1879.] H. L. St. Barbe — Pali Derivations in Burmese. 255 



common errors, and many others will be noticed among my examples. Nei- 

 ther Dr. Judson in his Dictionary nor Dr. Mason in his Pali Grammar can 

 be relied on, and I regret to state that the provincial government is among 

 the worst of offenders. Besides countenancing the most frenzied methods 

 of transliteration, it had the temerity to allow the Education Department 

 to publish a collection of popular Burmese texts with but the scantiest 

 acquaintance with the language. Pali MSS. were exclusively relied on, 

 the result being that it is almost impossible to conceive more orthogra- 

 phical errors being included within a smaller space. 



The process of engrafting Aryan vocables on a Mongoloid stock must 

 be more or less clumsy and inadequate. Gotama would scarcely understand 

 ten words together of his own doctrine as recited by a phungyi, and most 

 certainly could not make himself intelligible to a Burmese audience. The 

 character must always be a most unsatisfactory one to adopt for any new 

 dialect or language. In reducing Karen to writing, the American Mission- 

 aries had a grand opportunity of introducing the Latin alphabet (with the 

 necessary additions) which was just as intelligible to their converts as any 

 other, and which would have led easily to a general scheme of vernacular 

 transliteration. They were misguided enough, however, to employ Bur- 

 mese, the consequence being a series of appalling hieroglyphics incompre- 

 hensible to all but the contrivers. I hear that Kachyen is to undergo a 

 similar treatment. This is the language spoken by all the Singphos on 

 the borders of Burma and Assam and deserves a better fate than being" 



o 



interred within an ingenious (perhaps) but inscrutable cipher. May I be 

 permitted to record a feeble and, no doubt, ineffective protest ? Apart 

 however, from a want of orthoepical precision (to use Dr. Wilson's phrase) 

 there is a certain amount of method and uniformity observed in the appro- 

 priation of Pali terms. I have been able to frame a simple set of rules 

 which are tolerably comprehensive and which may be of some use in deal- 

 ing with future importations. It will be noted (1) that anuswara and 

 the nasals are freely interchangeable, (2) that visarga (which in Burmese 

 is only used as a grave accent after long vowels and nasals) is added with- 

 out any reference to the original. 



I. The word was imported whole. 



E. g. kala, sati, utu, gati, ussabha, ratha :, kula :, khana, upama. 



Often inflected or misspelt. 



E. g. asavo, upaddavo, pakate (pakati), chute (chuti), sare (siri),ytijana 

 (yojanami),hansa (hamsa), ansa (amsa), parikkhaya (parikkhara),* milak- 



* Cf. also Tir2ch.ch.han for Tirachchhana. There was evidently some false analogy 

 deduced from " viriya" another importation. 



