other influences upon the aboriginal races of that island. As to the currency of the modern Bengali forms in Ceylon, I may just by way of illustration refer to the following words, namely—Mācha (fish), gācha (tree) (occurs also as gāha in one tribal speech), petti (small) (the Bengali word peti or pāti is used now to signify contempt). A good deal will have to be said in a subsequent lecture, regarding the accent system of our speech, by comparing the prevailing system with the systems of some Dravidian races, and the old and the modern grammatical forms will have to be similarly considered. As such we cannot do anything beyond pointing out here, that in Ceylon, the word "bhūmi" is pronounced as "bumi" or "bimi," the word "bhāt" is pronounced as "bāt" and the form "karaṇa" (to do), of which the modern Bengali form is "karā," is in use. I may only note in passing, that in some eastern districts of Bengal, "ba" is nearly the sound of "bha" and "karaṇa" is the form of "karā"; the sentence Ār ki deon jāy for Ār ki deoā jāy occurs in a humorous song composed by our poet Rajani Kanta Sen whose early death we all mourn. As to Sinhalese accent system, the remarks of Mr. R. L. Turner may be profitably quoted. He writes: "With regard to Sinhalese, it is hard to come to a decision, because, firstly, all long vowels have been shortened, and, secondly, an extensive umlaut has taken place." The importance of the phenomenon, noticed by Mr. Turner, will be appreciated by you when you will be treated to our Bengali accent and phonetic system. The facts relating to Ceylon, as have been discussed here rather perfunctorily, do not fail to show, that men of Aryan speech and civilization commenced to colonize Bengal from a time not later than the 4th century B.C.
Probabilities, however, seem to be on the side of the supposition, that an appreciable number of Aryans chose
