244 



journal r. a. s. (ceylon). [Vol. VII., Pt. III. 



trina, §§, idu, "straight," for £3^, rija, utu, "season," 



for fi3°)«5 ritu. <SiQ } nisi, for £0°)©, rishi. 



2. <^6, ai, becomes €>, e, as hela, "mount," for 



3. §)<*>, aw, becomes eD, o, as <^eeo£(^, sonduru, for 

 saundaryya, " comely." 



4. A long vowel is generally shortened as 6sd, eh "one," 

 for 6si55, ^fca ; ©>€S3<§N<g|0c£, so/os, "sixteen," for sodasa ; 

 mo^a, "road" for ®od$, marga ; 9 $3^, wwra, ''lord" for j§ck£)<5, 

 ^swara. 



5. The dental sibilent C3, s, represents the palatal and the 

 lingual ; as ©S, nisi, "twenty," for ^ocsad^, vinsati ; €3*0, seta, 

 " sixty," for ©^8, shashti ; 53, sa, "six" for Sgd, sAasA. 



6. Aspirated consonants are reduced to their unaspirated 

 sounds, sometimes with eo, /?, to compensate for the loss of the 

 aspirate ; as birna, "land," for 2sp@, bhihni ; vidi, 

 "manner," for 8S, mVZAi ; £.2££#}, dehena, "religious medita- 

 tion," for 6D#)s53, dhydna. 



7. €), c7*a, is changed either to S3, sa, or c{, da, sometimes 

 to 55, £a ; as C3£53<5, satara, "four" for ©2p&, chatur ; Oe3°, pas, 



"five" for o€),pancha; (^<55igdi, goduru, "an object of sense", for 

 <^eoo©d, gochara ; tudus, "fourteen," for €)^^Q<a, cAa- 



turddasa. The change of ©, c/ia, to C3, sa, is not peculiar to the 

 Sinhalese alone : it is a feature of the Bengali and Marathi too, 

 Mr. Beames says, " In Eastern Bengal, where the pronuncia- 

 tion reaches the utmost limits of corruption, chha is regularly 

 sounded as s, and in that dialect of Bengal spoken in Assam, 

 not only has the s sound driven out the chha but also has in 

 many cases still further passed into A." So it is in Sinhalese ; 



e3C£, sanda, "moon," from Sanskrit chandra, is reduced to 



$><Q, ha/nda ; O©, pahcha, "five" is pasa, and reduced 



further into e2&>, paha ; <$£3, dasa, "ten" becomes <^eS5, daAa. 

 This QS5 7ia is sometimes still further reduced in Sinhalese, 

 - by dropping it altogether and retaining only its inherent 



