Excerpt from The Industrial Arts of India<br><br>I have been much exercised with the spelling of the modern Indian geographical names. I have never before spelled them according to the official system, but have been forced under various compulsions to submit more or less completely to it. On the present occasion. I have given up Sir Charles Napier's Scinde, but I have not been able to give up Moore's Cashmere. Whoever heard of the vale of Kashmir It has been very confusing to me to give up the Old oo's and ee's for the new a's and-i's, which latter render it impossible for common English people to understand anything like the 'true pronunciation of Indian names. It is impossible for English people to pronounce P-u-n-a as Poona, N-i-r-a as Neera, S-h-i-r-p-u-r as Shere pore, or D-a-m - D-a - m as dum-dum.' Even if the natives of India adopted the Roman alphabet we ought not to spell modern Indian geographical names as they naturally would, if our first object is to preserve the proper pronunciation of them: for let it be clearly understood that by the official system of spelling, we are degrad ing their pronunciation. I saw Kurnool the other day rhymed to skull, simply because the writer of the poem, himself an accomplished Orientalist, had been, in a heed less moment, misled by the official spelling of the word Karnul. English is English, and the spelling of English words should be left to be settled, by popular English usage, and no attempt should be made to regulate it by arbitrary resolutions of government. When an.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.