NOTES ON ANCIENT SIMHALESE INSCRIPTIONS. 21 



I am inclined to look upon the questionable passage in 

 the Kirinde inscription as being ] mre Mdgadki, the language 

 in which the sacred scriptures were known in Ceylon from 

 the time of Mahindo to Buddhaghosha, who would have 

 introduced from India what now is called Pali, and corrected 

 the texts he found in Ceylon. In point of fact, the ancient 

 Indian vernaculars resemble each other so closely that he 

 probably had little more to do than to alter the spelling of 

 the words and some grammatical terminations. With re- 

 gard to the latter forms like bhikkkave bhante leave no 

 doubt about the original connexion of the Pali language with 

 a dialect which changed original as, ah into e instead of 

 the common o. How long Buddhaghosha's sacred language 

 was known in India, we cannot now determine. We are as 

 little able to prove how far it bore itself the character of an 

 independent dialect uninfluenced by foreign sources. I will 

 here only give some additional instances, besides those 

 pointed out by Kern and Kuhn, of words which appear as 

 strangers in the Pali language as known at present. 



Kern's examples as far as I adopt them, are assa fp. 15) 

 at raj o (ibid), garavo (p. 34), maluto, halidda, daliddo (p. 14), 

 My forms are pali for pari in palibodho, palipanno, etc., 

 kappeti with the signification " to cut" does not seem 

 indigenous in Pali, while in Magadhi (cakari) we have 

 kappedha " cut ye" (Mrcchakatika), in Simhalese kapanawa 

 sunati, etc., for sunoti also seems to be adopted from Ma- 

 gadhi (dram. Mag. sunami etc., Mrcch.) We find in Pali 

 some obsolete bye-forms framed on different principles from 

 those in common use. Now a language may very well 

 possess different forms developed from one and the same 

 word and used indiscriminately, particularly if this language 

 has been arrested in a transitional stage. But if these forms 

 are rare and just in agreement with the type of another set 

 of languages, suspicion will appear justified. Such forms 



