1864.] Proceedings of tie Asiatic Society. 475 



use. Those modifications were exceedingly difficult to write and 

 read. As regards the most common character, the Hindi, he must 

 say, that he had known many people who wrote that character, but 

 very few who could read their own writing, and scarcely any who 

 could read any one else's writing. Bengali might be better, but, 

 coming as he did from a part of the country where the Persian charac- 

 ter was used in official business, to one where the Bengali character 

 was used, he could not but be struck with the very great inferiority 

 of the latter for practical purposes, being as it was, so very slow to 

 write and so little rapid or smooth to read. Those defects seemed to 

 affect all the modifications of the Nagri commonly used,, and he 

 doubted whether they could be got over. 



Then as respects the Eoman character, the remarks of the learned 

 gentleman suggested to him (Mr. C.) what had occurred to himself, 

 viz., that in the discussion on this subject, sufficient place had hardly 

 been given to the very important question, whether in fact this 

 Eoman character is really good in a phonetic point of view • whether 

 it has phonetic qualities of that catholic stamp which would render 

 it fit for universal use. Being as he had said not scientific, he could 

 not venture an opinion on this point, but as a practical man he could 

 not help mentioning that doubts had occurred to him, from what ha 

 had seen of the use of the Eoman Alphabet, when applied to two 

 languages foreign to it. One of these was the English. No w they 

 well knew that no language in the world was written in a less 

 phonetic way ; in none was there such a discrepancy between the 

 writing and pronunciation, so much variety and uncertainty in the use 

 of the same letters, and so arbitrary an attribution of various sounds 

 to those letters. He could not but fear that great part of this 

 difficulty might be due to the application of a foreign Latin Alphabet 

 to a Teutonic dialect to which it was unsuited. Again, we had seen 

 a partial application of the Eoman character to the ordinary vernacular 

 Hindustani of this country. And he confessed that such attempts as 

 he had seen, appeared formidable and horrible to the eye, and he never 

 could make head or tail of them. The immense variety of spelling 

 when Eoman letters are applied to Indian words, also seemed to 

 indicate difficulty. A gentleman had two or three years ago pub- 

 lished a guide book to India, in which for the expression of Indian 

 names and terms, he used the Eoman alphabet m what he considered 



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