60 



ON THE ORIGIN Or 



at present no variation, undergoes no change of form, and takes its 

 position immediately before the noun which it qualifies. * This is 

 also the case at present with the North -Indian dialects ; and, what 

 is still more remarkable, they possess, like the Sinhalese, a few 

 remnants of the early developement of gender, number, and case ; 

 e. g., in the Murathi many adjectives have separate terminations 

 for the three genders, and have two cases, f 



We are thus enabled to assign to the Sinhalese and the North- 

 Indian dialects a common origin, though like many modern Indo- 

 European tongues, they have gradually given up the peculiarities 

 of the adjective, which distinguish them from the dialects from 

 which they have arisen. 



Pronouns, 



Next to inseparable Prepositions, of which I shall treat here- 

 after, there is no class of words, which more clearly proves the non- 

 relation of the Sinhalese to the Dravidian, than the Pronouns. 

 Indeed they throw generally much light on the relationship of 

 languages ; for, as remarked by Caldwell, ' the personal pronouns, 

 and especially those of the first and second person singular, evince 

 more of the quality of permanence than any other parts of speech, 

 and are generally found to change but little in the lapse of ages.' 



In laying before the reader a long extract from the writer above- 

 named in which he compares the Dravidian, with the North-Indian 



* " In Sanskrit and all the Indo-European tongues, adjectives are declined 

 like substantives, aud agree with the substantives to which they are conjoined, 

 in gender, number and case. In the Dravidian languages, as in the Scythian, 

 adjectives are incapable of declension. When used separately as abstract nouns 

 of quality, which is the original and natural character of Dravidian adjectives, 

 they are sucject to all the affections of substantives; but when they are used 

 adjectively, i. e. to qualify other substantives, they do not admit of any inflex- 

 ional ehange, but are simply prefixed to the nouns, which they qualify." Cald- 

 well's Dravidian Grammar ; p. 35. 



f See Dr. Stevenson's Murathi Grammar, pp. 77—78. 



