ON THE ORIGIN OF 



show that the usage which is springing up in our language, is un- 

 warranted by Grammar and the usage of our standard writers. I 

 shall treat of the idiom involved in the use of an expression, as in 

 ma karana de, when I shall have entered upon the Section on 

 Verbs. 



The Auxiliary Case, which is found in the Sinhalese, owes 

 its origin entirely to the Sanskrit. Although the Dravidians havo 

 some notion of it, yet it is found confounded by them with the in- 

 strumental. There is however one important particular by which 

 the Sinhalese auxiliary may be distinguished from even the Sans- 

 krit, — that whilst the latter adopts the instrumental suffixes for the 

 auxiliary, the former have generally an entirely different set of 

 inflexions for each of the two cases. A careful investigation of 

 grammatical forms in the Indo-European, the North-Indian, and 

 Dravidian dialects, convinces me that there is a tendency in all of 

 them towards a distinction between the instrumental and the 

 auxiliary, which Caldwell denominates the conjunctive, although 

 the Sinhalese alone have marked the distinction with special suffixes. 

 See Sidatsangara, p. 30. 



The Dative Case. One of the striking analogies, to which Dr. 

 Stevenson refers as running through the North-Indian and the 

 Dravidian dialects, is the resemblance in the Dative hi hu ge,* 

 which are different from the Sanskrit and all Indo-European dia- 

 lects. 



Caldwell also states that ' in the vernaculars of Northern India, 

 which are deeply tinged with Scythian characteristics, we find a 

 suffix which appears to be not only similar to the Dravidian, but 

 the same.' p. 225. In giving examples from the Northern verna- 

 culars, Caldwell gives ghai as the f Singhalese * form of the Hindi 

 ho and hu. This is clearly not so. We have no g or h in the 



* In the primitive Indo-European tongues we discover no trace of any such 

 dative suffix or case-sign as the Dravidian ' ku;' but on turning to the Scythian 

 family, interesting analogies meet us at every step. 



