AUTHOR OF THE SIDATSANGARA'; AN INTRODUCTION TO SINHALESE GRAMMAR;
INTRODUCTION TO KACHCHA'YANA'S PA'LI GRAMMAR;
THE ATTANAGALUVANSA; CONTRIBUTIONS TO

ΤΟ

SIR HERCULES GEORGE ROBERT ROBINSON,

K. C. M. G.,

GOVERNOR AND COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF OF THE ISLAND
OF CEYLON.

SIR,

It is my pleasing duty to inscribe this work to you, for the compilation of which you did me the honor to appoint me, and for the prosecution of which you have placed at my disposal much of the assistance of which I was in need.

I shall not speak of my own work in terms of approbation,-it is for the public to decide on its merits; nor is it within my province to enhance its value by any allusion to the trouble it has entailed on me,for that too may be judged of by others: but, apart from the mode in which the work has been executed, permit me to say that, from its very design, it will open to the reading public a means of obtaining rare and valuable information. If the orient pearls for which Ceylon has been famed from all antiquity, are still highly prized amongst the nations of the world, the intellectual pearls which Oriental scholars of

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many nations will be enabled to gather from Lanka's Store-house of Literature, which you have founded, and the key to which is here presented, will not, I hope, be esteemed as less precious or valuable.

Confident that nothing will more enduringly bind the memory of Your Excellency to the present and future generations of the native Sinhalese, than "THE SANSKRIT, PÁLI, AND SINHALESE LIBRARY" which you have established, it is to me a source of sincere pleasure that I have been enabled to complete, at least, one volume of the Descriptive Catalogue during your Government; and I indulge the hope that, as an Index of the Library, it will set before the world a correct, though feeble, "description" of the now fading, but still rich, literature of the Country, over the Government of which you have presided for the last five years, with great credit to yourself, and lasting benefit to all classes of the people.

I have the honor to be,

Your Excellency's

Most obedient and faithful Servant,

JAS. ALWIS.

Nai-Villa,

28th June, 1870.