434. - . LANGUAGES, &c. OF THE 



instruct the people of Bhot in their own, that is in the Sanscrit letters and 

 language. They had, no doubt, some success in this measure in the first pe- 

 riod of their emigration mio Bhot ; but in the end, the difficulties of Sans- 

 crit, and the succession oi Native teachers to the chairs of the original Indian 

 emigrants, led to a preference of the Bhotiya language, and, consequently, a 

 translation of all the Sanscrit works they had, into the vernacular tongue of 

 the country. This resort to translation took place early ; a circumstance 

 which, aided by the lapse of time, and the further and further decline of the 

 original literary ardour, inspired by the Indian Refugees, produced, at no 

 distant period from the decease of the first Indian teachers, the oblivion of 

 Sanscrit, and the entire supercession of original Sanscrit versions by transla- 

 tions into Bhotiya ; the Bhotiyas, however, although they thus soon lost the 

 Sanscrit language, retained the Devanagari letters. The result of the whole 

 is, that the body of Bhotiya literature now is, and long has been, a mass of 

 translations from Sanscrit, its language native, its letters (like its ideas) In- 

 dian. To support this view of the case, I have to observe, that, even the 

 Nepalese, much nearer as they are to India, and much more cultivated as 

 they are, have resorted extensively to vernacular comments, and even trans- 

 lations of their books, which also are Sanscrit ; and that, although the Newars 

 have a good language of their own, they have no letters, but such as are clear- 

 ly of Ndgari origin, and declared by themselves to be so : that all the Bhotiyas, 

 with whom I have conversed, assure me, that they got all their knowledge 

 from India, tliat their books are translations, that the originals, here and there, 

 still exist in Bhot, but that now no one can read them : lastly, that several 

 of the great Bhotiya classics proclaim, by their very names, the fact. 

 These remarks are applied, of course, to the classics of Bhot : for, in regard 

 to works of less esteem there, I believe such to be not translations, but 

 originals ; chiefly legends of the Lamas, and in the vernacular tongue, the 

 best dialect of which is that spoken about Lassa and Digarchi ; but still, like 

 the translated classics, written in letters essentially Indian. 



