186 On the Transliteration of Indian Alphabets. [No. 2, 



On the Transliteration of Indian Alphabets in the Roman Character. 

 —By F. S. Growse, M. A. Oxon, B. C. S. 



[Eeceived 5th January, 1867.] 



The question of transliteration has been so fully discussed at recent 

 meetings of this Society, that a paper which attempted to revive the 

 subject would probably meet with scant consideration. I am also 

 myself of opinion that the theory has been discussed more than 

 enough, and only wish on the present occasion to state briefly a plain 

 matter of fact, and make a practical suggestion. 



It is impossible for any one, however imbued with phonetic 

 prejudices, to deny that all European philologists and oriental 

 scholars have, by mutual consent, adopted a uniform system of re- 

 presenting Indian alphabets in Roman characters, which varies only 

 in some few and unimportant particulars. As to the vowels, there is 

 at the present day no dispute at all ; for that intensely insular 

 peculiarity of denoting the simple sounds of * and u by the awkward 

 combinations of double e and double o is now quite obsolete in the 

 literary world. I have not seen any recent oriental work from the 

 French press, and therefore cannot tell whether their practice of 

 representing u by ou has been abandoned or not ; but this at all events 

 is a feature which is not likely to be imitated by English writers. 

 As to the consonants, there are some few, but very few, points which 

 are still left open : thus the palatal sibilant is generally denoted in 

 England by s with a stroke over or dot below it, while continental 

 scholars prefer the symbol c ; again the compound which English 

 scholars represent by ksh is on the continent represented occasionally 

 by x, more frequently by csch, which latter is not likely to find many 

 advocates out of Germany. Thus too in the Persian alphabet, the 

 Arabic kdf is sometimes denoted by q, but more usually by h with a 

 dot under it ; and the final consonant he is sometimes expressed by the 

 vowel a alone, sometimes by ah. But it is really unnecessary for us to 

 regard these minor discrepancies, since they do not appear in what 

 may be called our natural authorities. For I suppose it will be ad- 

 mitted that Forbes's is the standard dictionary for modern Hindu- 

 stani ; while the last complete Sanskrit dictionary is Prof. Benfey's, 

 published in London during the year 1866, and the greatest work 

 ever yet undertaken for the elucidation of that language is the 



