1895.] Beport on Transliteration. 125 



thinks til at he cannot accept this notation, and he has been kind 

 enough to reduce his reservations to writing in the following terms : — • 



" It is desirable, in the interests of Indo-European linguistic science, 

 and quite apart from all personal conceptions of the question, that the 

 notation r, I should be preferred to the notation ?• I for this reason, 

 that in the analysis of every Indo-European language Sanskrit not 

 excepted, the vowels m n hold a position in all respects equivalent to 

 that of the vowels r I ; consequently, if we adopt r I, we compel 

 linguists to write m w, and as a further consequence there arises a 

 confusion between ;« and certain notations of anus vara — and between 

 n and the cerebral consonant «." 



The Sub-Commission is compelled to recognize the force of this 

 argument which is, moreover, all the stronger from the fact that 

 MM. Biihler and Windisch bear testimony that the German Oriental 

 Society had originally of its own accord inserted in its programme the 

 transcription r and I, with a circle. If in spite of this, the Sub-Com- 

 mission has not thought fit to propose the adoption of this amendment, 

 its action is due to considerations of a purely practical nature. Tlie 

 German Committee only decided upon the transcription r and I (with 

 a dot) after due discussion, and a special vote. 



Would it then be wise to reopen the debate upon a question of 

 detail upon which the German Committee finally accepted without 

 previous agreement, the English proposals ? Would not this be to 

 endanger at the very outset, an undertaking the success of which is so 

 eagerly desired ? On the other hand, it seems essential to the really 

 wide and general spread of the system, that it should as far as possible, 

 offer to the eyes even of the uninitiated, only such symbols as will 

 neither grate against their sensibilities nor startle them — signs with 

 which they are sufficiently familiar from their habitual use in other 

 directions in the current alphabet. 



It is moreover only too evident that the transcription in which 

 we attempt to come to an understanding, would not satisfy the 

 demands of linguistic science, in themselves perfectly legitimate at 

 least without many other retouchings which must, however, be given up 

 since the only excuse for introducing them would condemn the attempt 

 beforehand to an annoying barrenness of results. I pass on to the points 

 very few in number, in which we have been obliged to exercise a choice, 

 owing to the two systems not agreeing. No sign for the long I vowels 

 has been fixed upon by the German Oriental Society. The notation pro- 

 posed by the London Society, by meams of I with two dots underneath 

 it, appears to recommend itself. Typographic exigencies do not permit of 

 the letter I being surmounted by the sign of the long accent. This lack 



