NO. 43.— 1892.] ETHNOLOGY OF CEYLON. 



261 



This fact, when taken with the following admissions made 

 by the writer, namely : (1) that his remarks do not apply to 

 the inhabitants of the central region " in the Sinhalese 

 country proper " ; (2) that the name Sinhalese is now er- 

 roneously given without any discrimination to thousands of 

 other races who populate the country, who have no claim to 

 the name ; and (3) that there is no doubt that other races had 

 from early times settled in Ceylon " distinctively " from 

 the Sinhalese — simply goes to prove that Mr. Nell is only 

 labouring to show that certain peoples, living on the western, 

 southern, eastern, and northern coasts of Ceylon (but who 

 according to his own statement have no claim to be called 

 Sinhalese), are not of Aryan but of Dravidian or mixed 

 descent — a fact which I am sure no one has thought of 

 disputing. 



The Paper might therefore have been allowed to pass 

 unchallenged, but for the fact that the writer calls upon us 

 to adopt the fact that some tribes or peoples of Ceylon are 

 Dravidians, or mixed, as suggesting that all are so. It is 

 therefore the very suggestiveness of the Paper that provokes 

 discussion. For to induce suggestions the writer takes up 

 matters of history which affect the real legitimate Sinhalese 

 people, and handles them in a manner which calls for 

 criticism. It is thus necessary to analyse the historical 

 merits of the Paper, which will be found to be equally 

 misleading as its method of reasoning. , 



First, Mr. Nell would suggest a non-Aryan origin to the 

 Sinhalese language from some resemblances which he has 

 found to exist between some of the letters of its alphabet 

 and the character of certain non-Aryan languages. Next, he 

 relates the narrative of the Ramdyana, and the fable of 

 Prince Yijaya's leonine origin, with the object of interpolating 

 certain gratuitous statements, such as that no Aryan settle- 

 ment was established in Ceylon, before Vijaya's arrival, and 

 that Vijaya himself was a non-Aryan Prince who spoke the 

 Telugu language, and that the Pandiyans by whom the 

 Vijayan colony was largely re-inforced were Tamils ; and, 

 lastly, under the title of the post-Vijayan myth, he labours to 

 show that Tamil soldiers were often employed by Sinhalese 

 Sovereigns in their battles, which no one ever denied. 



The writer seems unconscious that the very fact that the 

 Mahdwansa, which is his only authority all throughout, 

 scrupulously mentions the various tribes of mercenaries 

 in the Sinhalese armies by their distinctive names, and 

 contains not the remotest suggestion of any social connections 

 between them and the Sinhalese, clearly proves that the 

 latter reserved a scrupulous and religious distinction between 

 themselves and those heterogeneous nationalities. 



