II.  SANSKRIT.—­In Sanskrit or translations from it, the Singhalese have preserved their principal treatises on physical science, cosmography, materia medica, and surgery.  From it, too, they have borrowed the limited knowledge of astronomy, possessed by the individuals who combined with astrology and the casting of nativities, the practice of palmistry and the interpretation of dreams.  In Sanskrit, they have treatises on music and painting, on versification and philology; and their translations include a Singhalese version of those portions of the Ramayana, which commemorate the conquest of Lanka.

III.  ELU AND SINGHALESE.—­There is no more striking evidence of the intellectual inferiority of the modern, as compared with the ancient inhabitants of Ceylon, than is afforded by the popular literature of the latter, and the contrast it presents to the works of former ages.  Descending from the gravity of religious disquisition and the dignity of history and science, the authors of later times have been content to limit their efforts to works of fiction and amusement, and to ballads and doggerel descriptions of places or passing events.

But, to the credit of the Singhalese, it must be said, that in their compositions, however satirical or familiar they may be, their verses are entirely free from the licentiousness which disfigures similar productions in India; and that if deficient in imagination and grace, they are equally exempt from grossness and indelicacy.

The Singhalese language is so flexible that it admits of every description of rhythm; of this the versifiers have availed themselves to exhibit every variety of stanza and measure, and every native, male or female, can recite numbers of their favourite ballads.  Their graver productions consist of poems in honour, not of Buddha alone, but of deities taken from the Hindu Pantheon,—­Patine, Siva, and Ganesa, panegyrics upon almsgiving, and couplets embodying aphorisms and morals.

A considerable number of the Sutras or Discourses of Buddha have been translated into the vernacular from Pali, but the most popular of all are the jatakas, the Singhalese versions of which are so extended, that one copy alone fills 2000 olas or palm leaves, each twenty-nine inches in length and containing nine lines in a page.

The other works in Singhalese are on subjects connected with history, such as the Rajavali and Rajaratnacai, on grammar and lexicography, on medicine, topography, and other analogous subjects.  But in all their productions, though invested with the trappings of verse, there alike is an avoidance of what is practical and true, and an absence of all that is inventive and poetic.  They contain nothing that appeals to the heart or the affections, and their efforts of imagination aspire not to please or to elevate, but to astonish and bewilder by exaggeration and fable.  Their poverty of resources leads to endless repetitious of the same epithets and incidents; books are multiplied at the present day chiefly by extracts from works of established popularity, and the number of qualified writers is becoming annually less from the altered circumstances of the island and the decline of those institutions and prospects which formerly stimulated the ambition of the Buddhist priesthood, and inspired a love of study and learning.