No. 34.— 1887.] 



POLONNAKUWA. 



81 



Government in Orissa — a country, according to Cuningham's " Ancient 

 Geography of India," lying to the north of Kaliriga ; and Ganga-vansa 

 Kalydna Mahd Devi was no doubt a princess of that line. 



NOTE BY Rev. S. COLES. 

 Mr. Berwick's article is a very satisfactory solution of Mr. Burrows' 

 difficulty with regard to the Ganga dynasty, and is a step towards the 

 confirmation of the hypothesis of Professor Oldenburg, that Pali was 

 a dialect of the Sanskrit, spoken, not in the basin of the Ganges, but 

 in some districts in Central or Southern India where Buddhism was 

 early established, and whence it was easily transferred to Ceylon in the 

 Pali language. 



Howsoever that may have been, my object in writing this is briefly 

 to show that the word Ganga is a generic and not a specific or proper 

 name. It is almost certain that in Sanskrit, which was probably spoken 

 only in the watershed of the Ganges, that the term Ganga practically 

 was a proper name, as is customary among all riverside inhabitants 

 throughout the world, who always speak of their river as " The River " 

 without any further appellative. Besides, the fact that in Sanskrit 

 works a celestial and a terrestrial Ganga are mentioned is a proof 

 that the generic idea of Ganga was not unknown to those people. 



In Buddhist works frequent mention is made of other rivers beside 

 the Ganges under the term Ganga. In the " Savidhi Dfpaniya," in the 

 Byangana Division, on the 64th page, seven nadis and five g an gas are 

 mentioned. In the Commentary of the " Angotra Sangiya," the word 

 Ganga is used between twenty and thirty times in connection with 

 other rivers besides the Ganges. In the course of my reading I have 

 frequently come across it in the Tipitaka books, where it has the 

 generic signification. 



It appears, therefore, that although the Sanskrit-speaking people of 

 the Ganges valley used nadi as the generic and ganga generally 

 as the specific name for " river," yet they also employed the latter in 

 the general sense, as did also the other inhabitants of those parts of 

 India where Pali was spoken and Buddhism had been established. 



NOTES BY B. GUNASEKARA Mudaliyar. 

 Page 53. — Reading Lanka dipayata eJca mangala dipayak men 

 pemina Lankdtanha prasamaya kote samasta Lankddwipaya apawaraka 



48—88 G 



