434 General Meeting of the Asiatic Society of Paris. [No. 125. 



In names so well known as those just quoted, there can hardly arise 

 errors from these discrepancies in orthography ; but in names of obscure 

 men and places, the confusion arising from it, may be easily imagined. 

 I shall give an example. Mr. J. Prinsep quotes an official and modern 

 map of the Duab, where the road from Akbarpore to Cawnpore, a road 

 very much frequented, is doubly entered, because the topographic 

 bureau of Calcutta had found two routes with names, written in such 

 different ways, that their identity not being recognised, they were 

 believed to refer to parallel routes. 31 



It would perhaps have been better never to have deviated from the 

 old system, however imperfect it was, as the thing of real importance is 

 uniformity. But *now it is too late to retrace our steps ; the want of 

 exactness having once been perceived, we must endeavour to supply it, 

 hoping the introduction of a system, infinitely superior to the others, 

 will re-establish that unity from which we are so far at present. 



It is, meanwhile, I hope, not without use to classify the difficulties 

 which such a system offers, and the attempts which have been made to 

 remove them. These difficulties, it appears to me, are the following : — 



1. Oriental alphabets have a much greater number of letters than 

 ours. 



2. Orientals do not always pronounce according to the rules of 

 orthography. 



3. They disagree in the pronunciation of the same letter in every 

 country. 



4. Europeans disagree in the pronunciation of the same letters. 



1. Oriental alphabets have a much greater number of letters than 

 ours. This especially has application to the Arabian and Indian 

 alphabets. The means to obviate these difficulties, may be reduced to 

 three classes. 



a. The attempt has been made to enrich the Latin alphabet with some 

 new characters. Thus has Meninski introduced the Arabian Ain ; 

 Volney modified the form of some Roman characters ; Mr. Gilchrist 

 invented a short u, and other learned men at a still later period used 

 some Persian and Greek characters in their systems of rendering. 



31. See the Map in "The application of the Roman Alphabet to all the Oriental 

 Languages." Serampore, 1834, in 8vo. 



