Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/20

 NOTE. ONE of the great difficulties that met every one attempting to write on Indian subjects forty years ago was to know how to spell Indian proper names. The Gilchristian mode of using double vowels, which was fashionable early last century, had then been done away with, as contrary to the spirit of Indian orthography, though it left a plentiful crop of discordant spellings. On the other hand, Sir William Jones and most scholars, by marking the long vowels and by dots to distinguish the palatal from the dental consonants, had formed from the Roman alphabet definite equivalents for each letter in the Indian alphabets both Sanskritic and Persian. Lepsius, Lassen, and Max Muller in turn proposed various other systems, which ha^e not found much acceptance ; and of late continental scholars have put forward still another scheme, quite unsuited for English use. In this system such names as " Krishna," " Chach," " Rishi," are to be represented byKrsna, Cac, Rsi so pedantic a system is, impossible both for cartographer and ordinary reader and, like others, it may well cease to be. Meanwhile a notable advance towards official uniformity has been made in the spelling of Indian place-names. When the 'Imperial Gazetteer of India" was projected, Government judiciously instructed the editor to adopt the Jonesian system of transliteration as slightly modified by Professor H. H. Wilson, but devoid of the diacritical dots attached to certain consonants. The authorisation of this system in the new maps and Gazetteer, and its use in published works since, has established its claim to acceptance in a work intended for the general reader. In the following pages, consequently, this system has been used, as nearly as may be, avoiding diacritical marks on consonants, but indicating the long vowel sounds ti, i, ft, as in Lzit, Halebid, Stupa, etc., whilst e and o, being almost always long, hardly require indication. Thus a l sounds as in " rural " ; a as in " tar " ; i ,, ,, "fill"; i ,, "police"; ,, ,, "full"; ft ,, "rude"; e ,, ,, " there"; and o ,, "stone". Only the palatal 5, as in "sure," is distinguished from the dental, as in "hiss," by the italic form among Roman letters, as in "jikhara," "Aroka." A hundred years hence, when Sanskrit and Indian alphabets are taught in all schools in England, it may be otherwise, but in the present state of knowledge on the subject it seems expedient to use some such simple method of indicating, at least approximately, the Indian sounds. Strictly accurate transcription in all cases and of well-known names, however, has not been followed. In Burmese, which lisps sounds like s and ch, the spellings used in the Gazetteers of Burma have been generally adopted. 1 The shut vowel, inherent in all consonants of the proper Indian alphabets, was formerly transliterated by almost any English vowel : in " Benares" (for " Banaras"). t is used twice for it.