156 Proceedings of tlic Asiatic Society. [July, 



should never be allowed to interfere with the former, nor should the 

 Society encourage any system which would only produce mere pundits, 

 ignorant of the history of the world, ignorant of everything which 

 passed or passes elsewhere than among their own countrymen, whom no- 

 body would trust, and who were once detected in an extensive forgery 

 of whole passages interpolated in manuscript copies of a Sanscrit Law- 

 book, held as authority in the Sudder Court. The real mischief which 

 was done by the Anglicists, as they were called in 1835, was in the 

 discouragement of oriental learning in the civil and military servants 

 of Government. It is owing to the contempt of that learning in 

 high places, that young officers take so little interest in the cultivation 

 of oriental lanaguages, and that you no longer find your Colebrookes 

 and Wilkins raised up in the service by study in India." 



Returning to the specific resolution before the meeting, Mr. Banerjea 

 said he would heartily vote for it, if the Hon'ble and learned mover 

 would but add the words " and the classical languages from which 

 they are derived," that is to say, if the resolution ended thus : " Found 

 in the vernaculars and the classical languages from which they are 

 derived." He was opposed to the minting of new terms which no- 

 body understood, and which the speculative inventor might himself 

 forget afterwards, unless he daily exercised himself. The Society 

 must not forget the interests of Science in its zeal for Orientalism. 

 Where words are found in the vernaculars or their respective classics, 

 let them not be ignored, let them be preserved by all means. But 

 where the idea is quite novel, and there is no word in the vernaculars 

 or their classics, let the foreign term which introduced the idea be 

 at once adopted, without any murmur about purism. There are 

 practical examples which are replete with instruction in this respect, 

 and from which speculative purists may take a lesson. The records 

 of the lower courts of justice are by laio required to be kept in the 

 vernacular languages, and yet no one has attempted to translate such 

 words as " appeal," " issue," " decree." In the ordinary business of 

 life, men use terms that are practically useful, without regard to the 

 theories of any school, and no one has ever heard translations of such 

 words as " discount," " exchange," " cheques," and a host of other 

 business terms. The word " map," has been translated by man-chitra, 

 but it existsonly on paper: it is never uttered unless by a school-boy 

 under compulsion, and, though it has been on paper for many years 



