Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/335

306 historical importance. The incoiivenieuce of calling a Scythian language after the Aryan Medians has there- fore manifestly increased, while the name of ' Susian,' though not free from objection, has become more apjjropriate, and is the one now generally adopted. How far the Ihiiguage was spoken beyond the limits of Susiana, among the subject tribes of Media, may still be open to conjecture. There is, as we shall see, some evidence in favour of its extension.

It will l^e recollected that early in 1846 Rawlinson had been able to translate the whole of the last para- graph of the second colunm of the Behistun inscription from the Median or Susian text, the Persian version of that passage having been found illegible.^ Several years later Mr. Nori-is, with all his special knowledge, was o])lii>'ed to confess that he was ' unable to a'ive a better transhition than Colonel Kawlinson lias prepared' of that very paragraph.- In the same year Rawlinson announced the opmion liis studies had led him to adopt upon this subject. It does not appear that he was as yet acquainted with Westergaard's essay: but he had arrived at the same conclusicm with reference to the Scvthic aflinities of the lanOTaiie. He likewise esti- mated the number of the siuiis at about a hundred, ' the vowels, unless they commence a syllable, l)eing for the most part inherent.' He does not appear to have noticed the absence of sonants, but he saw that there must be considerable interchantreability in letters of the same class, and perhaps even between a and /. He added that the language evinced a repugnance to r. He held that ' it i-esembles the Scvthic in the em- ])loyment of post-positions and pronominal possessive suifixes.' In the declension of nouns it uses post-fixed })articles that are frequently the same as in modern

' J. R. A. S. X. L>28. - lb. XV. 115.