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INTRODUCTION.
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SPELLING OF BUDDHIST TERMS. I had on a former occasion pleaded so strongly in favour of retaining, as much as possible, the original Sanskrit forms of Påli Buddhist terms, that I feel bound to confess openly that I hold this opinion no longer, or, at all events, that I see it is hopeless to expect that Pâli scholars will accept my proposal. My arguments were these: Most of the technical terms employed by Buddhist writers come from Sanskrit ; and in the eyes of the philologist the various forms which they have assumed in Pâli, in Burmese, in Tibetan, in Chinese, in Mongolian, are only so many corruptions of the same original form. Everything, therefore, would seem to be in favour of retaining the Sanskrit forms throughout, and of writing, for instance, Nirvana instead of the Pâli Nibbâna, the Burmese Niban or Nepbhân, the Siamese Niruphan, the Chinese Nipan. The only hope, in fact, that writers on Buddhism will ever arrive at a uniform and generally intelligible phraseology seems to lie in their agreeing to use throughout the Sanskrit terms in their original form, instead of the various local disguises and disfigurements which they present in Ceylon, Burmah, Siam, Tibet, China, and Mongolia.')
I fully admitted that many Buddhist words have assumed such a strongly marked local or national character in the different countries and in the different languages in which the religion of Buddha has found a new home, that to translate them back into Sanskrit might seem as affected, nay, prove in certain cases as misleading, as if, in speaking of priests and kings, we were to speak of presbyters and cynings. The rule by which I meant mainly to be guided was to use the Sanskrit forms as much as possible; in fact, everywhere except where it seemed affected to do so. I therefore wrote Buddhaghosha instead of the Pâli Buddhāghosa, because the name of that famous theologian, the Voice of Buddha, seemed to lose its significance if turned
1 Introduction to Buddhaghosha's Parables, 1870, p. 1.
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