Page:Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal Vol 7, Part 2.djvu/67

l838] have long been pledged to my readers (and to the critics of the Meerut magazine in particular) to give them a new alphabet for these Bactrian legends, and I think the time ha. now arrived when I may venture to do so; or at least to make known the modifications which have been elicited by the abundance of fresh names and finely preserved specimens which have passed under my eye since that epoch. It must be remembered that the only incontestable authority for the determination of a vowel or consonant is, its constant employment as the equivalent of the same Greek letter in the proper names of the Bactrian kings. Beyond this we have only analogies and tnsemblances to other alphabets to help us, and the conjectural assumption of such values for the letters that occur in the titles and epithets of royalty as may furnish an admissible translate of the Greek in each and every case.

It will be my object presently to shew that this can be done, as far as the coins are concerned, by means of the Sanskrit or rather the Fell language; but in the first place it will be more convenient to bring forward my revised scheme of the alphabet as far as it is yet matured. Unfortunately the exceeding looseness of orthography and kalligraphy which could not but prevail when one foreign language, (for such it was to the Greek die-cutters), was attempted to be rendered by the ear in another character, equally foreign to the language and to the scribes, that with abundance of examples before me it is impossible to select the true model of some letters for the type-founder!

I begin with the initial vowels:

9, a. This symbol continues to occupy the place of the vowel a in all the new names, lately added to our list, beginning with the Greek A, of whiCh we have now no less than seven examples. The other short initials appear to be formed by modifications of the alif as in th. Arabic: thus. ‘, I e, is constantly employed for the a of Greek names. i u, i. found following it in the word Eucratides, as though put for the Greek T, but other evidence is wanting. 1, 17 though seldom met with on the coins is common in the inscriptions, and by analogy may be set down as 1. .9 and 2, ci, an, is employed in words beginning with AN. The medials seem to be formed in all cases by a peculiar system of

names. In the modificatloss i now propose, however, I do not borrow one letter from hi. list, because In fact he has followed quite another track. Ills reading of pan.u is, s.jrrvd, a Syrian word I believe for prince or noble. It was this which led to the expression of doubt of my own former alphabet, and to the just satire thereon in the Mreret Mipn. 4L