A.—ON THE SPELLING OF WORDS AND NAMES.
It will be noticed that the orthography of Indian words in the text differs with each writer, and this is the case in all the writings of the period. That phonetic method of spelling, which has passed into literature in the works of Thackeray and Macaulay, and for a return to which a writer in one of the magazines recently entered a plea, reigned supreme, but with this drawback, that each man expressed differently the sounds he heard. To take one instance, the comparatively simple name Baj-baj appears in various writings as Buz-buzia, Buz-budgee, Busbudgia, Budje Boodjee, and Bougee Bougee, besides the more modern Budge-Budge. The first person that rendered Murshidabad as Muxidavad evidently pronounced the x in the Portuguese way, as sh, when the name is quite recognisable if the accent be placed on the first syllable, but those who followed him, ignorant of this fact, passed from Muxadavad into Mucksadabad—a terrible example of the dangers of a follow-my-leader policy. Some writers, and notably Holwell, made an effort to obtain uniformity. Aghast at discovering the long a sound (as in Khan) variously rendered by o, u, au, and aw, they employed aa for the purpose, and hence we are confronted with such monstrosities as Rhaajepoot for Rajput. Considering the difficulty of rendering Hindustani words by means of English letters, the modern student may be thankful for the Hunterian system, which at least ensures uniformity, even though upon a purely conventional basis. It may be mentioned that the diversity is not confined to Indian words. The name of le Beaume is spelt in four different ways.