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

Bráhma, Ráma, Síva, Víshnu, and their associates, are frequently met with in various
dialectical modifications. The same names being also used as personal names of the
Hindus, every distinction consequently disappears, even though in isolated cases geo-
graphical names are referred in the first instance to persons belonging to modern
history. Occasionally Sanskrit names have passed far beyond the limits within which
the Hindostáni language is spoken, the geographical position of many places most
sacred to Brahmanical worship having materially contributed to this irregularity.
Mountains, lakes, and sacred springs are objects beyond all others with which names
of former periods have remained connected; the highest peaks of the Alps often pre-
sent cases of perfect analogy. I may be allowed to allude here to the interpretation
of Monte Rosa in our "Untersuchungen über die Alpen."¹ Amongst the words com-
pounded with elements of no mythological character, those containing nau, new, are
very numerous all over India; the application of upper and lower, frequent in Europe,
is less often used; even in the hilly districts of India and along the shores of its
rivers, where distinctions of level are so easily perceptible, such designations are very
rare;² Bulandsháhar, high town, is one of the few instances.

Numerals, as two, three, and ten, are very frequently used in compound geographical
names, as Dásgáñ, ten villages; Típpera, three towns; the term evidently meaning
that a locality in its present form is composed of several original settlements more
or less numerous. Arabic and Persian personal names introduced into composition
have been spread by the Mussálmáns in a vast proportion throughout India; and we
meet them again in the north, in Turkistán, the names remaining in most instances
almost without alteration. As they are generally taken from the Korán, it is very
difficult in most instances to decide to which special person, king, governor, &c., such
a name might be referred, even in cases where circumstances make such an origin
very probable. Here, as everywhere where we meet Mussálmán names, the linguistic
elegance and energy of the meaning is a welcome appearance.

The Tibetan terminology is particularly descriptive: great, small, high, low; the
various colours, as white, black, red, and allusions to the physical condition in general, are
very often met with; as component parts particularly frequent I may mention: thang,
pang, plain, grassy place; khar, fort; la, pass; ri, mountain; tso, lake; kar, white;