LANMAN. — PALI BOOK-TITLES. 701 



Both the Burmese and the Cingalese alphabets abound in groups of 

 confusingly similar letters. Thus in Burmese we have the groups : bh 

 and h and s ; te and vo ; dh and m ; t and d ; n and u (initial). In 

 Cingalese we have : bh and h and g ; t and n ; s and y ; v and c ; ch 

 and j ; ph and th and e (initial) ; m and o (initial). 50 It is because 

 the points of confusion are differently located in the several alphabets 

 that a ms. of one class often proves to be an effectual check (Kontrolle) 

 upon a ms. of another. 51 



Group-letter with exponent, for an individual ms. — The logical 

 conclusion from all this is clear. The sigla must show, each on its face, 

 to which one of the four groups or classes the ms. belongs. Nor is 

 there the slightest difficulty in devising such sigla, as the next para- 

 graph shows. The letter which indicates the group I call the group- 

 letter. This in the first place. — In the second place, each siglum must 

 of course indicate the individual ms. of the group to which the ms. 

 belongs. This also is very simply and easily done, namely, by placing 

 after the group-letter (which must be a capital) a small letter or an 

 Arabic numeral. This letter or numeral I call an exponent. 



Determination of the group-letters. — B=Burmese ; C= Cingalese ; 

 K = Kambodian; S = Siamese. — The word " Burmese " is never writ- 

 ten 52 with any other initial than B. Nor can there be any doubt that 

 S is the only available abbreviation 53 for "Siamese." It is quite true 

 that "Singhalese" or "Sinhalese," like the older forms of the name of 

 the island, Sanskrit Sinhala-dvipa, Pali Slhala-dlpa, 54 is very commonly 

 spelled with an S, in English as in German; and true also that "Cin- 

 galese" and "Ceylonese" are in irreproachably good use 55 and are 

 spelled with a C ; but for the name of the island, " Ceylon," although 

 it was formerly written 56 with S and Z, the spelling with C is now the 

 fully established one in English and French and German. And since 

 the necessity of employing S for " Siamese " is inexorable, we have no 



50 On the other hand, both in Burmese and in Cingalese, t is clearly dis- 

 tinguishable from t, and n from n. 



51 Wind'isch has made most useful observations on this subject in the 

 preface to his Iti-vuttaka (1889), p. iv. ; and so has Hardy in the preface to 

 his ed. of the Pv.cm. (1894), p. vii. Cp. also Hardy's remarks on p. v. of his 

 preface to Aiiguttara, vol. V., and among them this: "There is no ms. nor 

 any set of mss. which can be relied upon indiscriminately." 



52 Since we are not likely to be so pedantic as to adopt the form Mranma. 



53 It would indeed be far-fetched pedantry to use a Th (for Thai) ! 



54 For the origin of the name, see Mhvri., vii. 42, ed. Geiger. 



55 Linschoten, in 1598, writes Cingalas: see Yule-Burnell, Hobson-Jobson, 

 s.v. Singalese. 



56 See Hobson-Jobson, s.v. Ceylon. 



