124 Report on Transliteration, [July, 



Report of the Sub-Commission for the Transcription of the 

 Sanskrit and Prakrit Alphabets. 



The Sub-Commission appointed to consider the transcription in 

 Roman characters of Sanskrit and Prakrit has done me the honour of 

 entrusting me with the duty of communicating to you its views. 



My first duty is to recall to you the terms in which the question 

 was placed before the Commission — who were not asked to elaborate 

 an Alphabet of a theoretical nature capable of completely satisfying all 

 linguistic demands. That would have been an arduous, and to tell the 

 truth, an impossible task, inasmuch as, to be really definite, the pro- 

 posals would have had to take into account not only scientific results 

 already achieved or supposed to be achieved, but those also which 

 without doubt, are held in reserve for the future. Tts mission was a 

 more modest one. In presence of the systems of transcription already 

 adopted, if I may so say in the rough — on one hand by the Royal Asiatic 

 Society and on the other by the Deutsche morgenlandische Gresellschaft — 

 but open to modifications of detail, the Commission was called upon to 

 express its opinion, and to attempt above all to arrive, by ceitain 

 eclectic corrections, at the unification of the two series. We have 

 neither the right nor the power to establish a universal uniformity, 

 which would be the real desideratum. 



For instance, I myself did not put forward any French proposition. 



The transcriptions in customary use in the various countries have 

 nevertheless, in a general way, shewn such an evident tendency to 

 approach one another that it hardly seems presumptuous in these days, 

 to predict a unanimous accord in the not distant future. It was then 

 desirable to decide those propositions which appeared, from their very 

 simplicity, to be of a nature to form by degrees, a rallying point for all. 



We were not able to lose sight of the essentially practical nature 

 of the task assigned to us : we were above all bound to pay special 

 attention to the presumed feeling of India, where the adoption of an 

 uniform transcription in proper names and for daily use is so urgently 

 necessary. 



Under these circumstances, the Commission could not fail to 

 incline towards pure and simple acquiescence in the propositions which 

 had been submitted to their consideration, in so far as these propositions 

 were concordant : and this principle met with the unanimous approval 

 of the Commission, except in one point. 



The two proposals agree in transcribing the r and I vowels by r and I 

 (dotted). 



Monsieur de Saussure, who is a high authority on these matters, 



