National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

FOREWORD.

The printing of Dr. Francke's work was commenced in 1913. It was practically

suspended during the war years, and the difficult period which followed : and since

its resumption in 1920 it has been retarded by several circumstances, among which

may be mentioned the supply of Tibetan type and the author's residence in Germany,

entailing a vast amount of correspondence. The work has undergone considerable

revision both prior to being submitted to the press and subsequently.

As regards the difficulties of the texts, it may be said that the edition and translation

have been rendered possible only by Dr. Francke's personal acquaintance with the

language, peoples, and topography of Ladakh and the neighbouring territories, and by

the help which he was able to obtain in the country itself. There remain many points

of reading, rendering, and explanation in regard to which certainty has not been

attained.

In general Dr. Francke has preserved the varieties of spelling which he found in his

originals, and such varieties are usually reflected in the translations. Apology must,

however, be made for some inconsistencies in the treatment of Indian terms occurring

in the Tibetan : thus such words as mahárdja, wazir, may have been so written where

the Tibetan has ma-ha-ra-dza, wa-zir.l

The numerous deviations in the spelling of the same names may be classified as

follows : First, there are the variations so common in the Tibetan spellings both of

proper names and of ordinary words. Secondly, there are the divergent spellings of

European writers, whether due to differences of date, or to systems of transliteration,

or to individual idiosyncrasies : and an important group under this head consists of

place-namés which have assumed a certain fixity in maps, while another consists' of

names of rulers for which Cunningham's Ladák is the chief or sole authority. In general

the principles followed have been (1) to preserve in all citations the spelling of the

writer, (2) to maintain an uniform and, if possible, correct spelling wherever Dr. Francke

is speaking in his own person, except that (3) licence has often been taken to refer to

places under the name-forms familiar in the ordinary maps. In the special local maps

prepared for this volume a correct orthography has been thought appropriate. It is to

be hoped that in the future writers on Tibet will show respect for an old literary language

by presenting Tibetan words in the form of an exact transliteration according to an

1 It may be here mentioned that many of the words noted on pp. 145-6 as borrowed from Indian and European languages have been discussed by Dr. B. Laufer in his article " Loan-words in Tibetan ", published in T'oung-Pao, vol. xvii (1916), pp. 449 sqq.