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



Each of the other letters undergoes similar modifications of shape, as well as 

 similar alterations of its syllabic power ; and the Indian learner is taught to 

 repeat, first the sixteen syllabic powers of the letter cfj ka in the order here 

 given ; next the sixteen powers of the letter ^ k'ha in the same order ; next 

 the sixteen of the letter Jf go; and so on till he has gone through the sixteen 

 times thirty-four powers of the system. From his being practised to repeat and made 

 to get by heart this collection of 544 syllables as one complete in itself, there is a 

 likelihood that the vowel-letters did not originally belong to his alphabet. I am 

 aware that the present mode of representing the subject is to state, that the 

 vowel-marks by which the syllabic characters are modified, are derived from the 

 vowel-letters ; — a representation which is suggested by the analogous appearance 

 of tlie characters produced from the combination of two or more of syllabic 

 powers, — but there are very few of the letters and marks in question between 

 which there is the slightest visible connexion ; and where there is any, it surely 

 may have arisen just as well from amplifying a mark into a letter, as from con- 

 tracting a letter into a mark. That where such connexion exists it was produced 

 in the former way, is rendered probable not only by the practice above alluded 

 to, but also by the name of the Sanscrit alphabet, viz. ^^^^f KeKHo, which 

 is evidently derived from the two letters cj^ and ?^, just in the same manner 

 as that of the Greek system is from its first two letters. Alpha and Beta, or that 

 of the Japan series from its first three terms, I-ro-fa; whence it would appear 

 that, when this alphabet received its present denomination, ka and k'ha must 

 have been its first two characters, and consequently that the vowel-letters, which 

 now precede them, must have been subsequently added to the system. 



It is quite impossible that men who had formed the syllabic part of this system 

 by their own effbrts of thought, could be blind to the immense advantage of 

 resolving it into consonants and vowels, instead of continuing to use it as a set of 

 syllabic signs ; the circumstance, therefore, of the Indians still employing it in 

 the latter manner, and particularly of their doing so after they had got vowel- 

 letters, aflFords, as I conceive, the most conclusive evidence that they did not 

 arrive at it by invention. But I have discussed this point so fully in the case of 

 the Ethiopic syllabary, that it is unnecessary for me to dwell upon it here, any 

 further than to observe that the arguments previously urged, bear more strongly 

 on the system now under consideration ; inasmuch as, from its greater number of 



