earlier romanization conventions

[Jonathan Silk]

dear Colleagues,

I've been reading the new English translation of Burnouf's 1844 Introduction
to the History of Indian Buddhism. A number of oddities sent me back to the
French, and I noticed something which I must have just not processed before.
When Burnouf writes Skt in romanization (setting aside the obvious fact that
the does not use the current system, which was only standardized later on),
he often (though not always) separates elements of compounds, especially so
in the names of texts and persons, but also in ordinary terms. I noticed
this because sometimes the translators of the English, who in principle
follow modern conventions, do not reconstruct the compounds properly. I
don't *recall* having seen this elsewhere, but then I didn't recall it from
when I read Burnouf in French either, so maybe I just never noticed it
before.

Any thoughts?

jonathan

-- 
J. Silk
Instituut Kern / Universiteit Leiden
Postbus 9515
2300 RA Leiden
Netherlands