162 Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. [July, 



up new difficulties, or increasing the difficulties which already beset 

 the acquirement of almost all sciences. To pass any resolution which 

 would exclude from the Vernaculars the great body of technical 

 terms which already exist in Sanscrit and Arabic, in theology, 

 law, logic, mental and moral philosophy, philology, mathematics, 

 astronomy, &c, would come with a very bad grace from this Society. 

 He had brought with him a weighty tome, which lay on the table 

 before him. It was nearly a foot thick. It was called the Kashfal- 

 Zonoon, and was a dictionary of the technical terms used in the 

 sciences of the Moslims. This book was published by this Society 

 a few years ago, at a cost of some Us. 7000 or Us. 8000, and was 

 edited under the superintendence of Dr. Sprenger and himself, and if 

 this resolution was passed in its present form, it would be tantamount 

 to saying that that sum of the Society's money had been wasted, 

 or, in other words, would be to pass a vote of censure on ourselves. 

 " We have here, it may readily be understood, a great mass of technical 

 terms, and there are very many more in other dictionaries, which 

 have been published elsewhere." To reject all these terms ; or, as 

 one half of them no doubt are to be found in some translations which 

 have already been made, to take one half and to reject the other half, 

 would doubtless not be a very wise thing to do. Indeed, to reject 

 any terms which, being accurate and, as existing in a cognate 

 language, more easily and more generally understood, can be more 

 readily incorporated with the language into which the translation is 

 made, would, in his opinion, be a very foolish thing. And to this latter 

 point considerable attention must be paid, as the genius of languages 

 differs materially. Of those we have to deal with, in this part of India, 

 there are two great divisions ; one which delights in compounds, the 

 other which abhors them. The two cannot be said to be equally 

 well adapted for receiving or absorbing, as a portion of the language, 

 new terms derived from a foreign source. Again in the West, the 

 Roman alphabet is in universal use. Here we have languages with 

 very different alphabets, some having more, and some having fewer 

 letters. Thus the Arabic language has not the letter p ; and in 

 different countries where that language is spoken, the letter j is 

 pronounced as J, G & h. Few Asiatics can pronounce foreign words 

 beginning with two consonants, though the sounds may not be un- 



