the stream of living
speech. Now this transition from one declension to another had taken
place before the Chinese had appropriated the Sanskrit of the Buddhist
books. The Sanskrit nabhas becomes nabha in the Gathas; locative
nabhe, instead of nabhasi. If, therefore, we find in Chinese lo-che
for the Sanskrit ra_g_as, dust, we may ascribe the change of r into l
to the inability of the Chinese to pronounce or to write an r. We may
admit that the Chinese alphabet offered nothing nearer to the sound of
_g_a than tche; but the dropping of the final s has no excuse in
Chinese, and finds its real explanation in the nature of the Gatha
dialect. Thus the Chinese Fan-lan-mo does not represent the correct
Sanskrit Brahman, but the vulgar form Brahma. The Chinese so-po for
sarva, all, thomo for dharma, law, find no explanation in the dialect
of the Gathas, but the suppression of the r before v and m, is of
frequent occurrence in the inscriptions of A_s_oka. The omission of
the initial s in words like sthana, place, sthavira, an elder, is
likewise founded on the rules of Pali and Prakrit, and need not be
placed to the account of the Chinese translators. In the inscription
of Girnar sthavira is even reduced to thaira. The s of the nominative
is frequently dropped in the dialect of the Gathas, or changed into o.
Hence we might venture to doubt whether it is necessary to give to the
character 1780 of M. Julien's list, which generally has the value of
ta, a second value sta. This s is only wanted to supply the final s of
kas, the interrogative pronoun, in such a sentence as kas
tadgu_n_a_h_? what is the use of this? Now here we are inclined to
believe that the final s of kas had long disappeared in the popular
language of India, before the Chinese came to listen to the strange
sounds and doctrines of the disciples of Buddha. They probably heard
ka tadgu_n_a, or ka taggu_n_a, and this they represented as best they
could by the Chinese kia-to-kieou-na.

With these few suggestions we leave the work of M. Stanislas Julien.
It is in reality a work done once for all--one huge stone and
stumbling-block effectually rolled away which for years had barred the
approach to some most valuable documents of the history of the East.
Now that the way is clear, let us hope that others will follow, and
that we shall soon have complete and correct translations of the
travels of Fahian and other Buddhist pilgrims whose works are like so
many Murray's 'Ha