1903.] Dr..G. A. Grierson— A Prosthetic gin an Indo- Aryan Language. 125 



have been useful if an appendix shewing such words as are found in that 

 Dictionary which|do not appear in Rai Sarat Chandra Das's had been added. 



In point of new matter Rai Sarat Chandra Das's Dictionary contains 

 much more than Father Desgodins.' The chief difference between them 

 is that Rai Sarat Chandra Das's is primarily a Dictionary of the Literary 

 Language and contains a vast amount of research authorities, and exam- 

 ples from Tibetan writers. It also contains a number of new words of 

 the current colloquial language but unfortunately no distinguishing 

 mark has been made to shew which these are. A feature of the Diction- 

 ary is also the Sanskrit synonyms which have been compiled by Pandit 

 Satis Chandra Acharjya. In the case of Desgodins' Dictionary there are 

 also a number of new words, and these are mainly colloquial words, both 

 of theEastern dialects and of the Central language and Southern dialects. 

 The collection of materials for this Dictionary was commenced by M. 

 Renon, the founder of the French Chinese-Tibetan Mission in 1852, 

 and the missionaries have been collecting and collating material ever 

 since. This accounts for the number of new words probably those in use 

 in the Eastern dialects which the Dictionary contains. 



It is a pity that these new words could not have been shewn as an 

 appendix in Rai Sarat Chandra Das's Dictionary. The paper gives a 

 brief review of the history of the Tibetan Literary Language, and points 

 out that the Literary language differs so entirely from the spoken lan- 

 guage that it is practically unintelligible to the modern Tibetan, more so 

 than the English of Chaucer would be to the modern Londoner, and that 

 consequently what is now required is a Standard Dictionary of Current 

 and Colloquial Tibetan. 



Part II considers the lines on which such a Dictionary should be 

 compiled. 



Pandit Satis Chandra Acharjya said that the suggestion that a 

 list shewing the words to be found in Desgodins that do not occur in 

 Rai Sarat Chandra Das's Dictionary, was a good one, and that such 

 a list could still be made and published in connection with the Appendix 

 to the Dictionary of Buddhist terms which he was engaged in preparing. 



Rev. Fr. E. Francotte said that it had been Father Desgodins intention 

 to have published his Dictionary in English as well as Latin and French, 

 as making it more generally useful, but this had not been carried out. 



4. An Instance of a Prosthetic g in an Indo-Aryan Language. — By G. A. 

 Grierson, CLE., Ph.D., D. Litt., I.C.S. 



Certain of the Romance languages exhibit a tendency to prefix the 

 letter g to words originally beginning with u or v. Thus,— 



Latin, vado ; Italian, guado ; Provencal, gud ; French, gud. 



