No part of the arrangement of the work has given me more perplexity than the adoption of some uniform plan for the orthography of Oriental words. In writing for the English public, I preferred adapting the letters to the familiar pronunciation of our own language rather than to those of the continent of Europe; and my object has been to confine the power of each letter or diphthong to one simple sound, in whatever situation it be placed.

Thus the vowels are pronounced: —

a as in water, wall, ball.

e as in met, bell, level.

i as in bit, hill, lip.

o as in hold, bold.

u as in but, must.

y as in truly. — Where this letter is placed at the beginning or middle of a word it is sounded as in youth, joyous.

The following diphthongs and double letters are used to supply the varied sounds of some of the vowels: —

ee as in fleet, feel, seem.
oo as in school, tool.
ou as in our, hour, flour.
ei as in sleight, height.

Of the consonants, the letter c is never used except in conjunction with h, when the two letters have the same sound as in church. The Persian letter is expressed by the letters kh, which com­bined, have the sound of ch in the Scotch word loch, a lake. The letter is written with the letters gh, representing a guttural g, which is foreign to any of the western languages. The rest of the consonants have the same sound as in English. For the use of the Oriental scholar an appendix is added, containing all the proper names in the Persian character, with the meaning, as far as was practicable, to each name. These ortho­graphical rules have been applied to the proper names of persons and things, but not always to those of towns or countries, which are written as they are usually to be found in maps; and a table of latitudes and longitudes for those places whose positions have been ascertained is appended, though I regret it is not more complete.

The notes which have been added are the result either of personal observation or of information ob­tained for the purpose. In these the name of my friend Colonel Tod frequently appears, and to him I am much indebted for his unreserved communi­cations on all points connected with the history and geography of Rajpoothana and northern India. My thanks are also due to Mr. Henry Ellis, the author of Lord Amherst's Embassy to China; and to Mr. De Morgan, Mathematical Professor in the University of London, for their uniform kind­ness in rendering me assistance and advice on all occasions.

In preparing the indices to the last volume, I received much aid from Mr. J. Mitchell, Dr. Rosen, the Professor of Oriental Literature in the Uni­versity of London, and Dr. Bernard Dorn; and I take this opportunity to return my thanks to these gentlemen for their assistance.

After what has been said in the early part of this preface, I trust I shall be exculpated from the charge of endeavouring to supersede the former translations from any notion of my superior fitness to undertake the task. I have shown that I ori­ginally entertained no such idea; nor would this work have been brought forward in its pre­sent shape had not the circumstances which oc­curred at Poona deprived me of the labours of many years' study and anxiety, and left this sole wreck behind. The chief merits of a translator seem to me to consist in faithfully rendering the sentiments of the author into the language of the translation free alike from the crudities of foreign idioms, from the verbosity and terseness which be­long to some tongues, and from affectation. How far I have succeeded in following these rules, I leave the public to determine.