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JOURNAL, B.A.S. (CEYLON). [Vol, VIII. 



fruit"]. On the other hand, the Sinhalese cultivator's 

 word for 1 man ' is goyiyd i cultivator ' — he is thought of 

 primarily in his agricultural capacity. For the same reason 

 his wife is goyiammd [" mother cultivator "]. Words with 

 a general meaning beiog thus sometimes used in a particular 

 sense, it follows that the latter varies a good deal in different 

 districts. For example, ambaruva seems to mean "any 

 horned animal."* Ia the Kegalla and Balapitiya districts 

 it means f elk' [yond] , but in the other districts it means 

 Buffalo': it is also, I think, used for 'deer' [muva] . 

 Kalu gediyd [" the black lump "] is applied to ( monkey ' 

 [vandura] and ( boar' [urd], 



7. It will be noticed, as another peculiarity of these 

 localisms, that many of the words denoting inanimate things 

 have the terminations which in ordinary Sinhalese or Tamil 

 are confined to words denoting animates, or are words 

 ordinarily denoting animates. This is particularly the case 

 with respect to those natural objects, agricultural imple- 

 ments, &c, to which in the exercise of their occupation 

 the cultivators have occasion oftenest to refer. Thus in 

 Sinhalese — t 



= fire (lit., redness) 

 = water 



== salt (lit, sweetness) 

 = chunam (lit., whiteness) 



= rice (lit., ripeness) 



= arecanut (lit., bitterness) 



= jaggery (lit., sweetness) 



= gourd (lit., bitterness) 



= knife (lit., the cutter) 

 = reaping-hook (lit., the cutter) 

 = spoon (lit., the separater) 



Objects in 

 nature. 



/-pehiya 



r ., . ; kahatava 

 Fruits. &c. < '. , 

 i ranatiya 



tittaya 



i kapanna. 

 Tools, fyc. -J liyanna 



I turankaranna 



* Cf . the difference in meaning between English deer and German tJiier. 



j" To these may be added several Kegalla words, which in Mr. levers's 

 list seems to be in the accusative plural. See the words marked with an 

 asterisk in the list at the end of this Paper, and compare them with the 

 corresponding words from the other districts. 



