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



at second hand, and Mr. Nell's was a new departure in that 

 respect. It was a bold attempt to break through the tyranny 

 of blind faith and to make them judge for themselves as to 

 whether certain theories hitherto taken for unquestionable 

 articles of faith by them were actually founded on facts 

 or were only hasty conclusions founded on insufficient 

 data. 



There could be no doubt that the Sinhalese were a com- 

 posite race, and that the Aryan was but a very inconsiderable 

 portion, if any at all. The alphabetic system, a great many 

 grammatical forms, and a whole vocabulary of words, were 

 connected with the Sanskrit, Pali, &c. But that was easily 

 accounted for. Buddhism had been the chief religion of the 

 country for many centuries, and most of the Buddhist books 

 were in Pali. Thus the Sinhalese language had become 

 modelled on the Aryan method, and the Sinhalese mode of 

 thought on the Pali and Sanskrit. They knew how many 

 English words and phrases had become almost household 

 words even in the short time the Island had been under 

 English rule, and even such familiar names as those of the 

 months had, even among the ignorant, largely given way to 

 the English names. Therefore it was not a conclusive proof 

 of the descent of the Sinhalese from the ancient Aryans 

 that there should be grammatical forms and words allied 

 to Sanskrit and Pali. He submitted, therefore, that the 

 linguistic test alone was a very fallacious one. 



But the Aryan origin was totally disproved by the whole 

 tradition, history, laws, and customs which distinguish one 

 race from another. Even admitting that Vijaya's followers 

 were Aryans, at least half the blood in the Sinhalese must 

 be Dravidian, to say nothing about the Tamil conquests and 

 the influx of Tamil coolies. The Aryan caste distinctions 

 were not those which obtained in Ceylon, where they were 

 tribal, similar to those of the Tamils ; The existence of 

 polyandry also showed them not to be Aryan. 



The land tenure words were either borrowed from the 

 Tamils, in which event the Tamils were the civilisers of 

 the Sinhalese, or else the Sinhalese had them in common 

 with the Tamils, Telagus, and Kanarese, which would 

 show their language to be Dravidian. The formation of 

 their sentences was also Dravidian. One could change a 

 whole language by conquest, or by a new religion, bringing 

 in new literature, &c; but it was impossible to change the 

 method upon which a man thought. 



7. Mr. Barber said they had heard a great deal that night 

 about history and philology, but very little about ethnology, 

 and he would therefore ask permission to read a few 



