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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
firm after there has been no Smith or Jones or Robinson in it for more than a generation. In India we have the instance of Sri Jamsetjee Jijibhoy, Bart, in perpetuo as a personal name, let alone old established firms.
That the mental tendency above indicated is universal is shown in the fact that in a Swiss town in which this note is written, I find such Hotel names as follows: Palace et du Cygne (Palace and Swan); Grand et des Alpes (Grand and the Alpes) not Grand Hotel des Alpes which has a different sense altogether; Parc et Lac (Park and Lake);
BOOK-NOTICE.
LINGUISTIC STUDIES FROM THE HIMALAYAS, being studies in the grammar of Fifteen Himalayan Dialects. By the REV. T. GRAHAME BAILEY, Asiatic Society's Monographs. Vol. XVII, pp. xv, 275. London R. A. S., 1920.
This is another of Mr. Grahame Bailey's invaluable records of Himalayan speech, bearing date 1920 on the cover and 1915 on the title page. The War no doubt is responsible for what looks like a long delay in publishing. It is in fact a supplement or continuation of his Languages of the Northern Himalayas, Vol. XII of the same series, and between the two books Mr. Bailey has now given us an account of 41 of the Hill Dialects. Indeed, so closely are the two accounts connected and interwoven that the student must use them together.
The dialects examined in this volume belong to the Tibeto-Burman, 2; Lahinda, 2; Western Pahari, 9; Panjab. 2. In addition are notes on the secret vocabulary of the Qalandars, Qasais and the Panjabi gamblers. A notable collection.
Mr. Bailey goes into his subject with a thoroughness and a detail that is delightful to the student, but at the same time rather alarming to the helpers he would so like to encourage. Transliteration, or rather transcription, and the attempt to reproduce sounds with exactitude on paper can be so complicated as to defeat their own end to a greater extent than scholars perhaps realise. One reason is that hardly two people speak quite alike. The pronunciation of words and sounds varies in a remarkable degree even amongst the recognised educated masters of a language. Witness the efforts of the compilers of the Oxford English Dictionary to get at the "true" pronunciation of many English words. Then again any form of writing must be at bottom a question of conventional signs (like speech itself for that matter), which, as long as they are understood, answer their purpose. Just as any approach to the conventional sound and use of words answers eo long as it is understood. So does any conventional method of reproducing them on paper also answer-so long as it is understood, whether it be a recognised alphabet, syllabary or ideogram, or
[NOVEMBER, 1922
Belmont et Chateau (Belmont and Castle); Excelsior et Bon Port, and so on. In a French Provincial town I came across a delightful incongruous Inn sign, Du soleil et de L'Ecosse (the Sun and Scotland); and there is the well-known Hotel at Marseilles, Du Louvre et de la Paix (the Louvre and Rest). In each of these cases there has been an amalgamation of the old proprietaries into one concern.
The moral of all this is that searchers in tracing the history of international terms must be on the lookout for folk-etymology arising out of R. C. TEMPLE,
custom.
combination of signs that can be so explained as to be intelligible. But to any except very special students, there is a limit to the number of these signs which is quite quickly reached in practice. Philologists and phonologists are apt to forget this and to put so many special signs on paper to express their meaning that they do not actually succeed in doing so. Witness the official monographs on the North American languages.
Mr. Bailey makes an appeal at p. vii of his Preface: Here I could turn to those whose business or pleasure takes them to places where unknown or little-known languages are spoken and appeal to them to make an attempt to elicit from the people facts of grammar and pronuncia. tion, and to add to the sum of human knowledge by giving these facts to the public." I hope he may be successful in his appeal. I made a similar appeal as to the collection of legends and stories nearly 30 years ago in my Legends of the Panjab. It has borne some fruit; but not a satisfactory crop. Perhaps the cause has been that I asked for the ipsissima verba of the native tellers of tales as well as a translation, and that may have frightened would-be helpers So the danger I perceive in getting people to follow Mr. Bailey and those like him is that the detail of the approved method of record may frighten them. It is not every one that has the ear to follow the niceties of the sounds produced by speakers of vernaculars, or the special knowledge of the conventions by which they are recorded with pen and ink. Then again, years ago I put on paper my efforts to record dialects and languages spoken in Burma and the neighbouring countries, and still more years ago I tried to do the same for the Panjab and for the speech of some of the very people exploited by Mr. Bailey, only to find as time went on that the approved method of record had become changed in both cases. So my records, though given to the public, cannot apparently be used by it. I do not make these remarks to detract from the great value of Mr. Bailey's work to advanced scholars and students, but to show the
