854 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



and the cliff is only descended at the risk of life. There seems 

 to be no reasonable doubt as to the authenticity of the carving : 

 the symbols are common to the religions of the ancient world, 

 and are scarcely likely to have been sculptured hi such a place 

 by Europeans, castaways or others, although there is reason to 

 suppose that subsidence of the island has taken place. Large 

 tanks or cisterns hewn out of the solid rock, and other traces of 

 long ago occupation, were found by the mutineers of the Bounty 

 in taking possession of Pitcairn. But there is nothing in this 

 drawing which can be called aught but picture-writing in its 

 most primitive form. 



Since no inscriptions are available, we may turn to ancient 

 alphabets, and see if any trace of them exists in the living 

 record, i.e., the language of the people. The letters in ancient 

 alphabets bear plain evidence of their picture-writing birth, in 

 the names by which they are called. Thus A was not called a 

 but (deph, that is "the ox;" B was not called b but beth, 

 " a house." The researches of antiquarians have demonstrated 

 the theory that the art of writing began with the Egyptians, 

 passed from them to the Semitic nations (Hebrews, Arabs, etc.,) 

 and was adopted from the Semites by the Aryan Greeks and 

 Latins. Picture-writing preceded the alphabet, and the hiero- 

 glyph was the mother of the letter. The Aryans nowhere seem 

 to have invented an alphabet for themselves ; they always took 

 over borrowed forms from peoples of earlier civilization : the 

 " Ogham " writing of the Irish is comparatively a modern script, 

 and remained only locally known. It consisted of strokes 

 drawn on either side of a centre line, according to the value of 

 the letter represented, and is supposed to have been originally 

 copied from a tree-branch with leaves on each side. A decisive 

 proof that the Greeks took over the names of the letters, as well 

 as their forms, is that alpha, beta, etc., are meaningless in 

 Greek, but translatable in Hebrew : the alpha, our a, having 

 still the old resemblance to the head of the ox [aleph), re- 

 versed y.* 



I propose to take three letters or signs, as examples of the 

 others, and to show that if the Maoris (i.e., Polynesians) did 



* The derivation of the Sanscrit word Upi, "writing," as Dr. Burncll 

 (" South Indian Palaography") has pointed out, is not decisively known. The 

 derivations from likh, "to scratch," or lip, "to smear," do not satisfy 

 scholars: Zipt has been best connected with the Achu'menian word tlijii, 

 " writing, edict." As the first Sanscrit writing seems to have been incised, 

 as in the rock inscription of Asoka, I believe we have the first, or very early, 

 form in the primitive and ancient Polynesian word, found in Maori as ripi, 

 "to cut;" and in compounds, muripi, "a knife;" koripi, "to cut;" in 

 Hawaiian, Upi, meaning " an axe," and " sharp" — cf. (Eng.) rip " to tear 

 open, cut open ;" (Middle Eng.) ripen, "to search into, probe;" (Swed. 

 and Norweg.) ripa, " to scratch" ; (Danish) oprippe, "to rip up." — Skeat, 

 " Etym. Diet.' 



