8 
H. L. St. Barbe —Pali Derivations in Burmese. [Jan. 
Sur Das was very famous among Hindi poets. He was one of 8-1 
Bhaktas of the Vallabhacharya sect. Vallabhacharya was born in the 
year 1478 corresponding with the Vikram Era, 1535.” 
The following papers were read— 
1. Place names met with, during the season 1877-78, mostly in the Kaveri 
delta and Tanjore District.—By Lieut.-Col. B. It. Branfill, Depy. 
Superintendent Survey of India.—Communicated by Colonel J. T* 
Walker, C. B., E. E., Surveyor General of India. 
This paper will be published in the Journal, Part I. 
2. Pali Derivations in Burmese.—By H. E. St. Baebe, Esq., C. S. 
(Abstract.) 
The Burmese have borrowed their alphabet, religion and a great por¬ 
tion of their language from India. The alphabet was no doubt introduced 
at a very early period. It has never been analyzed in any case, but its 
square variety approximates more closely to the Asoka and fifth century 
B. C. inscriptions than any later Indian modifications. It was adoqited 
en bloc, though the Burmese have never themselves found any use for 12 
out of 34 consonants, and have altered several of the sounds, notably the 2nd 
..... -i m i i 1 tt • n • J et am /_ 
mrga from 
and 
: y” to “ s” and “ z,” the vowel “ ai” into “ e” (pro- 
nounced more or less like the “ e” in there) and the o into 6 (like the aw 
in “ law.”) The bulk of the Aryan element found its way into the Burmese 
language through a Pali channel. But Sanskrit words had entered the lan¬ 
guage before this without any connection with Buddhism. The names for 
the days of the week are derived from a Sanskrit source, and some other 
words such as missa, a ram, (Sans, rnesha) pritta (Sans, preta, the dead) 
prassad, a town, (Sans, for dsdda), seem to point to a time when foreign voca¬ 
bles were written down as they sounded in Burmese without reference to their 
etymology. The importation of those words is due to Indian immigrants 
who founded kingdoms inBurmah (the Sorehkhetara kingdom was founded 
B C. 482) and were the pioneers of civilization there. At present, words 
of Indian extraction constitute more than one-seventh of the entire Burmese 
vocabulary. The process of engrafting Aryan vocables on a Mongoloid 
stock must be more or less clumsy and inadequate. Gautama himself would 
not understand ten words together of his own doctrine as recited by a 
phungyi, and most certainly will not make himself intelligible to a Bur¬ 
mese audience. The character must always be a most unsatisfactory one 
to adopt for a new dialect or language, and it is a great misfortune that the 
Latin alphabet has not been used in reducing the Karen language to writing. 
