APPENDIX V 

 ADDITIONAL NOTES ON LOAN-WORDS IN TIBETAN 



In my "Loan- Words in Tibetan" (Toung Pao, 1916, pp. 403-552) 

 I was obliged to deal succinctly with some of the problems which are 

 discussed at greater 1 ength in this volume. The brief notes given there 

 on saffron, cummin, almond, alfalfa, coriander, etc., are now super- 

 seded by the contributions here inserted. A detailed history of Guinea 

 pepper (No. 237) is now ready in manuscript, and will appear as a chapter 

 in my "History of the Cultivated Plants of America." The numbers 

 of the following additions refer to those of the former article. 



Note the termination -e in the loan-words derived from the Indian 

 vernaculars: bram-ze, neu-le, ma-he, sen-ge, ban-de, bhan-ge. This -e 

 appears to be identical with the nominative -e of Magadhi. 



49. ga-bur, camphor. Sir GEORGE A. GRIERSON (see below) observes, 

 "The softening of initial k to g is, I think, certainly not Indian." The 

 Tibetan form has always been a mystery to me : it is not only the initial 

 g, but also the labial sonant b, which are striking as compared with the 

 surds in Skr. karpura. As is well known, this word has migrated west- 

 ward, the initial k being retained everywhere: Persian-Arabic kdfur 

 (GARCIA: capur and cafur), Spanish alcanfor (ACOSTA: canfora). These 

 forms share the loss of the medial r with Tibetan. This phenomenon 

 pre-existed in Indian; for in Hindustani we have kapur, in Singhalese 

 kapuru, in Javanese and Malayan kdpur. The Mongols have adopted 

 from the Tibetans the same word as gabur; but, according to KOVALEV- 

 SKI (p. 2431), there is also a Tibeto-Mongol spelling gad-pu-ra: this 

 can only be a transcription of the Chinese type PS ^ H kie-pu-lo, 

 anciently *g'ia5-bu-la, based on an Indian original *garpura, or 

 *garbura. Tibetan ga-bur, of course, cannot be based on the Chinese 

 form; but the latter doubtless demonstrates that, within the sphere of 

 Indian speech, there must have been a dialectic variant of the word with 

 initial sonant. 



54. The Pol. D. (27, p. 31) gives naliSam (printed aliSam) as a 

 Mongol word; assuredly it is not Tibetan. The corresponding Manchu 

 word is ocalxdri. 



58. Regarding Sin-kun, see above, p. 362. 



60. With respect to the Chinese transcription su-ki-mi-lo-si, PELLIOT 

 (Toung Pao, 1912, p. 455) had pointed out that the last element si 



591 



