70 



ON THE ORIGIN OF 



as Iceba or lada. Surely the addition of be in English or ya in 

 Sanskrit does not divest the verb, to which they are added, of the 

 passive signification which they impart. If not, it would seem that 

 Iceba, from its very meaning of, 1 passion,' 1 endurance' or ' suffering' 

 is calculated to make this voice more distinctly marked than either 

 be or ya. 



The formation of the passive voice in the Sinhalese is two-fold ; 

 one with inflexions, and the other with the periphrastic or 

 auxiliary Iceba. The first may be regarded as the original form, 

 and the second the form adopted to render the voice distinctly 

 marked in such writings as paraphrases, tikas, etc. Of the first see 

 examples in all our ancient works ; and the latter the reader meets 

 in every modern writer. Now, the exceptional use of the ac- 

 tive for the passive with a turn of expression does not shew that 

 the Sinhalese is allied to the Dravidian any more than that the 

 Dravidian exhibits a relation to the Seraetic, from the resemblance 

 which the one class bears to the other in the formation of roots 

 [Cald. p. 160-. } Even after the too general adoption of this form 

 of expression, it will be found, we have not altogether ceased to 

 use a passive voice : and I may indeed adopt the very language of 

 Dr. Stevenson in 1843, a year after he wrote his Essay published 

 in the Bombay A. S. Journal, and say "There is undoubtedly 

 such a thing as a passive verb occasionally used [in Sinhalese as 

 well as] in Murathi; but its use is very limited, compared with that 

 of the English passive verb, and its place is generally supplied by 

 intransitive verbs, or by circumlocution. * 



There is also another peculiarity connected with the Sinhalese 

 passive, or, as some call it, the middle voice, which may be noticed 

 here. 'When' says the Sidatsangara, 'the agent and the object are the 

 same, (as when a thing is produced of itself,) the verb takes a pas- 



* Murathi Grammar, p. 87. 



