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JOURNAL, R.A.S. (CEYLON). [VOL. XII. 



regarded in the sense of Papers submitted to the Society. 

 Again, it was not to be regarded as permissible for an absent 

 gentleman to send in his remarks as a Paper to be read to 

 the Meeting, although, as Mr. Corea was in possession of the 

 Meeting, a Paper he had sent to be read in his absence would 

 be allowed. 



4. The following remarks sent by Mr. C. E. H. COREA 

 were then read by Mr. F. H. M. Corbet, by special 

 permission : — 



Ethnology of Ceylon. 



I HAVE not much more to say in continuation of my 

 remarks on Mr. Nell's Paper, but I am compelled to 

 recapitulate much of what I have already said. 



At the last Meeting, I essayed to draw attention to the 

 fact that the Paper teems with fallacies in the method of its 

 reasoning, and to warn Members against the numerous 

 assertions of the writer which do not seem to be warranted by 

 historical circumstances. 



Among several such ipse dixits, I drew attention to the 

 assertion that " Princess Suppadevi, Vijaya's grandmother, 

 seems clearly to have been a Telugu princess." The writer 

 should be aware that all that is known of this princess points 

 to her having belonged to the Kalinga Vanga race of the 

 Magadha country, the head centre of the Pali language. The 

 Vishnu Purdna enumerating the peoples of Saka Dvipa, says 

 that of them " the Magadhas are an exclusively Kshatriya 

 race." In the method of reasoning adopted by the writer is 

 that the inserting of statements of this nature in a parenthesis 

 or incidentally, and afterwards using them as facta probantia 

 of important questions, is to be deprecated, as they are apt to 

 be taken for proven facts. 



I pointed out that he speaks of the Ilavers, a low-caste 

 tribe of South India, as Sinhalese, as if it had been 

 incontrovertibly proved that these Ilavers were Sinhalese, 

 without proof being in any way offered. The writer is saved 

 from the necessity of working out his premises to a conclusion 

 by the precaution he took at the outset to say that the Paper 

 is merely a " suggestive " one, though (if I am not mistaken) 

 but a few lines previous he had stated his intention to be 

 to prove everything historically. 



Of the many self-infirmative facts recorded by Mr. Nell, 

 one which occurs at the very commencement of the Paper 

 is sufficient in itself to cut the ground from under the 

 writer's feet. I refer to the statement that people along the 

 western coast and throughout the Southern Province speak 

 of the Kandyan Provinces as " Sinhala," or " the Sinhalese 

 country," and distinguish themselves from the Sinhalese. 



