1890-91.] SIBERIAN INSCRIPTIONS. 271 



The same in Inscriptions de I'lenissei : 



Shu Buda to taku to da to sa ku shi ba ta 



Literal translation of No. XVII. line lo, acording to M. Youferoff : 



Shu Buda to taku no dansaku Shibata 



Lord Budha company house of founder Shibata ^ * 



Freely : " Shibata, founder of the house of the company of Lord 

 Budha." 



These three documents are, I think, sufficient to justify m.y contention 

 that Messrs, Aspelin and Donner have been premature in converting the 

 varied written forms of the old Siberian character into printer's type. 

 My object in setting them forth is not that of the carping critic, nor a 

 desire to depreciate in the least degree the eminent labours of the 

 Finnish scholars to whose courtesy I am indebted for the elegant volume 

 with which this paper deals. It is rather to draw the attention of these 

 gentlemen, and of others interested in the same studies, in such a way 

 as only a printed and illustrated treatise can draw it, to the unavoidable 

 inaccuracies of their present process, in the hope that the love of 

 scientific truth and zeal for Siberian research, which so far has honourably 

 characterized their work, may induce them to favour students with 

 absolute fac-similes of the precious inscriptions, which, with untiring 

 energy, they have collected from many quarters. 



The full text of over twenty Siberian Inscriptions, including those 

 under consideration, will be found in my forthcoming work The Hittite 

 Track in the East, accompanied by an account of the discovery of the 

 phonetic values of the characters, and ample grammatical and historical 

 notes. I have, however, thought it wise to forestall the information there- 

 in contained, by appending lexical and grammatical notes to the 

 inscriptions dealt with in this paper, using for that purpose Dr. Hep- 

 burn's Japanese Dictionary and Mr. Aston's Grammar of the Japanese 

 Written Language. As the writers of the Siberian character were really 

 the most important element that subsequently, in their descendants, oc- 

 cupied the Japanese Islands, it almost necessarily follows that their 

 history has a place in the Japanese annals, which, however, like 

 most ancient documents dealing with the period of a nation's infancy, 

 are silent concerning the story of migration, although Japanese writers 

 are not wanting to derive their race from northern India. For 

 the history, therefore, I make use of Titsingh's translation of the Nipon 

 O Dai Itsi Ran, or Annals of the Emperors of Japan. In the Hittite 

 Track in the East, this history will be farther elucidated by chronologi- 



