98 The Rev. Dr. Wall on the Nature, Age, and Origin of the 



continuing to use the syllabary after he had attained to the superior system; 

 which he certainly would not do, if he had as much knowledge of the subject as 

 must have been acquired in rising from the one system to the other by his own 

 mental exertions. Indeed, even as the case stands, and admitting that he was 

 ever so passive and inert in his mode of receiving from some external source of 

 instruction the superior use of his letters, it is wonderful that the practical expe- 

 rience of the benefit of that use did not make him extend it through the whole of 

 his writing ; and his retaining the syllabary can, I conceive, be accounted for only 

 on the supposition of his having been long habituated to it before he was taught 

 the more perfect system. This supposition cannot, indeed, be verified by actual 

 observation, since there is not, as far, I believe, as has been yet ascertained, any 

 Sanscrit writing now extant in which there are not vowel letters ; but still it rests 

 upon inferential grounds of some strength, and the probability is, that the sylla- 

 bary alone was made use of for a long time before this writing reached the very 

 curious and extraordinary state in which it is now presented to our notice, with 

 the elements continually blended together in it of two alphabets of wholly 

 different kinds.* 



The Indian, however, had particularly strong inducements to introduce the 

 use of the superior alphabet into his writing, and we may be certain that he did 

 so, as soon as ever the improvement was suggested to him ; because there are 

 several syllables of his language that he could not express by means of his sylla- 

 bary. This imperfection, indeed, may to a lesser extent be observed in the 

 graphic practice of the Ethiopian ; of which I have given an instance in his 

 mode of writing the Greek word 'hpovcraXyfi, the second vowel of which he 

 was obliged to represent by the sound of the syllable i/a ; but as it affected only his 



* The Sanscrit scholar may perhaps be surprised at finding it stated, that there is any incongruity 

 in the ingredients of this writing. For, from the facility with which he conceives consonantal 

 powers, he insensibly acquires the habit of at once mentally resolving the syllabic letters he meets 

 with, into consonants and vowel signs ; whence he is brought to look upon the whole series of 

 characters which occur in any Sanscrit text, as belonging to an alphabet of one kind, and as differing 

 from the general nature of European writing only in the circumstance of being partly contracted. 

 But the writing in question is in this Essay considered, not as the European, from his superior 

 expertness in reading, is enabled to view it ; but as it is in itself, and as it appears to the apprehen- 

 sion of a native reader, taught according to the native method of instruction. 



