130 Proceedings of the -Asiatic Society. [June 



or honors they may confer, or the scientific teiminology they may 

 adopt, rather than unnecessarily import terms from European lands, 

 which last appears to me to be as unsuitable here as would be the 

 modes of dress of other nations, if substituted for the more graceful 

 garments of your own." Mr. Campbell went on— " This is the pas- 

 sage from which I particularly dissent. It seems to me that differ- 

 ence of language is in itself an evil, that if we cannot soon have a 

 lingua franca common to all, we should at least study rather to ap- 

 proximate than to draw farther apart. It is, I think, a great advan- 

 tage of the vernacular languages of India, that they have a singular 

 facility for adopting and incorporating useful foreign words. Already 

 many English words have been incorporated in the language of the 

 country. It used to be said that if our rule ceased, we should leave 

 nothing behind us but empty bottles. We should now leave many 

 material monuments. But more than that, I believe that we should 

 also leave in the language distinct traces of our presence. Well, in 

 respect of scientific terminology, of all things, uniformity of nomencla- 

 ture is the greatest possible object, and it appears to me that when- 

 ever we would introduce into the vernacular languages a scientific 

 term not before known to those languages, it is infinitely more con- 

 venient to import the English or European term, than to invent some 

 horrible new name, just as strange to natives, and quite unintelligible 

 to Europeans. When a word existing in the vernacular is well known, 

 and correctly expresses the required meaning, by all means retain it : 

 but when there is no such word, to coin one by the use of complex 

 Sanscrit compounds and Arabic derivatives, seems to me to be an 

 affectation of Oriental purism at the expense of practical utility, and 

 one, I may add, attended with no grace whatever, but with the most 

 crack-jaw results." 



Major Lees said that at this late hour of the evening he was unwill- 

 ing to prolong the discussion, and that as he had opened it, perhaps he 

 might be permitted also to close it. It had been his desire, as ho 

 before said, to remove the discussion altogether from the arena of 

 educational policy, for reasons before stated, and because he was 

 aware that, as regards the educational question, there was a good deal 

 of party feeling ; but there ought not to be, and there could not be 

 any party iecling regarding this question from the stand-point from 



