Sanscrit Writing and Language. 87 



excluded on the supposition of an independent invention. Here, then, lies one 

 of the many and, as I conceive, insurmountable difficulties of the imaginary case 

 under consideration. Man cannot construct an alphabet, by his own unaided 

 powers of intellect, till he has discovered the principle of its construction ; and 

 he cannot find out the principle until he gets under his observation a system of 

 signs, selected according to this very principle of which he is as yet ignorant. 

 Whether the reader will be more struck with this difficulty than with those 

 previously submitted to him in the part of my work which has already been 

 published, I cannot take upon me to determine ; but I am induced to place the 

 subject before him in diffijrent points of view, in the hopes of gaining his assent 

 to the correctness of one way of considering it, if not of another. I do not, how- 

 ever, expect him to acquiesce in mere abstract reasoning unsupported by actual 

 experience. What I principally rely on, is the fact that, not merely no alphabet 

 has ever yet been proved to have been produced by the independent contrivance 

 of man, but also every alphabet for which such origin is claimed can be clearly 

 shown from its own nature to be a derivative one. I have already established, I 

 will venture to say, beyond a doubt, and by the strongest evidence, both internal 

 and external, the Greek origin, as well of the alphabetic writing of the Egyptians 

 — to which, by the way, they never attained till after their conversion to Chris- 

 tianity, — as also of the phonetic writing previously employed by them in their 

 hieroglyphic system. I shall now for like pui'pose proceed to the consideration of 

 the Sanscrit alphabet. 



This alphabet is here exhibited in the character (in which it is principally 

 written) called Deva-nagari, which signifies, according to some authors (for all 

 are not agreed upon the point), " the written language of angels." This mean- 

 ing of the term is just worth noticing on account of the accordance of the opinion 

 it implies with that which almost universally prevailed in the ancient world, of 

 letters having been a gift to man from some one or other of the gods. The 

 diffusion of this notion through countries and ages so widely separated asunder 

 seems to indicate the remains of an early tradition on the subject, and conse- 

 quently tells somewhat in favor of the divine origin of the first alphabet, though 

 not of those for which the honor has been claimed by pagan nations. The letters 

 of the system now to be considered are arranged as follows, the power of each 

 being placed immediately under it. 



