Page:Essay Towards a Dictionary, Tibetan and English.djvu/15

 Hungarian, while it greatly differs from tbat of the languages of occidental Europe. As an example of this close analogy;—in the Hungarian language, instead of prepositions, postpositions are invariably used, except with the personal pronouns; again, from a verbal root, without the aid of any auxiliary verb, and by a simple syllabic addition, the several kinds of verbs, distinguished as active, passive, causal, desiderative, frequentative, reciprocal, &c. are formed in the Hungarian, in the same manner as in the Sanscrit; and in neither of them is the auxiliary verb ^^ to have^^ required for the formation of the preterite and other tenses, as in the languages in general of western Europe. But this is not the place to pursue an inquiry, ia which the author, from patriotic as well as philological predilections, feels necessarily the deepest interest.

With respect to the Dictionary (as well as to the Grammar, by which it will soon be accompanied,) now published through theliberality of this Government, t^e author begs to inform the public that it has been compiled from authentic sources, after he himself became sufficiently acquainted with the language, with the assistance of an intelligent Lama, (whose name is respectfully mentioned on the title-page,) in whose intellectual powers the author had full confidence, and whom he found to be thoroughly versed in Buddhistic literature in general, well acquainted with the customs and manners of his nation, and possessed of a general knowledge of those branches of science that are more essential for the preparation of a Dictionary. In every respect qualified as a gentleman, to mix and converse daily with the first men of his country, having also visited the greatest part of Tibet, he knew very well the respectful terms, (marked in this Dictionary by h. meaning honorific or respectful,) the multiplied use of which is a peculiarity in the language of Tibet. Such terms, though they strictly belong to the Tibetan language, constitute a sort of poetical dialect: they occur frequently in the literary works, as also in the conversation of the educated classes, especially among the nobility.

Sanscrit terms seldom occur in their books, with the exception of a few proper names of men, places, precious stones, flowers, plants, &c., where the translators could not determine what their proper signification would be in Tibetan. But the technical terms, in arts and sciences, found in Sanscrit, have been rendered (hot ai^ European nations have done with their translations out of Greek and Latin) by their precise syllabic equivalents in Tibetan, according to a system framed expressly for the purpose by the Pandits who engaged in the translation of the sacred works of the Buddhists into the latter language; as may be seen in the several vocabularies extant of Sanscrit and Tibetan terms; of which a large one has been translated into English by the author of this Dictionary, and presented to the Asiatic Society; the same, he afterwards found, had been previously made known to the learned of Europe by the late Mons. Abel Remusat.

The scheme prefixed to the Dictionary will give a general idea, (in the absence of the Grammar) how to read the Tibetan words. The structure of the language is very