No. 43.— 1892.] 



PROCEEDINGS. 



253 



Portuguese in modern times thought the Tamils of Ceylon 

 to be Malabars. 



Non-Drdvidian element. 



(4.) Notes two and three lead me to the conclusion that 

 the original inhabitants of Ceylon were the Elu people, the 

 country they inhabited the Elu country, and the language 

 they spoke Elu. 



(5.), Elu was the non-Dravidian element, which was also 

 non-Aryan at the same time. The grammatical constitution 

 of the Sinhalese language, notwithstanding the, overwhelm- 

 ing number of Sanskritic words, betrays its non-Aryan origin. 

 Languages there are which have borrowed relative pronouns 

 from other stocks. But, is there any typical Aryan dialect 

 which has no relative pronouns ? 



(6.) The problem about the written characters of the 

 Sinhalese alphabet seems to me to be the least difficult of 

 those suggested by the Paper. The Sinhalese characters are 

 a modified form of the Telugu characters. Telugu, Canarese, 

 and Malayalam characters are modifications of the Karnataka. 

 Vijaya was at least a semi-Tel agu prince, and most probably 

 was acquainted with the Telugu language, as we may naturally 

 expect a knowledge of English from a German prince. 

 Moreover, there used to be intermarriages between the 

 Kalinga and Vanga royal families. The Dravidian dialect 

 that has the largest Sanskritic vocabulary is Telugu. By 

 straining the meaning of the words, I may say Telugu was 

 Vijaya's mother-tongue, Tamils easily acquire a knowledge 

 of Telugu, which would have been the most convenient 

 medium of intercourse between Vijaya and his Tamil con- 

 sort. Still, I would not go so far as to say that Vijaya and 

 his followers spoke Telugu in Ceylon, though the Telugu 

 character has been borrowed by the Sinhalese. The 

 aboriginal language had in all probability no written 

 alphabet. The late Hon. James de Alwis points out in 

 his Sidat Sangardwa certain Sinhalese letters which most 

 resemble corresponding Tamil letters. A closer study 

 would probably lead to the discovery of closer resemblance 

 between the Telugu and Sinhalese characters. A perusal of 

 Dr. Burnett's Palceography of Southern India throws 

 considerable light on the subject. 



(7.) A careful study of the philology of Elu words by 

 intelligent and unbiassed scholars would show to what 

 languages the original language of Ceylon is most allied. 

 Only those words in the Elu vocabulary not allied to 

 Sanskrit must be studied first. I do not think that all the 

 words now considered to be Elu are pure Elu. There are 

 Sanskrit words in Tamil so disguised that their origin is not 

 easily discernible. 



