The Central Institute of Institute of Indian Languages was set up on the 17th July 1969 with a view to assisting and coordinating the development of Indian languages. The Institute was charged with the responsibility of serving as a nucleus to bring together all the research and literary output from the various linguistic streams to a common head and narrowing the gap between basic research in the fields of languages and linguistics In India. In pursuance of this objective the Institute is bringing out its research results in printed form during the past years. The present book Lexicography in India is the result of a seminar on Dictionary Making in Indian Languages : Survey and Prospects held in 1970. I regret that it has taken almost nine years to bring this publication to light. Consequently I must acknowledge that the matter present is not always to date and therefore may be considered in that light. Dictionary making is considered as drudgery even by lexicographers themselves. Dr. S.M. Katre in his book Lexicography, while discussing Johnson’s colourful definition, has accepted the second part of ‘harmless drudge’ to be true of lexicographers. Whether it is true or not it may be conceded by all that dictionary making fulfils a vital task in a multilingual country. The progress made by different languages in the field of dictionary making is not even either qualitatively or quantitatively. It is not considered as a serious academic activity by educational managers and many funding agencies. I hope that the publication of this volume will draw attention of scholars towards this important task and spur research in this area. The Gooficon (Marina K. Burt and Carol Kiparsky. Newbury House Publishers, 1972) lists the following :

Goof, slang, n.1. An error students tend to make in learning English as a second language for which no blame is implied. 2. A sentence containing one or more goofs.

Gooficon, slang, n, A collection f goofs and their explanations from the point of view of English grammar.

The English-Khmer Medical dictionary (Keller, Sally E. English-Khmer Medical Dictionary, Work Papers Vo. xx supplement 2, 1976, SIL, UNIV. of North Dakota, USA) was designed for the ‘Khmer-speaking young people studying medicine through the medium of English in preparation for working in a hospital...’ The above two are illustrative of the possible varieties of dictionaries that can be made of two languages. They also underling the need for familiarizing oneself with the profile of users in order to build a dictionary on scientific lines.

If one takes a random sampling of dictionaries made during the last ten years using Indian languages, one is bout to be struck with the lack of research, field work and scientific thoroughness, Even, in a Hindi-English dictionary the compilers do not seem to have asked themselves the question whether it is intended to increase the knowledge of Hindi speakers, English knowledge of other Indian language speakers who have some control over Hindi of Hindi knowledge of those who have some control over English. They have not asked themselves if marking of grammatical categories is necessary. If the dictionary is a pedagogical aid to mother tongue speakers of Hindi, it may be argued, under certain conditions, marking of grammatical categories are unnecessary. Very few persons seem to be aware of the implications of indicating proper pronunciation both by means of a general guide to the spelling system, usually, in the front matter, and by means of some type of phoneticization of each entry word. (Malone 1962 : 111 as quoted by Keller). In dictionaries where either word-to-word gloss is neither available nor helpful whether defining sentences have to be given is a decision which needs to be taken early in the day. Similarly for polysemous words in Hindi whether Hindi examples in addition to English meaning need be given to clarify meaning is to be decided so that necessary steps may be taken in this regard.

In a language where a existing script is being adapted for the first time or which is written in two or more scripts, the latter order poses a problem. For example, if a language has an established order of memorizing letters and Nagari letters which are adapted for writing have a different order, then which is more advantageous and for whom needs to be investigated. The problem of Sindhi, which uses both Devanagari and Perso-Arabic is well known to the Sindhi lexicographers. Not only that Perso-Arabic is written from right to left, but lack of vowel symbols poses special problems in the ordering of letters in a dictionary. Yet very little empirical data is available to make decisions in this regard.

From this state of affairs to the production of technical bilingual dictionaries is a far cry. Need of the user and selectivity are the two guiding principles in this regard. Even in specific dictionaries and technical terminologies we find that the compilers are tempted to include general words and function words. All the words necessary for the structure of a language cannot and need not be included in every dictionary using that language. Our dictionary makers must learn to serve specific needs of identified groups of users and ot make the dictionaries everything to everybody.

I hope that this book will be found useful not only by dictionary makers but by users of dictionary in different languages. I am grateful to all those who have contributed papers and congratulate all those involved in bringing out this volume.