THE SINHALESE LANGUAGE. 



8*3 



and tenia 'self as the sign of the nominative. The nearness of 

 signification and form of uggahethaiva to igenmehisita is remark- 

 able; also of nama and nam ; and of kale and kala. Here is an 

 illustration of the Sinhalese words mavu-piya for 'father' and 

 * mother,' being of Sanskrit origin. No Sinhalese scholar, I am 

 persuaded, will introduce into the above sentence appd or amrnd, 

 any more than an English writer would ' papa ' or ' mamma.' The 

 Pali dahara and the Sinhalese la-daru are synonymous, the la 

 being in the latter added to mark the 'tenderness' of the infant. 

 The Pali ti is expressed by the Sinhalese yi, and in the use of them 

 there is not the slightest difference. Again there is not a single 

 word, in the above sentence, which has the most distant relation to 

 the Dravidian. 



ii. The Sinhalese auxiliary artaye?i is expressed atthato in the 

 Pali. The passive voice is here undoubtedly expressed by pava- 

 rana-ladi, and kiyana-ladi. There is, moreover, no grammatical 

 form that may be pronounced to have had its origin in the Dravi- 

 dian. 



iii. In rendering the above Pali passage into the Sinhalese, 

 idiom has rendered the displacement of only two words. One is 

 the negative particle na, which, in the Pali, is prefixed to pati- 

 sambhiddya when the verb is understood, but which in the Sin- 

 halese should be added to the verb substantive which is generally 

 expressed. The other is the principal verb vavatthape7itu=niya- 

 makara-ganiti, 'determine,' which in the Pali precedes the quota- 

 tion following, but which in the Sinhalese follows the passage ex- 

 pressed as the thought that is passing in the children's minds. 

 Adverting to the only remaining analogy to which Dr. Stevenson 

 refers, — that in the Dravidian dialects ' the verb is used, last in the 

 sentence,' I may remark that the difference here between the Pali 

 and the Sinhalese is, that contrary to the position of the verb in 

 the first example, the Pali finite verb in example second does not 

 occupy the lust place in the sentence, whilst the Sinhalese verb 



