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



as an illustration of our special linguistic clumsiness, as contrasted 

 with Russian tact, and pointing out the considerable advantage which 

 they thus enjoyed over us in impressing the oriental imagination. 

 For my own part, I am quite unable to see any valid reason why the 

 well-known and dignified word pMshdh should not be used, at least 

 on all ordinary occasions, where no reference is made to the sex of the 

 sovereign, as in the superscripture of service letters, or the wording of 

 legal documents. 



As change of circumstances, or the development of European ideas, 

 involves an occasional necessity for enlarging the vernacular nomen- 

 clature, I would suggest that this coinage of words, hitherto charac- 

 terised by the most signal failures, should be transferred from the 

 Government mint to the care of the Asiatic Society, and that a 

 Philological Committee should be allowed to express their opinion 

 before any new issue was definitely stamped and authoritatively 

 circulated. The last new word that has been forced down the throats 

 of the people is numdish-gah, the principal result at present of the 

 fashionable exhibition epidemic. It is a compound, for which it would 

 be perfectly useless to look in any Hindustani Dictionary, and in fact 

 has never had any existence in the country. As yet its use is 

 exclusively confined to the Munshi class, who, in order to define its 

 meaning, invariably prefix the word mela, and I believe consider it 

 only the Government synonym for a tamdsha of any kind, in the 

 same way as sirika is the Government expression for what every one 

 in his senses calls chori. Thus, during the grand Darbar at Agra, I 

 had petitions from mukhtdrs, explaining their clients' absence on the 

 ground that they had gone to the " Agra numaish-gah." With the 

 people at large the word meld appears to answer every necessary 

 purpose ; or if greater precision is desired, sarhdri meld is employed. 

 And although some more adequate expression might no doubt be 

 evolved by a due exercise of the critical faculty, I consider this 

 indigenous product is at all events better than the official exotic, 

 Several other subjects suggest themselves for animadversion, but my 

 remarks have extended far beyond the limit I originally intended, and 

 some of the points already noticed may appear too minute to deserve 

 serious attention. Yet, if philology is worth studying at all, it is 

 certainly worth while to recognize its rules in practice. 



