Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/336

Rh Turkish, and he notified the existence of a Tartarian gerund. The pronouns are, he says, Semitic; the adverbs Aryan; the vocabulary a strange agglomera- tion of Turkish and Semitic. Although its construction is more akin to Aryan than Scythic, yet upon the whole he decides that its affinitv is with the Scythic, and suggests that that would be a more appropriate name for it than Median.^ He thought some of its peculiarities might be explained by comparison with the Georgian, which, when time permitted, he proposed to undertake.- He su^irested that it was the lanofuai^fe of the al)orimnal race whom the Aryan Medes had con- quered, and whose settlements reac^hed at least to Itehistun, where an inscription had l)een found without the Persian translation, apparently indicathig that it was locally comprehensible.'"^

Wlien Uawlinsonhad finished liis Persian Memoir he devoted himself to a more elaborate study of the Median, and he appears to have nearly completed an essay upon the sul)ject. Meanwhile, however, lie was drawn from this branch of inquiry to the more attractive and useful study of the Babylonian colunni: and his work on Median was never pul)lished.^ He did not, however, los(^ his interest in the subject. He handed over his <'opies and other materials to Mr. Xorris, who under- took the investigation of the subject and to whom he continued to give valual)le assistance as occasion arose.

The study of Median was taken up in the meantime by Dr. llincks from the point where it was left by Westeriiaard and Pawlinson. Hincks's contribution is contained in three papers read l)efore the Irish Academy

' J.ll.A.S. X. 1>0, note.

- Western^aard was also struck by the similarity <>t* the Georgian plural iitKx *bi.' Coi)enhagfn edition, \)\). 800, 80«">. ' J.ILA.Kx. 37. ' lb. vol. ix. Report, 1S4H, and li.'port, May ]f<4X.

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