ORIENTAL ELEMP:NTS OF CULTURE IN" THE OCCIDENT. 517 



Arabic miinorals reseniUU^ ours as well as thoso of India, l)ecaiise 

 they have more faithfully ])reserve(l the old Arabic forms. The his- 

 tory of writing otl'ei-s ifi this respect a paralUd, since the ]\Iaghrib 

 alphabet stands in many respects nuich nearer th(^ Gutic than does 

 the Neskhi. The ciphers of a Shiraz maiuiscript of tlu^ tenth cen- 

 tury" shows the transition of the older Islamic forms into those at 

 present in use in th(^ East. 



In earlier times the zero was n^presented by a point; the circular 

 form is secondary. R. Iloei-ide'' l)elieyes he recoo-nizes the beginnino- 

 of this sio-n in India in the fragments of an Indian arithmetic recently 

 discovered, wliicii he would ascribe to the third or fourth c(Mitury A. D., 

 and in which the point is also still employed for the unknown cpian- 

 tity. If it must be admitted that there is no inscriptional evidence 

 for the zero before the eighth century, still theiv ar(> indications of its 

 existence in India even in previous centuries. 1 also Ixdieve that there 

 is anoth(M- <eries of pluMiomena connected with th(^ history of the 

 di^velopment of th(> zero whicli until now htive not been considered 

 uiuhn- this aspect. The (xreek philologians used at first to mark pas- 

 sages which they considcn'ed as not genuine l)y a horizontal line called 

 ofteXog. In the Ihwapla of Origen the o/ifAo? appears in various 

 forms without any addition, as hypolemniscus with a point under- 

 neath, as lenuiiscus with two points, one above and the other underneath 

 the line. As these signs are used promiscuously, thos(> provided with 

 points ])rol)ably did not originate with Origen himself, but represent 

 jittempts at explanation l)y the scril)es. The coiuiection between the 

 ()))elos points and tlie canceling point, which writers of different lan- 

 guages of the Orient and Occident place oyer letters which we would 

 erase, is evident. In Latin this process was already in the fifth cen- 

 tury in vogue.'' As regards (ireek."' Syriac, Armenian, I can only assert 

 the fact without being a})le to tix the date of its beginning. In the 

 Hebrew Old Testament, too, our texts mark every lettcn- to l)e can- 

 celed by a point over it (compare, for instance, (ienesis xvi, a), and if 

 an entire word should not be read the point is repeated over every 

 letter of it (compare, for instance, (Tcnesis xxxiii, 4). In Psalm 

 xxvii. 3, is even found a mark corresponding to th(^ lenuiiscus; that is, 

 points a))ove and under every letter. The mentionmg of these points 

 in the Talmud' shows that they are older than the Masoretic vowel 



"Reproduced l)y Woepcke, op. cit., p. 75, (olnniii 4. 



''On the Bakhwliali nianuscnpt, inllie Procee(lin.i;sof the Vlltli International Con- 

 gress of Orientalists at Vienna, 1SS(), Aryan section, pp. \'.\\~].V1. Ooniparealso M. 

 Ilaberlandt, Zur < iescliiciite <ier Nnll, ( )('Hlcirei(lusciie Mdiiatsscliritt tnr den ( )ri(»nt, 

 Wien, 1890, vol. K), pji. ir)S-l(i(). 



f Maurice Prou, iManuei de ral('()L;ra))liie latnie et- trancaise dn \\'' an xvii'', siecie, 

 Pans, o. J, S., 15L 



f! Compare Gardthaui^en. ( iriechisciie I*:daeo<j:rapliie, I.eip/.ii:, 1S7!', i>p. 27S-279. 



f'Der P>al)yl()niseiie Talnuid nluTsctzt vnn Wmisciie, 1. Ilalhhand, Leipzig, lS(S0,p.6. 



