THE SINHALESE LANGUAGE. 



63 



some significant meaning, for we find it in the second person, as 

 in the first person plural. 



Whilst we take the root ta 'thou,' it will be observed we add the 

 same p in api to pluralize ta. The origin of pi, even if we 

 disregard the Sanskrit avdn, may, judging from the sense of 

 duality which it was intended to convey, be traeed to the dual 

 terminations in pi and pin, Greek; bhyam, bhis, Sanskrit ; and 

 bis, Latin. The Notherners, who have no dual number, seem to 

 have adopted this case-suffix, which so largely runs through several 

 of the dual cases in the Sanskrit, to express the two-fold relation 

 of the party speaking and the party spoken to ; and it seems to be 

 equally clear that the language which stands in fraternal connec- 

 tion with them, viz., the Sinhalese., was not so mindful of the 

 distinction, and therefore adopted one or two pronouns used by 

 her sisters, expressive of the plural pronoun for the first person. 



It is unnecessary here to enter into the other terminations in the 

 oblique cases of the pronouns of the first and second person, since 

 they are the same as those to which we have referred under the 

 declension of nouns; nor is it, for obvious reasons, necessary to go 

 into comparisons of the ohu 'he,' Sinhalese and avan Tamil; mohu 

 4 he [ proximate] ' Sinhalese, and ivan, Tamil. Suffice it, however, 

 to notice the form of the Tamil reflexive pronoun tan singular, 

 tarn pluarl ' self,' which may be traced to the tama and tam-ai in 

 the Sinhalese. This may at first sight seem to be a Dravidian 

 derivative; but there is no reason whatever to indicate why both 

 the Tamil and Sinhalese forms might not have had their origin in 

 the Sanskrit atman. T arn-ai is used in the modern vernacular 

 Sinhalese as in the Tamil to express a strong affirmation of 'self 

 or* the very person' whom the speaker intends to single out 

 as the man,' as in, 'Thou ; art the man but in the Sinhalese we 

 use it as in the English with a verb. Thus what in Tamil would 

 be expressed by ni-tan i thou self we would express in Sinhalese 

 to tam-ai 4 it is thou (very) self.' Tan in the Tamil must 



