THE SINHALESE LANGUAGE. 



45 



syllables; as bebili-ni * it brightens.' Examine the nominal roots 

 in the Sidatsangara, § .)8. 



v. The Dravidian formatives are chiefly gu, ngu, kku=ch or 

 nchu, su or chu, du, ndu, ttu, by, mbu or ppu. The Sinhalese 

 possesses none of these. It takes others such as a va, i, ta, 

 tat, etc. Take, for instance, the Tamil pada-gu 1 boat;' the Sin- 

 halese cuts off the formative, and adopts simple pada, or adds a va 

 to it, whence it becomes paru va. For the Sinhalese inflexical ter- 

 minations, See Sidatsangara, § 58. 



vi. In the formation of the adjective from the noun, the Dravi- 

 dian presents a peculiarity distinguishable from the Sinhalese* 

 For this purpose, or for qualifying another noun, or for converting 

 an intransitive into a transitive verb, or for the purpose of forming 

 a noun from verbal themes, the Tamil has to reduplicate the final 

 consonant. This process of reduplication is unknown to the Sin- 

 halese. E. g. ; from harak 1 ox ' (Sinhalese) is formed harak-hama 

 * ox-hide;' but from madu ' ox ' (Tamil) is formed mattu-{j)-tol ' ox- 

 hide.' Also, from duva (Sinhalese) ' run ' comes duva-va ' cause to 

 run,' so much like the Sanskrit ya; whilst the Tamil would redu- 

 plicate the d (— t) in odu and render it ottu. Again, whilst the 

 Tamil cannot obtain elattu 'writing' without reduplicating the 

 d (==t) in eladu ' writing,' the Sinhalese converts the simple 

 radical with a single m; as liya 'write;' liyu-m& 'writing.' 



vii. The formation of compounds in the Sinhalese is entirely 

 after the fashion of Sanskrit compounds. See Sidatsangara § 35. 



viii. The Sanskrit and some of the Indo-European dialects are 

 fond of combining clashing consonants. The Dravidian dialects, 

 on the contrary, aim at ease and softness, and are unable to utter 

 two consonants of different classes as svarni without introducing 

 a vowel between them, as suvami, or without cutting off one of 

 the consonants as in sdmi. In this respect the Sinhalese resembles 

 the Dravidian; but I must warn the reader against any inference 

 therefrom that the Sinhalese is related to the Dravidian. For, it 

 will be observed that this is a peculiarity which distinguishes the 



