Page:Essay Towards a Dictionary, Tibetan and English.djvu/16

 simple. There isone general form for all sort of declinable words. In the verbs, there is no variation with respect to person or number; the noun or pronoun, in the sin- gular or plural^ showing how the sense of the verb must be taken. When the student is acquainted with the auxiliary verbs, and particles for forming the different moods and tenses, he can conjugate every verb. There are some irregular verbs, of which it is required previously to know the present, preterite^ and future tenses, and the imper- ative, but these are mostly a sort of compound verbs : they have been explained in the Grammar, and introduced, at their respective places, in the Dictionary^ In the whole of Tibet an uniform orthography is observed^ but the orthoepy differs according to different and distant provinces, especially with respect to the compound consonants.

Not to swell the volume too much, few Sanscrit terms and proper names have been introduced in the present edition. When there shall be more interest taken for Buddhism, (which has much in common with the spirit of true Christianity,) and for diff^using Christian and European knowledge, throughout the most Eastern parts of Asia, the Tibetan Dictionary may be much improved, enlarged, and illustrated by the addition of Sanscrit terms.

The author necessarily experienced many difficulties in the first years of his Tibe- tan studies, there being no interpreter between him and the Lama, who knew no other language besides his own ; neither had he any European elementary work on this language, except the large quarto volume of the Alphahetum Tibetanum by P. Giorgi ; nor had he seen the Tibetan Dictionary, edited by Mr. Marshman, Serampore, 18526, until his arrival at Calcutta, in 1831, when it could prove of no use to him, since this Dictionary had been long since ready in the same form and extent, as is it now published : — he begs therefore the learned public's indulgence for the numerous defects which may be doubtless manifest to the experienced eye in this his first essay of a Tibetan Dictionary.

Calcutta, February, 1834.