1866.] Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. 163 



known in their own language, and these distinctions and differences 

 of sounds and letters could be multiplied almost ad infinitum. It is 

 thus often that true sounds are lost, especially when words are 

 transliterated back into the original language, or any other foreign 

 language. The Arabs, as before mentioned, translated most of the 

 Greek technical terms where they were translatable, but they retained, 

 of course, proper names. Some of these latter might be recognized 

 if rendered into Greek or Roman letters, as Sokrdt for Socrates, 

 Fisdgaroos, for Pythagoras, Aristotilis for Aristotle ; but others, such 

 as Jalinoos for Galen, would certainly become Jolly Nose in English, 

 and Bukrdt for Hippocrates, might with equal probability become 

 Big Rat. " I trust then that from these hurried and unprepared re- 

 marks, I have made it clear that there are difficulties on either side 

 of this proposition, and that this meeting will see that they will best 

 consult the interest of science by letting it alone." 



Mr. Dall favoured the passage of the resolution, provided the phrase 

 " technical terms" be used in its stricter sense. At least there was a 

 class of terms applied to recent facts and the discoveries of modern 

 science, for which he conceived that no corresponding term could be 

 found, even in the bulky quarto of Arabic and Sanscrit terms now on 

 the table. He doubted if his friend Major Lees would find there any 

 term answering to the chemical elements of bodies as at present 

 recognized. As new facts and combinations occurred, or resolutions of 

 bodies, once held to be simples, into yet simpler substances were accom- 

 plished, names were selected for them which partook of the nature of 

 proper names of persons, and were, like our own names, untranslateable. 

 Either an entirely new name must be invented, other than that which 

 had obtained general acceptance among scientific men, — or the term 

 must be transliterated. It could not be translated. 



Mr. Blochmann read the following remarks : — 



" I agree entirely with the last remark made by Major Lees, that 

 the record of the opinions of the members of this Society regarding 

 the resolution before us, will remain inoperative. The chief argument 

 against a Sanscrit and an Arabic terminology has been already clearly 

 stated by Mr. Justice Norman. I intend mentioning a few other 

 reasons, which may be perhaps of interest, as they are based on facts. 



" The possibility, or otherwise, of inventing technical terms is by no 



