Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/260

Rh Grotefend gave the value of n to a sign that completed the word 'bun,' to which he gave the meaning 'stirps.' This word had long been a stumbling-block to Zend scholars, and Lassen determined to get rid of it. He showed in the first place that the b or p at the beginning could not be interchangeable, and the word must at all events be treated as 'pun'; but he proposed to alter it still further by reading 'put.' By this means he came nearer to its obvious meaning, 'son' — that is, to the Zend 'putra.' He found this innovation supported by another word, kstrn, to which he thought he could attach a Zend meaning.

The nine incorrect values he admitted into his alphabet show little or no improvement on those suggested by Grotefend or Burnouf; and unfortunately the decipherer himself can rarely distinguish the incorrect values from the correct. A glance over a page of Lassen's transliteration will show the havoc these nine incorrect letters have made in his work. But, as we have said, he introduced errors peculiar to himself that were even more fatal than his failure to identify all the signs correctly. For example, he remarked that the sign he took for a short α seemed composed of the sign for n  and an angular wedge which might be an abbreviation of the sign itself. He was led to this hypothesis by comparison with the Zend, where ă is clearly a combination of α and n He goes farther and gives the short α and n the guttural sound of αng, when it is found before the letter he thought was h (, 27; really y), and he cites several instances which he thinks will justify this opinion. He recognises, however, that the rule even thus limited is not always applicable.