History of Indian and Eastern Architecture v1.c4.1

v1.c4.1

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 have 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," "Rĭshi," are to be represented by Kṛṣṇa, Cac, Ṛṣi—so pedantic a system is impossible both for cartographer and ordinary reader and, like others, it may well cease to be.