67 
1903.] E. H. Walsh —Tibetan Language , fy Recent Dictionaries. 
an authority on any doubtful point.” 1 The next Dictionary, and the 
first one which answers to the modern description of a dictionary, was 
that of Alexander Csoma de Koros, a Hungarian Missionary, 3 who also 
published a grammar of the language at the same time. This was also 
published at the expense of the Indian Government. This Dictionary 
of Csoma de Koros is the basis on which Jasclike founded his subsequent 
dictionaries, and on which therefore all subsequent dictionaries may be 
said to have been built. 
Csoma de Koros, however, adopted an alphabetical arrangement of 
the letters, which differed from that employed by the Tibetans them¬ 
selves, and from the scientific construction of the language, and which 
has consequently been abandoned by Schmidt and Jaschke and subse¬ 
quent writers who have followed the natural order of the letters, namely? 
that adopted by the Tibetans themselves. The manner in which Csoma 
de Koros departed from the natural order was by arranging words com¬ 
mencing with a prefix or superscribed letter, according to the alphabetical 
order of the prefix or superscribed letter. For those not acquainted with 
Tibetan it is necessary to explain that there are in Tibetan five prefixes 
P|’ 2^’ ga, da, ba, ma, a, which, though written, and in spelling 
treated as a separate syllable, are never pronounced, except where the 
word, which they commence, forms the second portion of a compound 
word, of which the first portion ends in a vowel, when they are sounded, 
bj r a process corresponding to the liaison in French, with the exception 
that it is the first letter of the following word that is sounded instead of 
the last letter of the preceding one, in the French liaison . As an example : 
—Bzhi “ four,” is pronounced shi, and —Bchu “ ten,” is pro¬ 
nounced chu when occurring as a single word. When the two words 
form a compound together it its pronounced not clm-shi “ fourteen ” or 
shi-chu “forty,” but chubshi and shibchu. Similarly, there are three 
superscribed letters— ^ Of r, l, and s, which, in Central Tibetan, 
are also silent except in the case of r and Z, where the word they 
commence forms the second factor in a compound word, when they are 
sounded ; ^ with its own sound of r and (2J Z, with the sound of n. 
Thus, in case of the two words taken for an example above, Csoma 
1 Prof. Terrien de Lacouperie, in the Encyclopedia Brittanica, 
2 Essay towards a dictionary, Tibetan and English. Alexander Csoma de Koros, 
Calcutta, Baptist Mission Press, 1834. 
