40 Address [Feb. 



limited number of Tibetan works that had been published in Germany 

 ami ;\\ St. Petersburg, besides a few block-prints obtained from itinerant 

 Lamas at Ladakh. More than this, words of every style and of every 

 age are collected together in Jaschke's dictionary without any attempt 

 at classification. 



The dictionary which Babu Sarat Chandra Das with his coadjutors 

 has now in hand is of much wider scope than either of its predecessors, 

 and its materials are derived from many different sources. It was in 

 the first instance undertaken at the suggestion of Professor Max Miiller, 

 who was anxious to ascertain the exact force of the Tibetan renderings 

 of current philosophical terms used in Sanskrit-Buddhist literature. 

 These technical terms, it was known, were rendered into Tibetan by 

 their precise syllabic equivalents, in conformity with a system framed 

 for the purpose by the Pandits engaged in the work of translating into 

 Tibetan the sacred books of Indian Buddhism. It was hoped that in 

 this way much new light would be thrown on the original meaning of 

 the philosophical terms of that literature, which is now in many in- 

 stances most obscure. 



The dictionary has accordingly been framed on these lines. The 

 Tibetan word is first given, and then its Sanskrit equivalent, if any, 

 followed by (1) a literal translation of the word according to its etymo- 

 logy, (2) the sense or senses in which the word is used in speech or litera- 

 ture, (3) illustrative examples taken from Tibetan works either pub- 

 lished or accessible in known libraries. In order to secure, as far as 

 possible, an exhaustive vocabulary and a copious supply of illustrations, 

 Tibetan literature has been ransacked. Recourse has been had, not 

 only to Tibetan- Sanskrit vocabularies like the Vyutpatti and the Maha- 

 vyutpatti, some of which had already been translated by Remusat into 

 Kicnch and by Csoma into English; and to Sanskrit works like the 

 Kalpalatd Kavyddarsa with their absolutely faithful Tibetan transla- 

 tions ; but also to a still larger treasury of literary and scientific wealth. 

 The Kahgywr, or collection of Buddhist Scriptures, comprises 10S vo- 

 lumes of about 500 leaves each. With the help of Lama Sherab Gyat- 

 sho, of the Goom Monastery near Darjeeling, 90 of these volumes have 

 been analysed for the purposes of the dictionary. The Tangynr, which 

 contains ±2o volumes, is a still richer storehouse of learning. It con- 

 tains the text of Piinini and other grammarians, treatises from the 

 Sanskrit on ethics, political science and political economy, and even 

 poems like the Meghad/uta — all transcribed literatim in the Tibetan 

 character, together with Tibetan translations and commentaries. The 

 T<imjiiur is in fact a cyclopaedia of Indo-Tibetan literature ; and the means 

 by v, Inch so many ancient Sanskrit works had been preserved in Tibet 



