Page:Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 1912.djvu/809

ROMANIC LETTERS FOR INDIAN LANGUAGES 751 Applying these principles to the more modern names it is clear that we should restore the original Persian pronunciatinn if we translitrratid them Sēbōē, Mushkōē, Khālōē, Naftōē, Durustōē, etc. It would be wrong to write them as if they were present-day Īrānī names, Sībūyah, Mushkūyah, etc., became this pronunciation of the majhūl vowels did not come in until centuries after the Muslim conquest.

We now see at once why the Arabic writers used the termination -awaihi to render the Persian -ōē. These two vowels do not, strictly speaking, exist in classical Arabic, and they are therefore called majhūl “unknown,” as distinguished from ū and ī, maʻrūf, “known.” The nearest Arabic sound to ō is the diphthong au or aw, and the nearest Arabic sound to ē is the diphthong ai or ay. Therefore the Arabs were quite correct in the transliteration they adopted, according to the principles of their own language. In all probability the accent in these hypocoristic names fell upon the last syllable; and it was in order to mark this that the Arabs expressed it by aihi (with short kasrah at the end, which would not be heard in pause). In modern Arabic aw is frequently pronounced ō, and ai ē; and Sībawaihi, thus rendered, is by no means a bad equivalent of Sēbōḗ. C. J..

The accompanying illustration gives the details of the scheme of Romanic letters for Indian languages, as suggested in my paper on “An Imperial Script for India” read at the East India Associatinn. Romanic letters consist of the ordinary Roman letters supplemented by the phonotypes of Sir Isaac Pitman and Mr. A. J. Ellis, together with some special letters for Indian sounds for which English has no equivalents The illustration