The original of the great Pali grammar of Kachchayano is now lost, but its principles survive in numerous treatises, and text-books written at succeeding periods to replace it.[1] Such is the passion for versification, probably as an assistant to memory, that nearly every Singhalese work, ancient as well as modern, is composed in rhyme, and even the repulsive abstractions of Syntax have found an Alvarez and been enveloped in metrical disguise.

[Footnote 1:  The Rev. R. SPENCE HARDY, to whom I am indebted for much valuable information on the subject of the literature current at the present day in Ceylon, published a list in the Journal of the Ceylon Branch of the Asiatic Society for 1848, in which he gave the titles of 467 works in Pali, Sanskrit, and Elu, collected by himself during his residence in Ceylon.  Of these about 80 are in Sanskrit, 150 in Elu (or Singhalese), and the remainder in Pali, either with or without translations.  Of the Pali book 26 are either grammars or treatises on grammar.

This catalogue of Mr. Hardy is, however, by no means to be regarded as perfect; not only because several are omitted, but because many are but excerpts from larger works.  The titles are seldom descriptive of the contents, but in true Oriental taste are drawn from emblems and figures, such as “Light,” “Gems,” and “Flowers.”  The authors’ names are rarely known, and the language or style seldom affords an indication of the age of the composition.]

Of the sacred writings in Pali, the most renowned are the Pitakattayan, literally “The Three Baskets,” which embody the doctrines, discourses, and discipline of the Buddhists, and so voluminous is this collection that its contents extend to 592,000 stanzas; and the Atthakatha or commentaries, which are as old as the fifth century[1], contain 361,550 more.  From their voluminousness, the Pittakas are seldom to be seen complete, but there are few of the superior temples in which one or more of the separate books may not be found.

[Footnote 1:  They were translated into Pali from Singhalese by Buddhaghoso, A.D. 420.—­Mahawanso, c. xxxvii, p. 252.]

The most popular portion of the Pittakas are the legendary tales, which profess to have been related by GOTAMO BUDDHA himself, in his Sutras or discourses, and were collected under the title of Pansiya-panas-jataka-pota, or the “Five hundred and fifty Births.”  The series is designed to commemorate events in his own career, during the states of existence through which he passed preparatory to his reception of the Buddhahood.  In structure and contents it bears a striking resemblance to the Jewish Talmud, combining, with aphorisms and maxims, philological explanations of the divine text, stories illustrative of its doctrines, into which not only saints and heroes, but also animals and inanimate objects, are introduced, and not a few of the fables that pass as AEsop’s are to be found in the Jatakas of Ceylon.  There are translations into Singhalese of the greater part of its contents, and so attractive are its narratives that the natives will listen the livelong night to recitations from its pages.[1]