Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 01.djvu/820

ARAM. body, lie soon after disappeared, and no trace of him could be discovered. Suspicion lighted upon Aram, not as Clarke's murderer, but as his con- federate in fraud. His garden was searched, and in it were found some of the goods which Clarke had bought. Aram was arrested and tried, but acquitted for want of evidence. He now left his wife at Knaresborough, and went to London and other parts of England, teaching here and there; and, in spite of his roaming life, contrived to acquire a knowledge of botany, her- aldry, Chaldee, Arabic, Welsh, and Irisli, and was planning a comparative dictionary of all the European languages. His most important scholastic a<?hievement was his discovery of the similarity of the Celtic to other Euro])ean lan- guages. He was at work on his dictionary when he was suddenly dragged away from his usher- ship of Lynn Academy, in Norfolk, and commit- ted to prison on a charge of murder. The remain- der of the story is well known. In 1759 a skeleton was dug up near Knaresborough, which the in- habitants suspected to be that of Clarke ; for they had now come to the conclusion that the unfortunate" man had met with foul play, espe- cially as Aram's wife had, on several occasions, made strange statements to the effect that her husband and a man named Houseman knew more of Clarke's disappearance than they chose to tell. Houseman was now confronted with a bone of the skeleton which had been discovered. He very emphatically denied that it was Clarke's. People naturally wondered how he could be so positive, and they became convinced that if the skeleton was not Clarke's, Houseman must know where Clarke's body was. At last he confessed that he had been a spectator of the murder of Clarke by Aram and one Terry. He named the place where the body had been hidden. The skeleton was dug up, and Aram was tried at York for the murder of Clarke, on August 3, 1759. He conducted his own defense, and at- tacked, with great acumen, the doctrine of cir- cumstantial evidence ; but to no effect, for a verdict of guilty was returned, and he was con- demned to be executed within three days. In the interval he confessed his guilt to two clergy- men. While in the condemned cell he wrote a defense of suicide, but failed in a practical illus- tration of the doctrine. For further details consult: N. Scatcherd, Memoirs of Eiif/ene Aram (London, 1838), and for an idealized portrait, Bulwer, Eugene Aram (London, 1832) ; Hood, The Dream of Eiifieve Aram (London, 1845). AR'AMA'IC. The name given to a branch of the Semitic languages, which embraces numer- ous subdivisions. According to the classification now generally adopted, Semitic speech is divided into four broad divisions, as follows : ( 1 ) Baby- lonian-Assyrian ; (2) Aramaic; (3) Hebrseo- Phoenician; (4) South Semitic. Passing over the early Aramaic inscriptions, these languages may be divided into a Western and an Eastern branch. To the former belong (a) Biblical Aramaic; (b) Palmy rcne; (e) Nabatican; (d) Jewish Ara- waic in certain Targuniim and the Palestinian Talmud; (e) Christian-Palestinian; (f) Samari- tan; (g) Modern dialects in the Lebanon. East- ern Aramaic are: (a) much of the Babylonian Talmud; (b) Manda-an; (e) Syriac: (d) Neo- Syriac in Northern Mesopotamia, Kurdistan, and the neighborhood of Lake Unni. Of these the most interesting and important, so far as literary productions are concerned, are Bibli- cal Aramaic, Babylonian Aramaic, and Syriac. Examples of Biblical Aramaic are in the Books- of Daniel (c.l65 B.C.) and Ezra (e.250 B.C.), with some scattered words elsewhere in the Old Testament. The discussions of the Babylonian rabbis on the Pentateuchal and post-biblical laws are almost exclusively in the Aramaic dia- lect, which w-as adopted by the .Tews on coming to Babylonia, and which forms the language of the most of the vast compilation known as the Babylonian Talmiid. (See Talmud.) Roughly speaking, this compilation covers the four centuries from A.D. 200 to 600, though theie are both earlier and later portions in it. The Syriac literature is almost exclusivelj' Christian, and for the greater part theological. Its dialect is more properly that of Edessa, for through the translation of the Biljle known as the Peshito (i.e. the plain or unadorned render- ing), in the Second Century A.n., the literary language of Edessa spread throughout Mesopo- tamia and Palestinian Christendom. From this time until the Fourteenth Century a large litera- ture was produced, embracing not only doctrinal and homiletic expositions, rituals, and religious ])oetrj', Ijut also history and romance. Even after the Arabic conquest, Syriac continued for some centuries to be the current language in Mesopotamia and northern Palestine. See Sykiac.

Of the other Aramaic languages, the Pales- tinian Aramaic is represented chiefly in the literary remains of the Aramaic-speaking Chris- tians of Palestine and the discussions of the Rabbis in the Palestinian schools on the minute regulations of post-exilic .Judaism, while the Samaritan is of importance chiefly because of the translation of the Pentateuch into this speech. The ilandaie, (me of the Christian dialects of Mesopotamia, has but scanty literary remains, and is of importance chiefly for the insight it affords into the peculiarities of the Mandiean sect. Palmyrene and Xabatfean are represented chiefly by mortuary and commemorative inscrip- tions, belonging to the early centuries of our era, while the modern dialects have now a large litera- ture — Bible translations, Sunday-school books, and religious works — due to the efforts of various mis- sionary societies. A feature of the Aramaic speech, which is illustr;ited by the above sketch, is the large geographical extent occupied by it, covering as it does practically the entire range of Semitic settlements, with the exception of Southern .rabia and Abyssinia. As early as the Eighth Century B.C. we find Aramaic a current s)iecch in the extreme north of Syria at the foot of the Taurus range. Monuments of rulers in this district, found by German explorers at Senjerli, contain inscriptions in Aramaic. The southern limit of Aramaic is marked by inscriptions found at Teima in north- ern Arabia, and belonging to the period before Mohammed. In the later days of the Babylonian Empire, Aramaic even superseded the native Babylonian as tlie current speech of the people, so that the Hebrews, upon coming to Babylonia, adopted Aramaic and not Babylonian, in place of Hebrew. In Palestine proper, Aramaic also crept in at a comparatively early period. After the return of the Hebrews from the Babylonian exile, Hebrew rapidly declined and assumed the character of a sacred and learned language in contrast to the ever-growing popularity of Ara-