Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/308

Rh These were: 19, t with i; 29, m with ^ ; 33, )n with u ; 40, r with u ; 43, n with u ; and he observed especially the affinity the vowel i had for certain consonants — a peculiarity he noticed also in some of the Scythic laniiuafjes.^ Wlien once his attention was directed to these facts it was not long before he set himself to account for them. One of the most useful contributions to decipherment made by Lassen arose from the sug- gestion that an a is understood though not always expressed after a consonant, when not followed by another vowel. Indeed until this idea occurred to him the result of decipherment was the apparition of a long series of words consisting of an agglomeration of consonants which no living tongue could pronounce. The next step to be made, resulted from the observation that some letters were always followed by i and others bv ti. A laborious classification of each letter accordin<i as it was followed by each of these vowels was therefore undertaken, and the result was sulficientlv remarkable. Tt showed that in two cases in the grade of sonants {d and m) there was a different sign according as the letter was followed by a, i. or //. Converselv, there were three cases in the grade of aspirates [th. y, sh)^ where the same si<rn mi<rht be found l)efore any of the three vowels ; and finally there were several cases in the grade of surds {k^ t^ and /'), where it was noticed that the same

' llawlinson wrote, early in 1846: *The cause of the affinity of the vowel « for the characters^', t, m and v can nyither be explained,. nor can we perceive any uniform effect which the coalition produces upon the phonetic power of the consonant. I can only illustrate the formation of the different groups by adverting to the law which still prevails in th*- Tartarian dialects, requiring the juxtaposition of certain vowels with consonants in order to render the latter articulable ; and by observing that, as a similar rule appears to hold good in the so-called Median alphabet, which has every indication of a Scythic origin, it is not improbable that the Persian w^riting may have been indebted to that source for so remark- able a deviation from the true ])rinciples of Arian orthography.* J, K. A. S. X. C6.