180 Report on Writing Indian Words [No. 8, New Semes, 



personal intercourse, they embodied the independent result 

 at which they had arrived, in separate papers, to serve as 

 the basis of more mature deliberation. Before, however, they 

 had arrived at a unanimous conclusion, Mr. Bayley and 

 Mr. Norman were compelled, by illness, to leave India. 



The scheme now submitted must be considered, therefore, 

 to exhibit the conclusions at which the majority of the Com- 

 mittee had arrived on the most salient points only, and 

 must not be taken as a unanimous expression of matured 

 judgment. 



The want of a recognized scheme for representing oriental 

 words of daily occurrence, has long been felt. Many at- 

 tempts have been made to remedy the evil. But with how 

 little benefit the slipslop spelling of proper names and technical 

 terms in official correspondence, and the barbarous names 

 which crowd the face of the best Indian maps, bear witness.* 



The object which the Committee have strictly kept in 

 view has been to lay down a scheme of orthography which 

 should provide for the exact representation of every word 

 occurring in the languages of India, under conditions at once 

 easy of application and so exact, as to enable persons 

 acquainted with the original tongue, to reproduce words 

 written according to it, in their native characters. In other 

 words, to submit a system of notation in which "each original 

 " (represented) sound should be rendered invariably by one 

 " appropriated symbol, conformably to the natural order of 

 " articulation, and with a due regard to the primitive power 

 " of the Roman alphabet, which modern Europe has in 



* One of the causes which delayed the preparation of the Murshadabad 

 Survey Registers was "the character of the Collectory lists. * * * Names 

 are distorted out of all recognition. Thus, the Mahomedan Berahimpoor 

 (Xbrahhnpur) will appear as the Hindoo Biharipoor, and many of our adumul- 

 nisha enquiries have been in search of Villages which had no existence save 

 on the page of the writer:" Report on Survey operatioyis* Lower Provinces, 

 from 1st October ]856, to 3rd September 1858, page 63. 



