1895.] Philological Secretary— Chinese equivalent for Raygarndti. 87 
The Philological Secretary read the following note on the Chinese 
equivalent for Raqgamati. 
Jn Mr. Beveridge’s paper On the Site of Kama Suvarna , read at 
the meeting of December, 1893, 1 he identified this town, the Kie-la-na- 
su-fa-la-na of Hinen Tsiang with the town of Raggamati in the 
Murshidabad district. In the course of his article, Mr. Beveridge 
quoted Hiuen Tsiang as follows — “By the side of the capital there 
rises the monastry called Lo-to-wei-chi-seng-kia-lan,” which last word 
is, according to M. Julien, the phonetic equivalent of the Raktaviti 
Saqgharama, which again Mr. Beveridge argues is the same as Raqga- 
math Lo-to-wei-chi, means, in Chinese, ‘red earth,’ and cliffs or 
bluffs of red clay form a prominent feature in the scenery of Rag ga¬ 
in at!. He suggests that instead of Raktaviti, the Sanskrit equivalent 
should be Ragamrttika, or Raktamrttika, the latter portion of the com¬ 
pound, mrttiha being the equivalent of the Chinese wei-chi. He 
further points out that in Hiuen Tsiang’s life, the word is Ki-to-mo-chi, 
instead of the Lo-to-wei-chi of the travels, and suggests that this dif¬ 
ference of reading may lead to a settlement of the question. Mo-chi 
may be right, and may be the equivalent of mrtti. 
Some time ago, I had the fortunate opportunity of submitting the 
point for the opinion of M. Sylvaiu Levi, perhaps the only person in 
the world capable of deciding it, for he is equally competent a scholar 
of Sanskrit and of Chinese. He very kindly writes as follows,— 
‘ The difference between the two words Ki-to-mo-chi , of the Life, 
and Lo-to-wei-chi , of the Si-yu-hi , is simply due to the confusion of 
two graphic signs nearly identical. The syllable Lo ) of tho 
Si-yu-hi very closely resembles the character Ki ^ ^ ^ of the Life, 
the only difference being that the character which surmounts the 
( p ), is (^ ) in one case, and ( ) in the other. Similarly 
with regard to the character wei (“5^" ) which only differs in the 
arrangement of its two horizontal lines from the character mo (Ilf). 
In the former, the shorter line is written above the longer, and in the 
latter, the reverse is the case.’ 
‘ The reading Lo is the more probable, for Julien, in his Methode , 
cites no example of the character Ki occurring in the transcription of 
Sanskrit names, nor have I ever met an instance. On the other hand, 
for the same reason, the character mo is more probable than wei. The 
regular transcription of Lo-to-mo-chi would be a Prakrit from Ratta- 
mati\ha ], the equivalent of the Sanskrit Rahta-mrttihd which corresponds 
to the meaning “ Red clay” given to the convent by the Pilgrim.’ 
1 Journal, Yol. LXII. Pt. I for 1893. pp. 315 and ff. 
