98 Karl Marx —Documents relating to the history of Ladakh . [No. 3, 
was written in TJ-clmn characters; consequently in all those cases, 
when certain U-med letters are apt to be confounded, it may be taken 
for granted that, as compared with U-med MSS., preference must be 
given to Schlagintweit’s edition, as being founded on an U-chan MS. 
On the other hand, any MS., specially prepared by a native of Ladakh for 
a foreigner, is apt to be less reliable than others of independent origin, 
for the reason,—which would especially be true regarding historical 
documents—that the copyist will have a tendency to slightly alter the 
text, in the interest of his master, religion or country, suppressing such 
facts as may seem derogatory to their fame, and substituting for phrases 
liable to be misunderstood others of a legs equivocal character. As to 
Schlagintweit’s edition it must be admitted, that the Lamas, who wrote 
the copy for his brother, did not give way to any such tendency until 
they reached the 6th line of folio 30a: be it that they wished to suppress 
certain facts contained in the sequel, or that they were of opinion, that 
the ‘ merit ’ of the presents extended no further : certain it is, that beyond 
this point, the text is merely a meaningless jumble of words, culled at 
random from the original and put together in such a way, that only a 
careful examination of the text by one who knew the language could 
reveal the fraud. These two and a half pages, therefore, which are sup¬ 
posed to embrace the history of about two centuries, are really not fit for 
translation, and the attempt can only conduce to results totally mislead¬ 
ing. All the other parts of the MS. seems to have been done fairly well. 
There are mistakes in spelling, and here and there an omission or an 
addition of a word or phrase that did not belong to the original, but, 
on the whole, the MS. seems to have been better than many one sees 
here. The pages of this Journal, however, are, I fear, not the fit place 
to enumerate and discuss in detail all the various errors in writing that 
occur in the MS. The new Tibetan text, herewith published, will, to 
any one interested, clearly show where and how, in my opinion, 
Schlagintweit’s text ought to be corrected; and to explain the reason 
why I dissent from his opinion, would, in a MS. of comparatively so 
little classical value as the ‘ Ladakh Gyalrabs ’, be sheer waste of 
time. 
Schlagintweit’s translation I would much prefer to pass over in 
silence, but as, for a new translation, there would be no raison d'etre 
whatever, if his translation were at all adequate, I am compelled to state 
my opinion regarding it. It is as follows : 
Considering that, in the first place, his Tibetan text left much to 
be desired;—that, secondly, in 1866 the Standard-Repository of the 
language of western Tibet, viz., the Dictionary of Aug. Heinrich Jaschke 
had not yet been published, and that therefore the meaning of many 
