A DISSERTATION

ON THE

ORTHOGRAPHY OF ASIATICK WORDS

IN ROMAN LETTERS.

BY

THE PRESIDENT.

EVERY man, who has occafion to compofe tracts on Afiatick Literature, or to translate from the Afiatick Languages, must always find it convenient, and fometimes neceffary, to exprefs Arabian, Indian, and Perfian words, or fentences, in the characters generally used among Europeans; and almost every writer in those circumftances has a method of notation peculiar to himself; but none has yet appeared in the form of a complete fyftem; fo that each original found may be rendered invariably by one appropriated fymbol, conformably to the natural order of articulation, and with a due regard to the primitive power of the Roman alphabet, which modern Europe has in general adopted. A want of attention to this object has occafioned great confusion in Hiftory and Geography. The

ancient Greeks, who made a voluntary facrifice of truth to the delicacy of their ears, appear to have altered by defign almost all the oriental names, which they introduced into their elegant, but romantick, Hiftories; and even their more modern Geographers, who were too vain, perhaps, of their own language to learn any other, have so strangely disguised the proper appellations of countries, cities, and rivers in Afia, that, without the guidance of the fagacious and indefatigable M. D'ANVILLE, it would have been as troublesome to follow ALEXANDER through the Panjab on the Ptolemaick map of AGATHODÆMON, as actually to travel over the fame country in its present state of rudeness and diforder. They had an unwarrantable habit of moulding foreign names to a Grecian form, and giving them a resemblance to fome derivative word in their own tongue: thus, they changed the Gogra into Agoranis, or a river of the assembly, Uchab into Oxydrace, or sharpfighted, and Renas into Aornos, or a rock inacceffible to birds; whence their poets, who delighted in wonders, embellished their works with new images, diftinguishing regions and fortreffes by properties, which existed only in imagination. If we have lefs liveliness of fancy than the Ancients, we have more accuracy, more love of truth, and, perhaps, more folidity of judgement; and, if our

works fhall afford lefs delight to thofe, in respect of whom we fhall be Ancients, it may be faid without presumption, that we shall give them more correct information on the History and. Geography of this eastern world; fince no man can perfectly describe a country, who is unacquainted with the language of it. The learned and entertaining work of M. D'HERBELOT, which profeffes to interpret and elucidate the names of persons and places, and the titles of books, abounds alfo in citations from the best writers of Arabia and Perfia; yet, though his orthography will be found lefs defective than that of other writers on fimilar fubjects, without excepting the illuftrious Prince KANTEMIR, ftill it requires more than a moderate knowledge of Persian, Arabick, and Turkish, to comprehend all the paffages quoted by him in European characters; one inftance of which I cannot forbear giving. In the account of Ibnu Zaidùn, a celebrated Andalusian poet, the first couplet of an elegy in Arabick is praised for its elegance, and expreffed thus in Roman letters:

66

Iekad heïn tenagikom dhamairna;

Iacdha âlaïna alaffa laula taffina.

"The time, adds the tranflator, will foon will deliver us from all our come, when you

cares the remedy is affured, provided we