MURRAY'S HAND-BOOK OF INDIA.*
IT is more than a compliment, it is a praise to say of this Hand- Book that the careful digest of useful and necessary matter renders it less available for literary notice than some of its predecessors. Lists of outfits for travellers of all kinds, from officers of artillery to the tourist, merely going out to see what he shall see—tables of Indian coins, weights, and measures—vocabularies of Indian words—regulations of the Indian services touching furlough, pay and pension, are all matters of extreme interest to those who want to deal with the one, or hope to receive the other. They are not, however, things for literary attraction or display, any more than are the lists of books-that a traveller may or should peruse be- fore starting, and a goodly "course of reading" it would be—or the chronological tables and summaries of Indian history, or rather elaborate vocabularies and "conversations" in the native • languages. For a book to hold in the hand upon the spot, the digests of what is to be seen at Gibraltar, Malta, and Egypt are capital ; but to the home reader who has even perused but a small part of what has been written of late years on those places they are not very full or very new. The plans of the great towns in India with their descriptions, convey a more vivid idea to the mind than general accounts ; but thie the reader must work out for himself. The introductory matter that formed a very interest- ing feature in many of the previous volumes, by its sketches of the country and the people, the conveyances and the accommodations, is of necessity broken down into provinces or districts in the Hand-Book of India while of accommodation there is little to tell. The immense extent and variety of India renders, as the compiler remarks, a complete account of it "more arduous" than that of many other countries, and splits up the subject into fragments. Perhaps underlying: the whole, is the want of sympathy between the English and Oriental mind which can only be overcome on stirring occasions, and is then roused not by purely Indian subjects, but by their connexion with English feelings and interests. There is little of either to be excited by accounts of tours, through districts whose very names many persons have never heard.
The wonted skill of Mr. Murray's compilers is shown in passing observations and occasional discussions. One of these last is on a subject that has more than once been mentioned in these pages, the mode of spelling Oriental names. The writer seems to have got into the hands of some " scholar " double dyed in pedantry. That there should be a difficulty in representing the words of lan- guages without vowels, with letters or signs which have no exact counterparts in our alphabet, and with combinations of signs which English organs cannot utter is not surprising. The old practice of reproducing the sound as near as possible' and making the word English, is the best course ; at all events it secured um- formity. Such was Bashaw, now Pasha, and the proper name Maliomet, now spelled half a dozen different ways, each resolv- ing themselves into some theory or national pronunciation, as we have a soft labial in Pasha and a stronger in Bashaw ; for if there were any philological principle in the case, they would all be spelled alike. The author before us cries out, inter alia, because the termination " pur " (a town) is now sometimes spelled poor and sometimes pore. This, however, is but a short step in his march of lingual improvement. Our old friend Ryder Ali, be- comes Haider 'Ali, his son Tippoo is Tipn ; their territory of My- sore is transformed into /dolour; and any one wishing "the blest sherbet, sublimed with snow," must call for sherbet. In all these cases and innumerable others, it is clear that pronunciation is the jus et norma. And that must be the general English pro- nunciation; for the native no doubt differs not only in many places but many mouths. Mispronunciation or mispefling, however, leads to incongruity, and doubtless inconvenience, where it has overlooked the meaning of Native names, and produced an absurdity to the Hindoo.
"The first instance may be taken from an Indian city, which has of late acquired an unhappy celebrity in this country, from Cawnpore. Of this city, Thornton says, the importance of this place is indeed altogether of i
recent date, and resulting from its selection n A.D. 1777 as a military can- tonment by the British authorities. It does not appear to be mentioned by Baber in his narrative of military operations in the Doab; and it is passed over in the Ayeen Akbery. The first notice of it is perhaps that by Hen- na.' This idea of the modern foundation of Cawnpore springs partly, if not entirely, from its incorrect spelling. Caton is the barbarism adopted by • A Handbook for India ; being.an Account of the Three Presidencies and of the Overland Route; intended as a Guide for Travellers, Officers, and Civi- lians, with Vocabularies and Dialogues of the Spoken Languages of India. With Travelling Map and Plans of Towns. Part I. Madras. Part II. Bombay. Published by Murray. the historian Orme for the Persian word Khan, ' a lord,' and was contem- poraneous with the equally barbarous ehan, which was the corruption that found favour with Dow. Cawnpore was, therefore, supposed to hare been built by some Muhammadan nobleman, and therefore to be a comparatively modern place. But the correct spelling of the word Kanhpur shows that it is a Hindu word, meaning the city of Ranh,' or Krishnab. It is, iu fact, a place of primieval antiquity, and from it the Kanhpuriyah Rajputs have their title, a tribe that entered Awadh (Oudh) many centuries ago. "By those who have not examined and compared maps of India and the books of routes through that country, the blunders and confusion created by incorrect spelling can hardly be Imagined. In some cases, quartermasters of regiments have been unable to identify the name of a single place in routes furnished to them from the Government offices, and have sent in new drafts of the routes with the names spelled in an entirely different manner, though the places intended were in each case the same. The compiler of this Handbook, on comparing the Madras Government Routebook with the map of the Trigonometrical Survey, was scarcely able to trace any similar- ity in the names. Thus the Tamraparni river is called in the Route-book Tamberperny ; in Thornton's Gazetteer, Tambaravari; in Walker's map, Pambouri; and in the Trigonometrical map, Chindinthura. Thus, too, or, in Tamil, signifies ' river' ; but the compilers of the Route-book, ignoring that simple fact, continually add 'river' to or, which they frequently write our, making it a proper name. Not content even with this, they sometimes prefix the word noddy, a corruption of the Sanskrit nadi which also means river,' to ar. Thus the phrase occurs, 'cross the Nufdly-ar river,' equi- valent to cross the river, river, river,' though all that is meant i cross a stream. Girl is mountain,' and Gadi_, in Telugu, or Garhi, in Hindus- tani, is 'a fort' ; but maps and route-books write Gherry, Ghurry, or some similar corru.ption for both fort' and mountain.' Thus the Neilyherriee is written 'for blue mountains"' and Gheriah for Ilflayadury, simply a fort. Indifference to the meaning of names is the prolific parent of another series of mistakes, for nearly all Indian names of places are significant, and the etymology is obscured and the meaning lost by their perversion. Thus, Saghazpor, which signifies paper-town,' and 113 so 'called on account of a paper manufactory* there, is made into Rego:, poor, which is utterly meaningless. Kakamari, 'crow-killer,' a village so called from a plant thought by the natives to be poisonous to crows, is per- verted into Caughtnahry. .Eranaur is pronounced and written Ennore, ac- cording to the popular English mode ; but this means, What town ?' If an Indian peasant were asked the way to What Town, how is it possible that he could reply satisfactorily ? This case, and the others that have been quoted, wilkperhaps, be a key to the difficulty experienced by Englishmen when travelling in India in getting information as to iplaces. They ask an unintelligible question, and if they do not succeed n extracting the in- formation they want, too often wreak their anger on the unfortunate and bewildered Indian. In military expeditions, these mistakes have sometimes had most serious consequences. And it was the consideration of the neces- sity of furnishing the traveller with names which would be understood by the natives that led to the adoption of the correct mode of spelling in the present work."
What the writer calls correct spelling has nothing to do with it, but correct pronunciation. To what extent corrections of this kind should be made is a nice question; for it involves an entire change in our maps and printed books. It may be doubted whether such alterations should be attempted (for to effect them would be very difficult,) merely for the sake of official necessities, or some John Bull who loses himself in a district into which he should never have gone. It is the same thing in kind as calling upon us to change our language for the convenience of people going abroad. We should guard against such blunders for the future ; as will probably be done. In the ease of various modes of pronouncing the same word, it would undoubtedly be best to select the right one, by authority, if authority there be. We must, however, protest against this author's uncouth and eye- repelling mode, or perhaps that of his prompters. In the first place some other learned pundit will spell differently ; and in the second his method. seems no better guide to pronunciation than the English one.
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