1866.] Proceedings of the Asiatic Society^ 143 



that the address tends very much to the ideas of the Orientalist party, 

 and that we sail very near the wind in thanking Sir Donald Macleod 

 for it, without pledging ourselves to that side of the question. But 

 having done so, and our advice having been asked, I think we may 

 well go on to say whether we do or do not concur in certain Ultra- 

 Orientalist advice on a subject, falling, as I conceive, very much within 

 our province. 



" On the merits of my proposition, it seems to me that in scientific 

 terminology, of all things, uniformity of nomenclature is most desirable. 

 Ideas wholly new to India must be represented by words new to 

 India. But the vernacular languages have a singular genius for 

 adaptation, and the people are most ready to adopt, and do daily 

 adopt, the convenient terms which we offer to them, together with 

 our new ideas. Is it not then better to permit them to do so, than 

 to say ' No, don't condescend to borrow from us, don't defile your 

 language with our barbarous words, go to Sanscrit and Arabic, and 

 thence concoct compounds and abstruse derivatives, and affix a mean- 

 ing to them which, if people do not understand, they may be made to 

 understand ?' It seems to me that such advice comes less becomingly 

 from us English than from any people under the sun. For what is 

 our own language, of which we are now so proud, but the most 

 polyglot in the world? How have we raised it from a savage jargon 

 to one of the most copious, useful and practical of languages, but by 

 talcing all the higher words from foreign languages, wherever we 

 have found them good and suitable ? There are some excellent obser- 

 vations on this subject in a paper published by the Society in their 

 Journal since the last meeting, a paper on the Hindustanee by Mr. J. 

 Beanies. As he says, " English, by ready borrowing and making good 

 use of its borrowed stores, has raised itself from, an obscure low 

 German Patois to the most extensively used medium of communica- 

 tion between distant countries." And he draws a capital comparison 

 between English which has thus freely borrowed, and German which 

 has attempted ta progress by combinations of indigenous words, 

 rather than by borrowing. He shows us that while English, abound- 

 ing in words which, though of foreign extraction, are now part of the 

 language, and are concise, clear and easy, uses them with facility and 

 effect, German has become entangled in a mass of horrible long 



