154 Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. [July, 



" I regret thai want of time prevented my sending in the paper on 

 technical terms which I promised. It is a subject with which I have 

 had to deal practically during the last twelve years, in connection with 

 schools and translations into the vernacular. 



" It is of importance to keep to-night to the point at issue, which I 

 conceive to he— not whether a scientific nomenclature derived from the 

 Sanskrit or Arabic should be constructed for those natives who intend 

 to study thoroughly the sciences of Botany, Minerology, Chemistry, 

 Optics, Anatomy ? — but whether the mass of the people, who can only 

 gain an elementary knowledge of popular science, should have to study 

 Latin and Greek terminology ? 



" The upper ten thousand who study English, will of course study 

 science in English, and with it they will adopt the terminology which 

 Englishmen use. But it is a very different question with the masses 

 of India, whose knowledge will and can be gained only through the 

 vernaculars, who have time only to study the elements of popular 

 science. 



" With respect to their case, and they comprise 170,000,000 in India, 

 I would make the following remarks : — 



" (1) Should we not so then endeavour to popularise science, by 

 communicating its truth in as plain language as possible, freeing the 

 approaches to its temple from the thorny jungle of hard words, and not 

 imitating the Schoolmen in making a jungle of terms ? Even in 

 England itself, is it not admitted by some of the leading Botanists 

 that their delightful science has been rendered distasteful to many, and 

 particularly to ladies, by the numerous strange terms which they must 

 first study ? 



" (2) In Bengal, with the exception of medical works, for which there 

 are special reasons, all the popular works in Bengali on Botany, Natural 

 Philosophy, Metaphysics, Astronomy, Zoology and Geometry, Algebra, 

 &c. derive their technical terms from the Sanskrit. 



" (3) As nine- tenths of the Bengali language is derived from the 

 Sanskrit, those terms are easily understood and keep a firm hold on the 

 memory. They generally define themselves thus, peduncle is rendered by 

 pushpa (landa, the flower stalk ; petal by pushpapatra, the flower leaf J 

 petiole by patra danda, the leaf stalk ; also bya host of others. I have seeij 

 myself in schools under my superintendence peasant boys learn those 

 terms with the greatest ease. 



