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SPECIMENS OF SINHALESE PROVERBS, 

 By Louis de Zoysa, Mudaliyar. 



A complete collection of the proverbs of the country, is 8 

 desideratum in Sinhalese literature. No such collection lias 

 ever been made, either by a Native or European author. I 

 do not, by this remark, intend to ignore the existence of such 

 works as the Lokopakare* Siibhdsita,~\ &c, &c, but these 

 works contain moral and political maxims, and not proverbs, 

 strictly so-called. The only native work in which a number 

 of proverbs is found embodied, is an anonymous little poem 

 by a modern author, entitled Updratnamdle: 



It is a curious and interesting fact, that the first writer" 

 who has recorded any number of Sinhalese proverbs, is no 

 other than the first Englishman who has left us an account 

 of Ceylon. In Captain Robert Knox's well-known and 

 interesting work on Ceylon, published upwards of 200 years 

 ago, he has recorded a few Sinhalese proverbs, of which he 

 gives us not only the translation in English, but also the 

 original Sinhalese, romanized in his own quaint way. I select 

 a few specimens, to -shew how correctly he has translated 

 them, and also to exhibit his peculiar mode of transliteration. 



" Miris dilah ingurah gotta. " I have given pepper, and 

 got ginger.'-— Spoken when a man makes a bad exchange ; 

 and they use it in reference to the Dutch succeeding the 

 Portuguese in that island." 



* Ascribed by tradition to Mayurapada, a learned Buddhist priest, 

 the author of Pujdvali and other works, who flourished in the reign of 

 Pandita Parakramabahu, a. d. 1267—1300. 



f A well-known Sinhalese poet, who flourished in the beginning 

 of the seventeenth century, the author of Ktisajatalee, Semrf sandese, &c. 



