7Q The Rev. Dr. Wall on the Nature, Age, and Origin of the 



Ce sont la de veritables alphabets, dont on forme a volonte un syllabaire, comme 

 nous le faisons nous-memes avec les lettres de notre alphabet." — Memoires de 

 rinstitut, torn, viii, p. 55. This passage was written in reference to the Japanese 

 syllabary, which the author contended to be the only one as yet discovered in 

 actual use (in order that he might make out the Corean system to be not a sylla- 

 bary, but a complete alphabet of consonants and vowels) ; although in his 

 volume of Recherches sur les langues Tartar es, published in the very same 

 year, 1820, he endeavoured to prove that the Tartars formerly employed sylla- 

 baries of their own invention. Passing by, however, this inconsistency, I have 

 to observe, that in the extract before us, short as it is, there are yet included four 

 very material errors. 



In the first place, the Professor, in expressing his conception of a syllabary, 

 has omitted its essential property, — ^namely, its being limited to some fixed num- 

 ber of terms ; — instead of which he has substituted an accidental one, and made its 

 nature in part depend on that of the characters by which the syllabic powers of 

 the system are represented. The nature of the characters undoubtedly may 

 give rise to the subordinate distinctions of diiFerent species ; but that it is not 

 essential to the general idea of a syllabary, is evident from a consideration of the 

 very one which gave occasion to his remarks. The Japanese syllabary can be 

 written in seven or eight different ways, namely, with the kata-kana characters, 

 or the Jira-kana, or the yamato-kana characters, &c. Yet still, the series of 

 powers thereby denoted remaining in every respect unchanged, the system con- 

 tinues to be essentially one and the same ; and is called either the Japanese 

 syllabary from the people who make use of it, or the I-ro-fa syllabary, from the 

 first three powers of the series. If any one choose to speak of the kata-kana 

 syllabary, or the fra-kana, or the yamato-kana syllabary, I do not object to this 

 mode of expression ; as it is only making the distinction of subordinate species 

 which must still come under the common denomination of the I-ro-fa, or the 

 Japanese syllabary. M. Klaproth, I observe, in a formal treatise upon this 

 syllabary, published in the volume of the Nouveau Journal Asiatique which 

 came out in the year 1829, expresses himself indifferently in either way. The 

 title of his paper is as follows : " Sur ITntroduction de 1' Usage des Caracteres 

 Chinois en Japon, et sur I'Origine des differens Syllabaires Japonais." Here 

 he speaks of different syllabaries ; but, when introducing the subject, he more 



