892 



REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1896. 



formed, which are given, with their Malagassy names, in the following 

 table : 



1 * * Jama. 



9 * ' Adikizy. 



Taraika. 



10 



Alezany. 



Jditsimay. 



11 



A lemora. 



Alokola. 



12 



Adibidjady. 



Asoravary. 



13 



Kizo. 



Asoralahy. 



14 



Adikiasajy. 



MoJahidy. 



15 



Saka. 



Mikiarija. 



16 



Vonfsira. 



lu order to explain the Malagassy names, which in part at least are 

 Arabic, M. Steiuschneider' gives a table, compiled from a Hebrew 

 lot book in Munich, with the Arabic, Hebrew, Latin, and Berber desig- 

 nations of these combinations of dots. The figures, he states, are 

 supposed to represent the astrological "houses" connected with the 

 planets. They are distinguished as male and female — a distinction 

 which we may assume exists in the single and double dots, as in the 

 unbroken and broken lines. Steiuschneider assumes that this sup- 

 posed Arabic science was transplanted by scholars like Abraham ibn 

 Essa and Jehuda al-Charisi, who traveled from Spain in Europe and 

 the Orient in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, through so called 

 lot books into Hebrew. 



Sibree relates that in a simple form of SiMdy an indefinite number of 

 grass stalks are counted off in twos until only one or two are left.^ 



' Zeitsclirift d. deutsclien morgenlandischeu Gesellscbaft, XXXI, p. 762. 



2 For further references to Sikidy see : 



Zeitschift d. deutscheu morgenlandischea Gesellscbaft, XXXI, p. 543. 



William Ellis, History of Madagascar, London, 1838, p. 431. 



James Hibree, jr., Madagascar and Its People, London, 1870, p. 392. 



James Sibree, jr.. The Great African Island, London, 1880, p. 308. 



James Sibree, jr., Madagascar before the Concjuest, London, 1896, pp.162, 285. 



L. Dahle, Antananarivo Annual, II, p. 80. 



