12 Dr. L. A. Waddell — On the Eev. A. Sandherg^s note [Jan. 



The Secretary read the following note by Dr. L. A. Waddell, on 

 the Rev. A. Sandberg's note to Mr. Gait's paper on Ahom coins. 



The Secretary of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. 



* 



To 



Sir, 



I have just received the June number of the Proceedings of 

 the Society and find that it contains a note under the above heading 

 by Mr. Sand berg dealing with what he is pleased to consider certain 

 ' inaccuracies ' of mine, and I take the earliest opportunity of correcting 

 its misapprehensions and mistatements. 



It is amusing to see sach a peaceable person as myself accused of 

 ' much maligning Hue ' and of ' accusing him of errors,' especially as 

 I have never lost an opportunity of expressing ray admiration for Hue's 

 marvellous accuracy of observation ; and few, indeed, have contributed 

 more than I have done towards rehabilitating Hue's reputation for 

 veracity. And certainly no hostile spirit to Hue's work was expressed 

 or implied by me in my reply to the editor's request to revise the spell- 

 ing of the names in Hue's list in accordance, if possible, with the system 

 adopted by the Society. A glance at Hue's Tibetan names at once 

 showed that his list stood much in need of revision. In fact the majority 

 of his names were mispelt almost beyond recognition, thus Cheng for 

 Shirj, Dchak for Chag and Tchon for Chhu — for Hue's weakest point was 

 the comparatively unimportant one of spelling. 



As the editor was also good enough to ask me to test if possible, 

 Hue's spelling of the Mongolian words, I obtained the list in question 

 from the learned Mongolian Lama of the Bhotiya School at Darjiling 

 who is Babu Sarat Chandra Das' chief source of inspiration on Tibetan 

 matters ; and had my accompanying note on its source and interpreta- 

 tion been also published, all ambiguity would liave been saved. 



In that note, of which unfortunately I kept no copy, I am under 

 the impression that I clearly stated, firstly, that the Mongolian 

 words were written down for me in Tibetan characters by the scholarly 

 Mongol Lama Sherap Gryatsho, who is thoroughly proficient in Tibetan ; 

 and secondly, that all I had done was to transliterate these words into 

 Roman characters by a slight modification of the system of Jaeschke, 

 the authority on Tibetan orthography ; ^ and thirdly, that the words 

 were pronounced according to the Tibetan style. 



I could not compare the words with the forms found in the diction- 

 aries of European lexicographers as I had at that time no library at 



1 The system adopted is almost identical with that used by the Society except 

 that the h in aspirates is expressed by a comma. 



