266 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VoL. IV. 



simplification for ordinary use of the original cumbrous hieroglyphic in 

 Hittite as in Egyptian. The proof of the antiquity of the Sinaitic 

 inscriptions will appear shortly in "The Hittites in Sinai," in which I 

 have translated over a hundred of these venerable documents, records of 

 the kings who reigned in Edom, of the princes of the Hittite confeder- 

 acy, and of the shepherd kings of Egypt and their viceroys. It is 

 probable that all alphabets and syllabaries may yet be traced back to 

 one original, doubtless hieroglyphic in character, when it will be found 

 that the variation to be considered most is not the form of the symbols 

 but the varying phonetic values which diverse peoples attributed to the 

 same form. As I have elsewhere stated, the names Aleph, an ox ; 

 Beth, a house ; Gimel, a camel, and Daleth, a door ; given by Semitic 

 peoples to the first few letters of their alphabet, are proof positive of a 

 hieroglyphic origin, and that a Turanian people would make such 

 characters stand for the first syllable of ox, house, camel, and door in 

 their own language. In the accompanying plates I present the equiva- 

 lents of the Buddhist or Lat Indian syllabary, both as set forth in the 

 Asoka proclamations and in ordinary royal inscriptions, and the texts I 

 have chosen for illustration. My object is to aid scholars in interpreting 

 these ancient monuments, and thus to place the early history of India 

 on a firm foundation. The variations of characters in the Asoka pro- 

 clamations are really a species of vowel notation, as yet imperfectly 

 understood. Those in the ordinary syllabary are partly of the same 

 nature, and partly due to changes in style arising from difference of time 

 and place. As the most ancient inscription read is of ^t,7 B.C., and 

 others are later than the Christian era, it is natural to find varieties of 

 style in writing. The characters represented in the plates are gathered 

 from thirty-seven inscriptions, and are sufficient to enable the student to 

 decipher any ordinary Buddhist Indian document presented to him. 



The first text I present is that of the proclamation of Asoka, the 

 Buddhist Constantine, found at Girnar. This I read, not as the inter- 

 preters of such inscriptions have so far done from left to right, but from 

 right to left. The transliteration gives : — 



I. 



1 . s/it ' keki • shhnane khvame ' ta ga 



2. tasJiita ' rikidowa ka asliika nega ki 



3. girifu no aka hoi odd ' manete 



4. janage ta fumi kareta nomija liitoshi 



5. nai • kanegaki kaki " sJiimane rakajiniu noniija 



