to a Dravidian origin. On the 

 other hand, there is no language, in which the Dravidian element 

 is far in excess of the Sanskrit, that may be placed in the northern 

 group. Take, for instance, the Hindustani, Marathi, Bengali* 

 Guzerati. The Sanskrit or north-Indian element of these idioms 

 is nearly as much in excess of the Dravidian - 9 as in the Tamil, Telagu, 

 Karnataka, and Malayalim (the south-Indian languages) the non- 

 Sanskrit or the Dravidian is in excess of the north-Indian or the 

 Sanskrit element.")" In proceeding therefore to an examination of 

 lexical analogies, I shall select on the one hand the Tamil, the most 

 cultivated of the south-Indian languages,^ in which the Sanskrit 

 element is less than in others, § and from whence the other Dravidian 

 dialects are supposed to have been derived; and, on the other, the Pali, 

 to which, as I shall hereafter show, the Sinhalese mediately, if not 

 directly j owes its origin. 



* Professor Max Mailer's Survey of Languages, p. 7» 

 t Caldwell's Gomp. Grammar, p. 29. 



J"* From the various particulars above mentioned it appears certain, that 

 the Tamil language was of all the Dravidian idioms the earliest cultivated ! 

 it also appears highly probable that in the endeavour to ascertain the character- 

 istics of the primitive Dravidian speech, from which the various existing dia- 

 lects have been derived, most assistance will be furnished by the Tamil ' 

 —Caldwell's Comp t Grammar, p. 60. 



§ ib. p. 33, 







