No. 5.— 1850.] THE ELU LANGUAGE. 243 



anxiety on his part to bring the subject prominently before 

 his native readers, with a view to the discouragement of 

 a practice which exists to a lamentable extent— a practice, 

 too, from which no good results, since they who use a 

 mixture of English terms neither think in English, and 

 thereby exercise an easy mode of acquiring the idiom 

 of that language, nor habituate themselves to a correct and 

 fluent expression of their native tongue. 



From such a state of things — I had almost said the de- 

 generacy in literature — one would be led to believe that the 

 Sinhalese language is defective. But this is not so.* Such 

 a belief would be inconsistent with the existence of books 

 treating fully on a variety of subjects. It is said, however, 

 that the books are written in Elu and not in the Sinhalese. 

 This, again, is a mistake. The r :e is, in fact, no difference 

 between the Sinhalese and Elu. Owing to a plurality of 

 vulgar terms which the natives use in their everyday inter- 

 course, and also to a belief that " the dialect in which the 

 Singhalese works are written is called Elu,"t Europeans 

 have been led to this supposition. :£ But they are both 

 appellations for one and the same language, although it is 

 true that from time to time the Elu, like the English, has 



* " The EIoo has undoubtedly given birth to the vernacular language 

 of this country. It appears to claim great antiquity, and being derived 

 from the Sanskrit, a great proportion of the words may be traced to 

 that source. This language is copious, and must, in former periods, 

 have been cultivated to a high degree of perfection ; it is regular in its 

 grammatical construction, and possesses most of the elegancies of 

 style ; and, from the numerous works which are still extant, it is evident 

 that it is capable of being used in every species of composition." — 

 Clough's " Singhalese- English Dictionary," preface. 



f Vide 0. A. S. Journal, 1846-47, No. 2, p. 103. 



% The Rev. B. Clough, in his "Singhalese-English Dictionary," 

 p, 799, gives the following definition : — " the Elu or ancient 



language of Ceylon." 



57—87 I 



