152 The Rev. Dr. Wall on the Sanscrit Writing and Language. 



questionable ;* they were, indeed, for a long time under Greek rulers, but so 

 were the Egyptians, and yet it is certain that this latter people had no alphabetic- 

 writing of their own till they became Christians. Analogy therefore would lead 

 us to a corresponding inference with respect to the Persians ; but at all events it 

 is, I submit, clear, from the specimen I have given of their history of the latter 

 part of what is called by them the Kalanian dynasty, that they could not have 

 had any durable mode of preserving the memory of events till long after the 

 termination of that dynasty. If, for instance, they had got any better writing 

 than hieroglyphs within two hundred years of the period in question, it is quite 

 impossible that they could have made such a nonsensical medley as they have, of 

 the life of Alexander the Great. Still, however, from the time they came under 

 Greek dominion, the government documents must have been in Greek ; which 

 circumstance would Indirectly contribute to render their national writing more 

 permanently legible, by affording a standard of reference. The effect of this is 

 visible in the approach, made at the end of the Kaianlan list, to the names of real 

 history. Thus, I submit, is laid open to our view the mysterious cause why the 

 Persians should be wholly ignorant of the ancient history of their country ; — a 

 cause which has operated exactly in the same way in the case" of every Asiatic 

 nation to the east of Persia. But I shall have an opportunity of placing this 

 matter in a much stronger light when, in the prosecution of the work with which 

 I am engaged, I come to treat of the language, the writing, and the history of 

 China. 



* The Persepolitan inscriptions, which are probably the oldest now extant in Persia, are written 

 in Syriac letters of an ancient form. 



