Page:The history of the Bengali language (1920).pdf/45

Rh Not only the Sinhalese, but even the Vaeddas and their very wild congeners, use a large number of Māgadhi words in their speech, which are of the time I have spoken of. The use of the words "gini" for fire, "gonā" for cows, "goyā" and "goyi" (the Prākṛta forms of godhā and godhikā), "vāso" to indicate residence (as in kaeto-vaso, forest residence), "ini" from the root ই=to go (as in gamanini), etc., which occur in the old Māgadhi Prākṛta, by even such Sinhalese as lead a rude life in distant forest tracts, raises a presumption in favour of very early Māgadhi influence in Ceylon. It has to be noted that the Sinhalese are non-Aryan people, and the Tamil-speaking Hindus, who have most influence with them, are not at all familiar with the Māgadhi words noticed above. As the early chroniclers of Ceylon could always prevail upon the Gotama Buddha to visit the island off and on, it is unsafe to rely upon the dates given by them in their pious zeal for the cause of religion.

The account that Vijaya and his successors proceeded to Ceylon from Vanga, cannot also be easily dismissed, for there are indelible marks of the influence of the eastern Gangetic valley on the speech of the Sinhalese. It is a fact that many words and grammatical forms, as had their origin in the soil of Bengal at a comparatively recent time, are current in the speech of even some isolated forest tribes of Ceylon, along with the Māgadhi words of earlier date as just now noted above. This argues in favour of the proposition that the later immigrants must have proceeded directly from Bengal. Whoever the early conquerors of Ceylon may be, it will be quite reasonable to suppose that even when the old Māgadhi of the 3rd or 4th century B.C. changed its own character considerably in farther east, lots of people of the lower Gangetic valley continued to pour into Ceylon, to exercise linguistic and