in the triple Inscriptions of the Persians, &c. 279 
defective ones should have their vacancies filled up ; and that it is not with a. 
Thus, the name of the father of Darius is uniformly represented, in the Persepo- 
litan legends of the first kind, by a group to be read ‘ Vishtaspa’ (or, perhaps, 
‘Whishtaspqa’ ), which is written with a secondary w, appropriate to, and followed 
by the cuneiform 7; while, in the Behistun tablets, the initial character of the 
same designation is syllabically employed, without any letter after it to denote 
the vocal part of the syllable ; and, in the reading of the latter group, the first 
supplied vowel should unquestionably be 7, in accordance with the fuller cunei- 
form expression of the same name. Major Rawlinson, indeed, in his transcrip- 
tion of the Behistun record, has constantly written this name “ Vashtaspa;” but 
he has virtually allowed this to be an erroneous representation of its sound, in the 
second chapter of his memoir, by giving there the right vocalization of its first 
syllable, and a just view of the matter, with regard to this and another particular 
example.* In cases, however, in which we have no longer any means of ascer- 
taining the vocal sounds of the old Persian words, the Sanscrit mode of supplying 
their place may as well be adhered to as any other, with the precaution of not 
inserting a short a oftener than is absolutely necessary for the pronunciation of 
all the elements of the cuneiform groups; but, wherever the slightest clue is 
afforded to the vocalization of those groups, it is to be followed in preference to 
a practice that has nothing but mere arbitrary convention to rest on. Thus the 
second group, in the common title of Darius and his son, Xerxes, transcribed 
without any supplementary letters, WZRK, and the modern Persian term, 6%, 
transcribed in the same way BZRG, may be well conceived to be connected; as 
the meaning of the latter, “great, powerful, grand, or magnificent’’ (see Richard- 
son’s Persian and Arabic Dictionary), is a perfectly suitable ingredient of the 
title in which the former occurs; and as the transition has been frequent in the 
course of time from the w power to that of v, and again from the v power to that 
*“Tn the name Vishtdspa, and in the term V’itha, ‘a house,’ or ‘family,’ the @ is irre- 
gularly suppressed at Behistun, although preserved at Persepolis; from which I infer that the 
character [for V] appropriated exclusively to that vowel had come to be used to a certain extent 
syllabically, that is, that it was admitted to express the sound of the vowel as well as the labial 
consonant ; and I have, accordingly, in the words above cited, continued to represent the ¢ in the 
Roman character, but have marked the peculiar cuneiform orthography, by placing a brief accent 
over the letter.” —Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. x. part ii. p. 151. 
