Page:JSS 006 1b Bradley OldestKnownWritingInSiamese.pdf/47

 passages is encountered at once at the close of the general introductory statement.

All the European editors seem obsessed by the idea that in this section must be found the "Code" which has become, it would almost seem, the one indispensable element in every such inscription. P writes in flowing phrase, p. 177, "Il donne ensuite la constitution de son royaume, tant administrative que religieuse. Il a fait graver sur cette pierre la loi qui régit son royaume, pour que le peuple en prit connaissance . . . . Cette inscription est restée la base fondamentale de leur vie civile et religieuse." Unfortunately this strong prepossession of all the editors displays itself, in the large amount of intrusive material they find it necessary to import into their translations, and in the surprising liberties they take both with the grammar and with the natural sense of the text. If other "codes" with which of late we have been made familiar are no better grounded in the facts of speech than is this, it is safe to say they never could have been administered. From beginning to end of the section there is not found a single one of all those verbal phrase-forms and modal particles—permissive, mandatory, or prohibitive—without which, in an uninflected language, no "code" could possibly be known to be such. The only natural and obvious inference, both ft·om sentence form and from content, is that in his general survey of the conditions prevailing in his reign, the Prince, by a natural transition, and with natural and pardonable pride, passes from the visible prosperity, security, and happiness of his realm to speak of the kind and just government which has made these things possible. The features of that government he expounds concretely and dramatically, precisely as he has expounded the prosperity, by a series of illustrative examples or scenes—idealized of course. But with true human and true literary instinct he has refrained from marring their interest and weakening their force by attempting to make them prescriptive.

With this comprehensive statement, the value of which any one conversant with the language is invited to test for himself, I must dismiss this matter. I trust I may be excused from exhibiting tn detail what I cannot but regard as mere foibles on the part of scholars whom I sincerely respect, however much I disapprove of some of their methods