Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/312

Rh The interchange of these two signs in ' Kurus ' finally disposed of a supposition started by Buniouf and supported so lately as Iloltzmann,^ that >-^^ might be /, and that the Persians pronounced the name of their <ifreat kin<r ' Kulus/

Considerations of the same kind greatly assisted liawlinson in rectifying some of his values. For example, in the case of ^E*", which he had hitherto read //A, he found that it replaced {^ the g before a, in order to form the locative singular ' Msrgaicw; and consequently he had no hesitation 'in placing the two characters, not merely in the same class, but in the same grade of that class/ It is therefore now found among the gutturals as g l)efore ur

Precisely the same considerations led to the rectifi- cation of 28 (►-y^) j'/t to j. He found the locative of Susiana [' uwajaiya ') written »-y^ . ^, i.e. ji, which he knew from granunatical considerations must stand for jai; and he therefore concluded that *^^^ \sj before a; which is correct.

A farther result of this classification is to supply the sounds of the missini*" vowels e and o. for when i or it follow a consonant with an inherent a, the diphthongs ai and au are produced, which correspond phonetically and grammatic^ally to the diphthongs e and 6 in Sanscrit.^ Such were the results communicated by Rawlinson in his Supplementary Note, which, as we have seen,, crossed the detailed account of Hincks's paper on the same subject. It was received in London on October 8, and its substance was read at a meeting of the Society on December G, and noticed in the
 * Athenaeunr of December 10.** The alterations in the


 * Holtzmann, lieitriif/e, p. 15i\

2 J. It A, S. X. 177. > lb, X. 176.


 * Athenmimy December 19, 1846, p. 1302. Cf. ib. November 22, 1884.