Page:The Aryan Origin of the Alphabet.djvu/63

Rh necessarily imply its alphabetic use there, though taken in series with the other contemporary alphabetic owner's marks there establishes a presumption that it also was alphabetic.

In the Cadmean and Greek this X occurs as a letter with alphabetic value, but that phonetic value is considerably confused by the Greeks, the X value being transferred by them to a totally different letter-sign. Although this X sign occurs in the Greek alphabet in the third place from the end, as does also the X in the Roman and modern alphabet, it is not given an X phonetic value in Greek but is read Ch, and this notwithstanding that C is admittedly a very late letter. On the other hand the letter between N and O in the Greek alphabet, formed by three parallel lines and corresponding to the three-parallel barred S of the Phœnician alphabet (the Sigma of the Greeks) which also occupies therein this identical place between N and 0, is given by the Greeks the guttural value of X and called Xi, although it has not the form of X. That this letter was presumably regarded by the Greeks as the Phœnician S seems evident from the use by the later Greeks of the guttural C to represent the sibilant S.

In the Indian Pali and Sanskrit alphabets a somewhat similar confusion exists. In the Asokan, which is essentially a Pali script, the sign representing X (as seen in both versions, see Plate II, col. 11) is given by Indianist scholars the value of C, whilst what appears to be a cursive form of the same sign is given the value of Khā, Khi and Chi, and the letter X is not used by Indianists for transliterating any of these letters. In Sanskrit, however, the Kh of the Pali is sometimes rendered Ksh and by others X. Thus the ruling title of Khattiyo of the Pali, which I have shown to be the equivalent of the Sumerian Khatti or "Hitt-ite," and the Catti title of the Ancient Briton kings