VI.] THE SOUTHERN MONGOLS. 203 



" enlumine^." Here, he tells us, the script is still in use, being 

 employed jointly with Chinese in drawing up legal dpcuments 

 connected with property. He was informed that this Lolo 

 script comprised 300 characters, read from top to bottom and 

 from left to right 1 , although other authorities say from right to 

 left. 



Of the Lolo he gives no specimens 2 , but reproduces two or 

 three pages of a Mosso book with transliteration and translation. 

 Other specimens, but without explanation, were already known 

 through Gill and Desgodins, and their decipherment had exercised 

 the ingenuity of several Chinese scholars. Their failure to interpret 

 them is now accounted for by Prince Henri, who declares that, 

 "strictly speaking the Mossos have no writing- system. The 

 magicians keep and still make copy-books full of hieroglyphics ; 

 each page is divided into little sections (cahiers) following hori- 

 zontally from left to right, in which are inscribed one or more 

 somewhat rough figures, heads of animals, men, houses, con- 

 ventional signs representing the sky or lightning, and so on." 

 Some of the magicians expounded two of the books, which 

 contained invocations, beginning with the creation of the world, 

 and winding up with a catalogue of all the evils threatening 

 mortals, but to be averted by being pious, that is, by making 

 gifts to the magicians. The same ideas are always expressed by 

 the same signs; yet the magicians declared that there was no 



1 Op. cit. p. 55. 



2 This omission, however, is partly supplied by T. de Lacouperie, who gives 

 us an account of a wonderful Lolo MS. on satin, red on one side, blue on the 

 other, containing nearly 5750 words written in black, " apparently with the 

 Chinese brush." The MS. was obtained by Mr E. Colborne Baber from 

 a Lolo chief, forwarded to Europe in 1881, and described by de Lacouperie 

 Journ. R.As.Soc., Vol. XIV. Part i. "The writing runs in lines from top to 

 bottom and from left to right, as in Chinese" (p. i), and this authority regards 

 it as the link that was wanting to connect the various members of a widely 

 diffused family radiating from India (Harapa seal, Indo-Pali, Vatteluttu) to 

 Malaysia (Batta, Rejang, Lampong, Bugis, Makassar, Tagal), to Indo-China 

 (Lao, Siamese, Lolo), Korea and Japan, and also including the Siao-chuen 

 Chinese system " in use a few centuries B.C." (p. 5). It would be premature 

 to say that all these connections are established ; but the Indian origin and 

 affinities of all the members of the Malayan branch are now placed beyond 

 doubt (see next Chapter). 



