Sanscrit Writing and Language. 73 



immediately after having given it, and as using the term syllabary here in its 

 ordinary acceptation. Accordingly, by his denial of the Ethiopic alphabet being 

 a syllabary, he must be understood to maintain, that the powers of the letters 

 employed in this writing are not syllabic. I confess I was startled by this part of 

 the passage under examination when I first read it, and should not have been 

 more surprised by a bold denial of the Greek and Roman alphabets being systems 

 of consonants and vowels. Had the latter declaration been made with ever so 

 much confidence, of course I should not have thought it necessary to refute it; 

 but as the Ethiopic writing is not so generally known, a short account of it here 

 may perhaps not be superfluous. 



When by the discovery made by the Portuguese navigators of a passage round 

 the Cape of Good Hope, a direct communication was opened with Abyssinia, 

 and intercourse with the Inhabitants became in consequence more frequent, the 

 attention of the learned was turned to the very peculiar kind of writing em« 

 ployed by that people ; and great interest was excited by the appearance of a 

 version of the Scriptures in a language and character then first brought into 

 notice in Western Europe. The study of this version was much facilitated ^y 

 the nature of the language, which was found to have a very close affinity to 

 Hebrew ;* it was encouraged even by the Popes, from a desire to provide means 

 for the extension of their spiritual dominion over a distant empire ; and it was 

 considerably promoted by their having granted an asylum and permanent resi- 



* The curious fact of an African people speaking a dialect of Hebrew is, perhaps, best accounted 

 for by Nicephorus (Callistus) in his Ecclesiastical History; where, incidentally describing the 

 extensive district of Abyssinia between Axum and the ocean near its junction with the Red Sea, he 

 informs us, that the inhabitants called themselves Assyrians ; that up to his time they spoke the 

 Assyrian (or Chaldee) language ; and that they were the descendants of colonists who had been 

 transported thither from Syria by Alexander the Great. Certainly it must have been some very 

 despotic measure by which their forefathers were driven to so ungenial a clime ; and no one was 

 more likely than the Macedonian conqueror to have put this [^into execution, both from the extent 

 of his power and the violence of his disposition. The passage to which I refer, is as follows: — 

 Taurrjc toIvvv tJ}? i^vd^ag Totg t^ooOsv fiepsaiv iv apiartpa 'Av^ov /jurat ilalv, S>v ij fisrpo- 

 TToXtg "Av^ov /iiQ. ripi S' avTciiv dcrlv sttI tov i^WTurw KaOriKOVTeg^QKcavbv Trpog avaToXac, 

 ^ AaavpioC raiiTt) 8e t?J kX^uh, koi Trap' avroig ovofjia (ptpovcnv' ovg 'AXt^avSpoc 6 Maics- 

 C(t)v, EK Supiae avaoT-fjaag, iKii Kari^Kicrtv' 61 Sf Iq Sivpo ry Trarpii} yXuiacT)/ ■xpwvTcii. — ■ 

 Histor-ia Ecclesiast.lih.iyi, c. 18. 



VOL. XVIII. JT 



