JOUBNAL 



ASIATIC SOCIETY. 



No. IV. 1864. 



On the application of the Characters of the Boman Alphabet to 

 Oriental Languages —By Oapt. W. Nassau Lees. 



I cannot call the paper I am about to read to you this Evening 

 a " scientific paper," and perhaps I owe this meeting some apology 

 for reading it within these walls: but the name of our illustrious, 

 founder is so often associated with the question which I have discuss- 

 ed, and the subject is so intimately connected with the labours of such 

 distinguished members of our Society as James Prinsep, II H. Wil- 

 son, E. Thomas, E. C. Bayiey, General Cunningham, Babu Bajendra 

 Lall Mitra &c, that I have thought it would not prove wholly 

 uninteresting to you. 



The substitution of the Roman for Oriental alphabets is a question 

 that about some thirty years ago occupied the attention of educa- 

 tionists and others in India. It did not make much progress at first, 

 nor find favour outside missionary circles ; and for a long time the 

 subject would seem to have slumbered. Within the past few years, 

 however, it has occupied the attention of certain distinguished mem- 

 bers of the German school of Orientalists; Sanskrit books have been 

 printed in it ; and Dr. Sprenger, an eminent Arabic scholar, well 

 known in India, has written two able and interesting articles in the 

 Augsburgh Gazette, which within the last few weeks have been re- 

 published in Calcutta, advocating the change, as one necessary to 

 enable the languages of the East to become the vehicles of conveying 

 western ideas to the people of this country. As long as the discus- 



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