GLOSSARY OF NAMES AND TERMS.
[In the text of the present booklet all unnecessary terms have been avoided. Whenever a good English equivalent could be found, the foreign expression has been dropped. Nevertheless, the introduction not only of many foreign-sounding names, but also of some of the original terms, was unavoidable.
Now we have to state that the Eastern people, at least those of Hindu culture during the golden age of Buddhism in India, adopted the habit of translating not only terms but also names. A German whose name is Schmied is not called Smith in English, but Buddhists, when translating from Pāli into Sanskrit, change Siddhattha into Siddhārtha. The reason of this strange custom lies in the fact that Buddhists originally employed the popular speech and did not adopt the use of Sanskrit until about five hundred years after Buddha. Since the most important names and terms, such as Nirvāna, Karma and Dharma, have become familiar to us in their Sanskrit form, while their Pāli equivalents, Nibbāna, Kamma and Dhamma, are little used, it appeared advisable to prefer for some terms the Sanskrit forms, but there are instances in which the Pāli, for some reason or other, has been preferred by English authors [e. g. Krishā Gautamī is always called Kisāgotamī], we present here in the Glossary both the Sanskrit and the Pāli forms.
Names which have been Anglicised, such as "Brahmā, Brahman, Benares, Jain, and karma," have been preserved in their accepted form. If we adopt the rule of transferring Sanskrit and Pāli words in their stem-form, as we do in most cases (e. g. Nirvāna, ātman), we ought to call
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