Note 910 — Chapter L

Tibetan orthography Sroṇ-btsan-sgam-po. It is hard to decide what is the best method of representing Tibetan words in Latin letters:

(a) The orthography differs from the modern pronunciation more than in any other language, except perhaps English, but it apparently represents an older pronunciation and therefore has historical value. Also, a word can be found in a Tibetan dictionary only if the native spelling is faithfully reproduced. On the other hand readers interested in oriental matters know many words in a spelling which is a rough representation of the modern pronunciation. It seems pedantic to write bKaẖ-ẖgyur and ẖBras-spuṇs when the best known authorities speak of Kanjur and Debung. On the whole, I have decided to represent the commoner words by the popular orthography as given by Rockhill, Waddell and others while giving the Tibetan spelling in a foot-note. But when a word cannot be said to be well known even among Orientalists I have reproduced the Tibetan spelling.

(b) But it is not easy to reproduce this spelling clearly and consistently. On the whole I have followed the system used by Sarat Chandra Das in his Dictionary. It is open to some objections, as, for instance, that the sign h has more than one value, but the more accurate method used by Grünwedel in his Mythologie is extremely hard to read. My transcription is as follows in the order of the Tibetan consonants.

k, kh, g, ṇ, c, oh, j, ny. t, th, d, n, p, ph, b, m. ts, ths, ds, w. zh, z, ḥ, y. r, l, ś, s, h.

Although tsh is in some respects preferable to represent an aspirated ts, yet it is liable to be pronounced as in the English words hat shop, and perhaps ths is on the whole better.