204 JOURNAL, R.A.S. (CEYLON). [VOL. XIV. 



found in the "Vaimi are not of sufficient antiquity, and have 

 not been subject to this process long enough to have undergone 

 much change, and their meaning is therefore evident enough. 



This is due to the fact that this part of the country was 

 colonized by its present occupants in comparatively modern 

 times, and that the former Sinhalese inhabitants were driven 

 from the villages to the southern districts. The invaders 

 gave new names to the villages which they occupied, and to 

 the tanks which they had not destroyed. Many villages, no 

 doubt, were not occupied at all owing to the destruction of 

 the adjoining tanks, and in this way the old Sinhalese names 

 disappeared and were forgotten. The task of explaining 

 the present names of places in the Vanni is therefore com- 

 paratively an easy one. 



The tank is everywhere the great necessity of the country, 

 and without the tank the village could not exist.* Accord- 

 ingly we find that nearly every village is called after its 

 tank, and in the great majority of names the affix is one of 

 the numerous words employed in Tamil to denote a tank or 

 a pond. There are nine of these in use in the Vaimi, viz. : — ■ 



Kulam = a tank 

 Madu = a tank 



Mocldai = a pond, tank (not given by Winslow) 



name was that the village is on the boundary between the Alutkuru and 

 Hapitigam korales, and that some people fleeing from justice, or rather from 

 the King of Kandy, crossed over from the latter into the former korale. 

 When it was suggested that their pursuers should also cross over and arrest 

 them, some one said : " Do not touch them, it would be a sin " — Nallapaw. 

 This is the only explanation of the name of the village that 1 could 

 obtain. 



To go from the names of places to the names of plants upon which they 

 are often founded, I should be inclined to doubt the fantastic derivation 

 of the name for sweet potato, batala, from lata 11 rice " and le " blood," 

 given in the Journal of this Society for 1891-92, pp. 125-6, and to suggest 

 that it is merely a Sinhalese corruption through the Portuguese of the 

 Haytian word batata, from which potato is also derived. 



* It is owing to this intimate connection between the two that the words 

 for tank and village become interchangeable. I have heard Sinhalese 

 villagers of the Vanni talk of the tank as gama. Mr. levers says gama is 

 used for paddy field in the North-Central Province. The tank, the field, 

 the village— one implies the other. 



