62 



ON THE ORIGIN OF 



difference to be observed between the Sinhalese api 'we,' and all 

 the forms of the dialects above named,— that whilst the latter 

 retain the primary consonant of the first person, the former gives 

 it up altogether. Yet it will be observed that the Sinhalese 

 is indebted for this ap, not to the Dravidian, but to the North- 

 Indian ; e. g., the Murathi and Gujarathi dpane 'we.' 



Now, apane in the dialects above named, one of the two pro- 

 nouns for 'we' —that is, 'the party speaking, including those who 

 are addressed,' whilst hame, the ordinary form, is simply ' the 

 party speaking.' The existence of this two-fold form of the first 

 person plural, in some of the North-Indian vernaculars has induced 

 Dr. Stevenson, and several other scholars to class them with the 

 Dravidian dialects, which also have this two-fold plural. Even 

 with regard to those North-Indian idioms, the utmost extent to 

 which an inference may be drawn from the above circumstance, is, 

 that one class has borrowed an idiom of expression from the other; 

 for the words which the Dravidians use are [nam and nangal~\ 

 different from those adopted by the North-Indians. When we 

 turn from the North-Indian to the Sinhalese, we neither find 

 two pronouns of the first person plural, nor the distinction sought 

 to be cenveyed by the adoption of two sets of words.* The Sin- 

 halese api means nothing more or less than what ' we ' means in 

 the English, or nos in Latin, or amhe in Pali ; and it clearly 

 comes from apane, from the Sanskrit dual form avan, the v being 

 changed into p. 



This p, or the entire inflexion pane must have originally had 



* " The existence of two pronouns of the first person plural, one of which- 

 includes the other excludes the party addressed, is a peculiarity of the Dravi- 

 dian dialects, as of many of the Scythian languages; but is ; unknown to the 

 Sanskrit and the languages of the Indo-European family,"— Caldwell's Dravi- 

 dian Grammar, p. 06. 



