Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/313

284 method of transliteration required by the new system were, as we have said, carried out under the super\dsion of Mr. Xorris.^

Eawlinson has not drawn up a formal grammar of Old Persian, but lie loses no opportunit)^ of com- paring its forms with Sanscrit and Zend, and pointing out wherein they a^^ree and wherein they difler. He shows that the initial letter c/, so frequently employed,, is used to express the temporal augment in llie past tenses of verljs, and according to the analogy of the Sanscrit it is short. But the short a of Sanscrit terminations is clianued into lni>' a in the cuneiform; and the nmte terminal consonants of the former are usually omitted, as in the endings * as/ ' at,' ' an,' ' am,' a rule applieable to both nouns and verbs, lie shows also that the suliixes in /, so connnon in Sanscrit and Zend, are all lenirthened into 'iva'; a rule also applicable^ to the terminal ar li' lie had finished his chapter on the Vocabulary, the student might have been able from it to put together a complete grannnar. Under their initial letters we find ' adam,' the personal pronoun ' ego *; ' aniya,' ' alius *; the two demon- strative pronouns ' ava,' 'that,' and ' iyam,' 'this';^ correctly traced through all their cases so far as they were known — and the same is done for the cases of the verbs ' am4y,' ' I am,' and ' thah,' ' to say '; ^ and in each he shows the close similarity they exhibit to Sanscrit and Zend. In his notes to the translation he dwells especially on the construction of the sentences and upon the historical questions raided l)y the subject- matter of the text. He aives an elaborate analysis of each letter of the cuneiform alphabet, comparing

^ J. 1{. A. iV. X. 195, note. - 10. x. 56, 60, 65, 69.

3 lb. xi. 15, 20, 47, 72. Cf. Spiegel, pp. 180, 204, 208, 210. lb. xi. 27, 176. Cf. Spiegel, p. 209, 222.