Page:JSS 006 1b Bradley OldestKnownWritingInSiamese.pdf/44

 my readers further illustration of this point, and shall confine myself to such alterations of the text as directly concern the sense.

8. พุ่ง 'to thrust with a weapon hurled'. It hardly can be "je sautai sur l'éléphant" of S, nor even "je combattis son éléphant" of P.

9. The second word seems to me to be a part of the elephant's name, มาศ เมือง "the city's gold, or treasure," and I take the next word แพ่ 'defeated' as expressing the result of the thrust. S and P, following only the cue of the word เมือง, take แพ่ for แพร่, the well known Lao city. But among some hundreds of elephant's names encountered in reading, I cannot recall a single monosyllabic one; and that city's name occurs in this text spelled แพล่ l. 121.

10. เพื่อ, 'because.' In modern Siamese the word is almost exclusively prospective 'with a view to,' 'in order that,' 'for.'

In this text the use of the nikhahit (◌ํ) seems quite unsettled. It was, of course, the 'anusvara' used in Indian writing to indicate a nasalized final short a. In modern Siamese and Lao, in combination with า—as in อำ—it is the regular spelling of the syllable am. Indeed the alternative spelling อัม almost never is seen save in the case of foreign words. In this text forms without า are as numerous as forms with it. Thus we have: คํแหง passim, ซํ้ 37, ดํ 53, บํเรอ 11, 16, 17, บงคํ 53, สํพาย 94; over against คำ 116, ค้ำ 23, จำ 86, ถ้ำ 93, 94, น้ำ 18, 41, 42, 94 พร่ำ 16. In each case the usage is quite consistent. But the sign seems to indicate an entirely different sound in สํ้=ส้ม acid 12, พํน perhaps พรรณ์ 49, 50, and ลุํบาจาย—115.

12. All the European editors so far seem quite unaware of the fact that หมาก was, and in the North still is, the generic name for any edible fruit, including of course the fruit par excellence, the areca-nut, but not by any means limited to that. "Sour" and "sweet", the terms applied to the word in this line, cannot without violence be applied to the areca-nut; yet B, S, and P, all feel compelled to attempt that