20 



ON THE ORIGIN OF 



PPwONOUNS. 





Pali. 



Sinhalese. 



Tamil 



T 



( amha 



ma 





X 



( ahan 



ma (ma) (nom.) 



nan 



We 



mayan 



api 



nam 



Thou 



J tumha 



| ta 



ni 





\ tvan 



( to 



jl OU 



tumhe 



tepi 



nir 



IVIJ 



mama 



mage 



en 



Thy 



tava 



tage 



nin 



He (prox.) 



eso 



mohu 



ivan 



He (remo.) 



•so 



ohu 



avan 



They (prox.) 



ete 



movhu 



ivar 



They (remo.) 



te 



ovhu 



avar 



The personal pronouns serve more to establish or disprove the 

 relationship of languages than any other words* of a language. 



Now, on comparing the above there is not one Dravidian form 

 which has the most distant relation to the Sinhalese, whilst it is 

 quite evident that most of the latter bear the nearest affinity to the 

 Sanskrit, or the Plli. 



The Sinhalese radical ma, which is mama in the nominative, is 

 clearly taken from one of the Pali oblique cases of ahan, and 

 exercises a great influence in the inflexions of the verb of the first 

 person. In the formation of the plural the vernacular Tamil 

 changes the na and the ni to na{n)-gal and ni(n)gal; and it will 

 be shewn hereafter that this addition of gal bears no resemblance 

 whatever to the pi which the Sinhalese adopts, nor is that plural 

 inflexion to be found in the formation of any* of the Sinhalese 

 plural nouns. But this inquiry properly belongs to another head of 

 our investigations, viz., the Grammatical ; see injra. 



* * The very last words which we should think of borrowing from a foreign 

 nation are pronouns, particles, and numerals' — Professor Max Muller's Survey 

 of Languages, p. 12. 



