Sitpplevient to " A^alure,'' October 19, 1905 



SUPPLEMENT TO "NATURE." 



.1 TIBET.IX DICTIOSARY. 

 A Tibctan-Englisli Dictionary until Sanskrit 

 Synonyms. By Sarat Chnndra Das. Revised and 

 edited by G. Sandberg^, B..\., and .\. \\". Heyde. 

 Pp. xxxiv+1353. (Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat 

 Press, 1902.) 



THE chief attractiiin whicli the Tibetan lanniiagf 

 possesses fur the uc^trrii reader is that it is 

 tlie Latin of Central .\^ia, and preserves in its bulky 

 literature the old-world lore and vestiges of early 

 culture which the priestly schoolmen of Tibet believed 

 to he all that was worth knowing, not only about 

 their own country, but of the outside world, and more 

 especially ancient India, regarding which so little 

 is known to us. For Tibet, upon receiving its 

 Buddhism from India in the seventh century A.D., 

 adopted at the same time the Indian characters for 

 the purpose of reducing its hitherto unwritten Mon- 

 golian language into writing, and forthwith translated 

 into its new vernacular the Indian Buddhist scriptures 

 and other works, the originals of which were after- 

 wards destroyed by the fanatical Mohamiiiedan 

 invaders on the expulsion of Buddhism from India in 

 the twelfth century a.o. From these scripts, thus 

 preserved in their Tibetan translations, much invalu- 

 able information has already been gleaned by Euro- 

 pean scholars ; but owing to a habit of the learned 

 monks to translate most of the proper names, of 

 ])ersons, places, and things, root by root etymo- 

 logicallv into the Tibetan, it so happens that without 

 a copious Tibeto-Sanskrit lexicon to re-convert these 

 translated names into their recognisable Indian 

 equivalents, a great deal of the mass of information 

 locked up in the Tibetan volumes, now accumulating 

 in our national libraries, remains to some extent 

 sealed. 



This is what the present dictionary claims to 

 facilitate to a greater extent than has been done by 

 the lexicons of the pioneer Csoma, the Hungarian, the 

 ^cientificallv equipped Moravian missionary, Jiischke, 

 ,ind Pere Desgodins. It has been compiled by Babu 

 .Sarat Das from vernacular dictionaries brought by 

 him from Tibet, when he visited that country some 

 years ago. His revisers complain that they found 

 " the material had been put together in somewhat 

 heterogeneous fashion hardly systematic enough for 

 a dictionary," so that they had to take " the greatest 

 freedom in correcting or rejecting the matter set 

 forth in the work." This task of correction has 

 obviouslv not been carried far enough, for in its pub- 

 lished form this ponderous volume still retains serious 

 shortcomings in the elementary requirements of a 

 dictionarv. The definitions offered are too often want- 

 ing in accuracv to be trusted, or too wanting' in 

 necessary details and useful references to be very 

 helpful. The Sanskrit sxnonyms are not so numerous 

 as thev might have been, and their definitions are 

 usually made up of indiscriminate extracts from the 

 Sanskrit-English dictionaries of English lexico- 

 NO. 1877, VOL. 72] 



graphers, reproduced often withtiut acknowledgment 

 ;md with strange confusion and errors. 



For instance, to refer to some of the botanical 

 matters in the first few pages, under " Kakola," an 

 aromatic spice, the author has taken the latter part of 

 his definition from Wilson's dictionary without 

 .-icknowledgnient, and included with it part of the 

 definition of. the next following word; he also states 

 that cardamom is " the fruit of Coccidns indiciis," 

 and mistakes Erandi or cubcb pepper for Erand, or 

 the castor-oil plant. .\g,iin, " Kapi " is given in 

 trustworthv Tibetan lexicons as the Sanskrit equi- 

 valent of " Ka/iittha," not " Ka&ittha " as stated by 

 the Babu. and secondarilv " Pithanaja," which is 

 omitted bv him. The primary meaning, therefore, is 

 the wood-apple tree (Feronia elepliantum) and not 

 " resin of the juniper plant " as given by him. .As 

 secondarv meanings he inserts five lines taken without 

 acknowledgment from \\'ilson, and in so doing mis- 

 spells each of the three botanical names, and alters 

 " waved-leaf fig tree " into the nonsensical " mane- 

 fig tree." In the next word, also, both the Sanskrit 

 and botanical terms, taken unacknowledged from 

 Wilson, are misspelt. 



-Again, " Chu-sing kar-po," or "the white water- 

 tree," is absurdly stated by him to be Aconitum jcrox. 

 which, however, is black rather than white, and never 

 called a " tree " bv the Tibetans, to whom it is 

 famili.ar. The vernacular lexicon, however, gives for 

 " water-tree " the Sanskrit " Kadali," or " water- 

 wood," which is the appropriate name of the watery 

 plantain tree, and it gives the further synonym 

 " Mochalca," or the " horse-radish-tree," which the 

 Babu omits. Of this tree, the " Sajina " of Indian 

 cooks, there are two varieties, namely, a red and a 

 white kind, the latter of which is the one that has 

 been wronglv identified with the deadly aconite by 

 our compiler. Still .-mother s\nonym for this word, 

 ■'Nalam," a reed or "stalked water-plant," is in- 

 correctly given as " the ratan " (sic); and the author 

 frequently confuses can? with bamboo. 



Not infrequently the precise shade of meaning is 

 missed; thus Rig-dsin, which literally and invariably 

 means " a holder of knowledge " or sage, is defined 

 bv him as " comprehension of a science (sic) with 

 ease"; and seldom is any hint given of the useful 

 literal meaning of such namo as the common word 

 for small-pox, which is euphemistically called " God's 

 granules " in deference to the malignant disease 

 spirit. 



.As instances of common words altogether omitted 

 are La-lis, the respectful form of "yes," which after 

 the mystic " Om " formula is perhaps the word most 

 frequently uttered in Tibet ; Choma, the common 

 Potentilla, the root of which is eaten as a food ; pin- 

 kytir-ma. the kestrel, being onomatopoetlc for its call; 

 the word for " bribe," which is ethicallv interesting 

 as meaning literally " a secret push." 



His orthography disregards some of the accepted 

 rule's of scientific philologists, so as to give 

 " Daipung " for the great monastery of Dapung, 

 although no i occurs either in the vernacular spelling 

 or pronunciation. We miss, too, in a dictionary of 

 this size, which owing largely to clumsier type is 



