102 Karl Marx— Documents relating to the history of LadaJch. [No. 3, 
present it in such a form as will make it acceptable to English readers. 
If, after all, the wording seems clumsy and of little fluency,—I can 
only say that I ‘ tried my best.’ As the English language is a foreign 
idiom to me, I think, that in this respect I am entitled to a certain 
amount of forbearance. Somehow, it seems to me, that to combine, in 
a translation, faithfulness to a Tibetan original with fluency in English 
is particularly difficult. 
Apart from my own observations and special studies, I had to rely 
greatly upon the assistance of natives of Ladakh. Information derived 
from this source has, however, in every case been carefully sifted and 
compared with statements by other persons. As to works by European 
authors, Jaschke’s Dictionary was found invaluable. Koeppen’s ‘ Reli¬ 
gion des Buddha ’ and £ Lamaistische Hierarchie ’ was a great help in 
many places. Sir Monier Williams’ ‘Buddhism’ (1890) sometimes 
proved useful. E. von Schlagintweit’s £ Buddhism in Tibet (1863) is, 
I fear, not more reliable than his ‘ Konige von Tibet’ (1866). Cun¬ 
ningham’s ‘Ladakh,’ I regret to say, was not accessible here, nor was 
Wassiljew’s ‘ Buddhismus.’ Drew’s ‘Northern Barrier of India’ and 
his map are referred to on several occasions. Other maps used were the 
map of the Government Survey for Ladakh etc., and one sheet (SE) 
of the ‘ Map of Turkestan ’ (in four sheets, 1882). No maps relating to 
Central Tibet were available here. 
In romanizing Tibetan names, I adopted, for the sake of its sim¬ 
plicity, Jaschke’s system as set forth in his useful ‘ Tibetan and English 
Dictionary ’ (Kyelang, 1866), with one or two exceptions, viz., h as 
indicating an aspirate, I replaced by an apostrophe, (e. g., for chh , ths, 
etc., I wrote ch\ t’s, etc.) ; instead of shr , I used sh, and g indicates the 
soft guttural g (in the Comparative Large Dictionary y), d, t, t, sh 
represent the cerebral class of consonants. The vowels invariably have 
the Italian sound. This system of transliteration very nearly corresponds 
with the ordinary Ladakh pronunciation of Tibetan. It widely differs, 
as is well known, from the Lhasa pronunciation, but has the advant¬ 
age of representing more accurately the spelling of Tibetan words, and 
of simplicity. 
As I am not acquainted with Sanskrit, I had to rely upon the 
authorities adduced for any information derived from Sanskrit sources. 
A small contingent of new Tibetan words and phrases will also be 
formed embodied and explained in these pages. 
The notes appended at the end of the translation will, I trust, be 
found useful. 
