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that it was divided by a river; and that the ancient inhabitants were richer in gold and large pearls than the Indians "Onesicratus classis ejus praefectus, elephantos ibi majores bellicosioresqne, quam in India gigni scripsit: Megasthenes flumine dividi, incolasque Palæogonos appellari, auri margaritarumque grandium fertiliores, quam Indos." The Elephants of Cey lon are, I believe, confessedly larger than any in India, or in any part of the world, perhaps, except Africa. Rivers are common to all countries. The description is vague in this respect; but the geography of the interior could not be correctly ascertained by strangers. Gold perhaps there was in former times in the island of Ceylon. But the pearls are a more peculiar produce: and the pearl fishery is a principal source of revenue at this day. Sumatra, being a part of the Aurea Chersonesus, doubtless product gold. But there are no pearls in those seas; nor is Sumatra celebrated for its elephants. This question is fully, and I think satisfactorily, discussed by Dr. Robertson in his "Historical disquisition concerning an cieut India." He comes to the conclusion, "That the Taprobane of the ancients is the Island of Ceylon; and not only its vicinity to the continent but the general form of the island as delineated by Ptolomy, as well as the position of several places in it, mentioned by him, establishes this opinion with a great degree of certainty." [p. 81, 84, 8vo. London 1809.] See some very excellent remarks on the ancient Taprobane in Histoire et Memoires de Justitut Royal de France. Classe d'Histoine et de Literature Ancienne Tom. I. p. 117. Paris 1815.-See also Tom. X. p. 222, et seq. and Gibbon's Roman Empire, vol. iv. p. 142, note 6, 8vo. Edit.

III.

We begin with the Kandian boundary, as the commencement of the Interior. Up to this point, however, the country improves at every step from Colombo. The Kandian boundary is nearly forty miles; about half way between Colombo and Kandy. The road,-formed under the Government of Sir Edward Barnes, and under the direction of Captain Dawson, to whom & monument is erected on the road side not far from Kandy, -is as good as can be constructed. But the boundary of Colombo is no sooner passed than there is a visibly rapid improvement in the scenery. The boldness of the Kandian country at once commences. Except in Switzerland, and the more elevated regious of Europe, and the Hymalaya mountains, bolder scenery, within so small a circle, can scarcely be found than in the territories of the late king of Kandy.

IV.

Warakapoli hill is the first striking object. It meets the 'eye immediately on passing the boundary. It breaks abruptly from the base. It is in fact a vast black rock. One side is abrupt and bare; the other is covered with jungle. The blackness appears to be the effect of the humidity of the atmosphere, and of the rain; the stone being apparently soft and porous.

V.

"The Talipot tree was of frequent occurrence, and we saw one speciment of it in blossom. This noble palm has been the subject of a good deal of fabulous story. It has been called the glant of the forest, but, like the Cocoanut tree, it is never found wild. Its blossom is said to burst forth suddenly, with a loud explosion; but it expands gradually and quietly. When its flower appears, its leaves are said to droop and harg down, and die; but they remain fresh, erect, and vigorous till the fruit is nearly ripe, and their drooping precedes only the death of the tree, which speedily takes place after the ripening of the fruit. Even the disagreeableness of the smell of the flower has been exaggerated greatly. This palm, Lizuala spinosa, the largest of the order, has a circular fan leaf, from ty to thirty feet in circumference. Its flower, which it bears once only in its life, is a conical spoke, occasionally thirty feet high." Davy's Interior of Ceylon, p. 416.

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To this account it need only be added that of the leaf the natives make fans, and construct light airy, rustic ceilings to houses. The flower shoots out and upward from the top of the tree, and forms one of the most beautiful objects imaginable. I saw two or three in the road on my first journey to Kandy.

VI.

on

Kadeganava is & noble pass. In one part it is cleft through the rock. A lofty ridge of mountains and rock is on one side, sometimes precipitous and perpendicular; the other, deep and dark dells beneath, frowning with jungle and forest, which the eye cannot penetrate. It reminded me,-by the vastness of the objects and the cleft rock,-of the fine mountain gorge of Ollioules, near Toulon. But at Ollioules there are scarcely any, if any, trees; and the grandeur arises from the nakedness and desolation of the scene. Here, the dells are darker, deeper, and more mysterious from the shadowy effect of the jungle, and forest trees. In these deep valleys or dells, there are, I am told, some of the more valuable woods with which this beautiful island abounds, such as ebony. A thunder storm made the more impressive, as I descended from the carriage and walked up the pass,

Scene

VII.

I have said that twenty years, had intervened between the periods when I saw the throne of the king of Kandy, and first visited his capital. I find it about nineteen years. The Throne was sent to England, I am informed in 1819,-and it was, I think, in that year that I saw it in the armoury at Charlton house. I first visited Kandy in 1834. It is now 1840,

ON THE AFFINITY BETWEEN THE MALDIVIAN AND

SINGHALESE LANGUAGES.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE CEYLON MAGAZINE.

SIR,-My object in sending you the subjoined list of Maldivian and Sin ghalese words is to invite the attention of Singhalese Scholars to the affinity existing between the two languages that the subject may undergo a ful investigation by them. I therefore trust you will not refuse it a place in your forthcoming periodical and oblige.

Yours Faithfully,

SIMON CASIE CHITTY.

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TO THE EDITOR OF THE CEYLON MAGAZINE.

SIR,-In a periodical for which the designation of the CEYLON MAGAZINE has been selected, discussions having for their object the illustration of the antiquities and the ancient classical literature of Ceylon could not, at any time, if confined within due bounds, be deemed inappropriate; while at the present moment these researches derivé an especial importance, and excite an extent of interest among orientalists and antiquaries, produced by the rec nt discovery of the ancient alphabet. of India, of which few persons, who are not themselves engaged in the same pursuits, are yet aware.

Mr. James Prinsep, the distinguished orientalist to whom the literary world owes this remarkable achievement, as well as many other important services rendered in the wide field of Asiatic research, was interrupted, in the midst of his brilliant, and successful course of discoveries, by loss of health occasioned by too intense application of his mental powers. He was compelled consequently last year to return to Europe-whither his fame had long preceded him; and the last overland mail has brought the mournful intelligence of the final close of that promising career. Those alone can form an adequate conception of the magnitude of the loss which the cause of oriental research has sustained by the death of Mr. James Prinsep, who have had the direct benefit of being instructed and aided in their own inquiries by the comprehensive attainments, in science as well as literature, of his active mind. I believe I may safely say that by no one has that loss been more sensibly felt than by myself. It is, however, to that accomplished scholar Sir William Jones that the honor is due of having laid the foundation of oriental research locally among our countryman in India. But his own labors, as well as those of many eminent orientalists who succeeded him, all tended,, in the most disheartening manner, to prove that in a country, which even at a remote period of antiquity had attained an advanced state of refinement in literature as in the arts and sciences, and which still professed to possess historical records extending back to the earliest ages, every essential evidence of authenticity, as well as all coherence based on chronology, had been obliterated; and that in their place an inexplicably mystified compilation, purporting to be historical annals of great antiquity, had been substituted.

European inquirers, in this perplexity, naturally turned to those pages of the western authors which comprise the narration of the events of the fourth century before the Christian era, for the purpose of discovering whether any coincidence existed between the names and the events of the reign of the particular monarch who swayed the Indian sceptre at the time of Alexander's invasion of India, and to whose court held at Palibothra, Megasthenes, Ambassador of Seleucus was deputed, and any Indian sovereign mentioned in Hindu authorities. Such a coincidence, both in name and in personal characteristics, was not wanting. The name of the Sandrocottus of the Greek and of the Chandragupta of the Sanscrit authors presented no other nor greater difference than the peculiarities which those two languages would ordinarily produce. In personal history the identity was indisputable, both having, under similar circumstances, usurped the Indian empire. Beyond this identity, however, this interesting discovery, made by Sir William Jones, furnish ed no useful result. It ought, if the Indian chronology had not been deranged, to have afforded a connecting link between the two chains of Asiatic and European chronologies. But no such parallel could be established---as cording to the Indian chronology, Chandragupta flourished nearly twelve hundred

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years before Alexander! I need hardly add that such vitiated records possessed no value, as containing historical data, in the estimation of European investigators

Oriantalists next sought, but sought equally in vain, to decypher the extensive and numerous inscriptions which were still preserved, with singular distinctness, and nearly all in the same character, engraven on monuments of antiquity scattered over various and widely separated parts of India. Not only had all attempts to decypher those inscriptions been baffled, but no information could be obtained even as to the age in which that alphabet had been known to surrounding nations. From a Maliomedan writer it was ascertained that in the reign of Feeroz Shaw, in the fourteenth century, they "were literal characters which the most learned in all religions had been, unable to explain." It was clearly proved, therefore, that the knowledge of this alphabet had been lost long anterior to that age.

The discovery of motives-whether produced by religious or political causes--of sufficient importance to occasion the systematic mystification of the historical annals of such a civilized country as India has manifestly been, would' be the solution of an important philosophical question; and, though less important, the rational explanation of the circumstances by which the knowledge of any particular alphabet could be lost by a people, who have always boasted of their pundits or learned men, who from generation to generation had lived among these monuments, and who had preserved uninterruptedly a knowledge of the various dialects of the language (though the form of the. letters underwent a succession of changes) in which these inscriptions are com. posed, would not be much less interesting.

It is not my intention, nor do I consider myself competent to enter upon either of these inquiries. Connected with them, however, I may here briefly introduce a few historical facts, which are accessible to every reader however superficial, and which will serve to lead me back to the ancient classical literature of Ceylon, and to an illustration of the inportance of Mr. James Prinsep's discovery, from which I have digressed.

From a remote antiquity, involved in the obscurity alluded to in the precoding remarks, Asia has been distracted by a struggle for religious supremacy between the brahmaus on the one hand, and the buddhists on the other. While the brahmans were in the possession of that supremacy in the sixth century before the birth of Christ, a prince of the name (in Páli) of Siddhatto, the son of a subordinate reigning sovereign, Suddhodano, of that portion of India which borders on the Ganges, then called Magadha, assumed the cha racter of the last Buddho--whose religion it is which now prevails in Ceylon. He promulgated his doctrines in that dialect of the Sanscrit language which was peculiar to his own' country --hence called the Magadhi, and, also, from the high state of refinement it had attained in that age, the Páli language.

From that period buddhism gradually gained ground, until the close of the fourth century before Christ, when Asoko the emperor of all India, called also Piya lassi, the grand son of Alexander's cotemporary Sandrocottus became & convert to that faith. He immediately deputed, in the fervor of recent apostacy, missionaries to all parts of Asia, to propagate his new creed; and in the same capacity of a buddhist, ordained, missionary he sent to Ceylon, Mahindo one of his own sons, who arrived here in the year before Christ 307. Asoko erected also in various parts of India, religious edifices and monuments; on many of which he inscribed the doctrines of his new faith, and recorded the acts of his piety and religious munificence.

The succeeding emperor of India, however, reverted to brahmanism, and gradually the brahmanical faith resumed its supremacy in continental India--leaving buddhism predominant, as the religion of the state, in Ceylon, and in the regious to the northward of the Himalayan chain, and to the eastward of the Burhamputra river. The religious animosity of the brahmans made them spare no pains in continental India in vilifying all that appertained to buddhism, as well as in disparaging, as a provincial jargon, the Páli language in which its doctrines were written. Their own sacred and classical language was the

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