7 
1894.] F. B. Shawe —Tibetan Orthography and Pronunciation. 
literature had its beginning in the translations of the Buddhist 
canon, nominally the religious norm, even at the present day, for 
the overwhelming majority of the Tibetan-speaking race. 1 The res¬ 
training influence on the language exerted in Christian countries 
by a universally accepted translation of the Bible is well-known; 
in Tibetan we have a similar work standing at the very begin¬ 
ning of literature. Consequently, whilst in most languages the 
gradual development of orthography and pronunciation can be traced 
by a more or less complete chain of literary productions, Tibetan 
orthography has remained stationary, whilst the pronunciation has 
undergone great modifications. For, so far from finding any re¬ 
markable facts pointing to an original discrepancy between ortho¬ 
graphy and pronunciation, we have a series of observations which 
all point to the conclusion that the latter has, either gradually, or sud¬ 
denly, divorced itself from the former. 
These observations are made both in the literary language (*<V T Siy 
cos-shad ) and in the popular dialects (^QTSfy p’al-shad). 
Turning our attention first to the literary language , we can con¬ 
veniently enquire into the original relationship between orthography 
and pronunciation by investigating the homophones and the gramma- , 
tical particles or p ost-position s, which supply the place of flexions^ IcnTjxub hT • 
On bearing Tibetan spoken, the student cannot fail to be struck 
by the large number of homophones. In some cases the homophonous 
appearance is genuine, i. e., there are a number of words identical in 
spelling and pronunciation, but differing in meaning. In the majority 
of cases, however, an enquiry into the orthography reveals the fact, 
that many apparent homophones need not necessarily be homophonous. 
Whilst identical to the ear, they are orthographically clearly distin¬ 
guished to the eye. These homophones resolve themselves into two 
classes :—those having an identical or similar root, and those having 
differing or dissimilar roots. 
The first class consists mainly of verbs. In the literary language 
the active and neuter form s of the verb are rarely identical, whilst no reP.M 
difference is at present made in pronunciation. We have, e. g., the ^ 
neuter verb Q grub-pa “to be accomplished,” with Perf. 
1 It is also interesting to note that the influence of Buddhism has secured the 
adoption of Buddhist terms for the commonest things, e. g., the only words in use 
cs cs 
for “ world ” are srid-pa, (i. e ., “i)kw - of very rare occurrence) and 
s 
0 jig-rten, [i. e., “receptacle of the perishable,”—the common term), both of 
which are evidently of Buddhist origin. What word was in use previous to the 
introduction of Buddhism F 
