270 Translation of a Tibetan Fragment. [July, 



and Tibetan Dictionary in the Royal Library. The letter was pub- 

 lished in the Transactions of the Academy of St. Petersburgh, and the 

 text and translation reprinted by Bayer in his Museum Sinicum. Miiller 

 in his Commentatio de Scriptis Tanguticis in Siberia repertis — Petro- 

 poli, 1747, criticised Fourmont's translation, and gave a new one of the 

 first lines, prepared with the double aid of a Tangutan priest, or Gelong, 

 who rendered it into Mongol, and a Mongol student of the Imperial 

 College, who interpreted that version to Miller. The original was also 

 engraved in the Transactions of the Leipsic Academy. Itwas reprinted 

 with correciions and additions and a new translation by Giorgi in his 

 Alphabetum Tibetanum, and has recently been made the subject of 

 animadversion by Mons. Remusat, in his Recherches sur les Langues 

 Tartares. Of the previous performances, M. Remusat thus speaks : 

 a On avoit d'abord admire la profonde erudition qui avoit permis a 

 Fourmont de reconnoitre seulement la langue dans laquelle le volume 

 etoit ecrit : on a vante depuis celle de Giorgi, qui avoit rectifie et le texte 

 et la traduction. Je ne sais comment on peut traduire ou corriger un 

 texte qu'on n'est pas meme capable de lire. II n'y avoit rien d'admirer 

 dans tout cela : interpretes et commentateurs, panegyristes et critiques 

 tous etoient presque egalement hors d'etat, je ne dis pas d'entendre une 

 ligne, mais d'epeler une syllabe du passage sur lequel ils disertoient. 



The consequence was what might have been expected, and the at- 

 tempts at translation and correction were most ludicrously erroneous. 

 The greatest liberties possible were taken with the words, and letters 

 were inserted or omitted at pleasure, in order to make them approxi- 

 mate to those terms which appeared most like them in the imperfect 

 dictionaries possessed by the translators. After all, the translation was 

 not only unlike the original, but unlike common sense ; and as was remar- 

 ked of Fourmont's version by the President de Brosses, the Latin was 

 quite as unintelligible as the Tangutan. The following specimens of the 

 first lines of the different versions will show that the remark was applica- 

 ble to all as well as to the first. 



Fonrmonfs Translation. 

 " Attrita fortitudine quisnam brevis equus frigoris vita destruatur 

 (pro) spiritu inest putredo. Contritus oratne ? hoc est irrisio omnes 

 vident : orat avis contrita ? morbida ? non scit (non potest amplius) os 

 aperire legis (ratiocinationis)." 



This must have puzzled the Czar and his academy quite as much as 

 the original ; and as Remusat observes, the Latin was of marvellous 

 use to the translator. Fourmont would not have dared to write a 

 syllable of such nonsense in French. 



