150 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 
the Turanian character in the land of the Indian Cathaei, Dr. Emil 
'Schlagintweit, of Munich, directed me to the Lat inscriptions of 
northern Hindostan. As I wrote the other day to Dr. Leitner, of 
Lahore, who is interested in my researches and has published my 
comparisons of inscriptions, it may seem presumptnous to ignore th® 
labors of Prinsep, Cunningham, and Dowson in this field, who have 
acted on the supposition that the phonetic values of the Lat charac- 
ters are those of corresponding early Sanscrit letters, and have pub- 
lished unsatisfactory translations of them.” Nevertheless, I am 
convinced that the Lat inscriptions are in the old Turanian syllabary, 
of which they are the most perfect specimens, as they are the first to 
exhibit the vowel notation which really makes them alphabetic like 
the Corean. The Corean vowel notation is the same virtually as 
that of the Lat inscriptions. To what extent the Aryan Indians. 
borrowed the Turanian letters, or what phonetic uses they put them 
to, I am not yet in a position to say. 
So far, I have found no links to bind the Punjab with Syria in 
the chain of Turanian script. From Syria westward, various mem- 
Khitan was derived the mediaeval name Cathay. They were expelled in 1125 and their place 
taken by the Mantchu Nyuche. Klaproth, Asia Polyglotta, 194. Sheketang or Shekingtang, 
the second Emperor of this dynasty, ascended the throne in 936 A.D., under the name of 
Howtsin, Gutzlaff’s Sketch of Chinese History, Vol. I., p. 338. It is said that the invaders 
came from the desert of Kobi, but it is more than a coincidence that in the region of Siberia 
about the head waters of the Yenisei, where most of the Siberian inscriptions have been found, 
the natives call themselves individually ket, kit, khitt, hitt, hiit, according to their different 
tribes, and that one 1mportant tribe in former days, of which but a remnant is found, is that 
of the Kotten. Malte Brun, Geography, in loc., says that the Tartars call the mounds of the 
Yenisei country to which the inscriptions belong Li Katei, which he translates, “‘the tombs 
of the Cathayans.” 
12 The first great student of the ancient characters called Lat (because chiefly found upon the 
monuments so denominated) was Mr. James Prinsep, the author of Indian Antiquities. The 
chief present workers in the same field are Major-General Alexander Cunningham, C.S.1., 
Director-General of the Archzological Survey of India, in his elaborate and valuable reports, 
and Professor Dowson, in the Transactions of the Asiatic Society and elsewhere. I call the 
translations given by these scholarly men unsatisfactory, because many of them are incomplete 
and can only furnish a general signification, a few present unwieldy compounds like Cheh- 
hichchha, and others represent pillars which eastern royalty might have envied as the gifts of 
mendicant monks, In the third volume of General Cunningham’s admirable reports of the 
Archzological Survey of India, Plate XVI., inscription D is read on p. 48 in the text as ‘‘the 
religious gift of Bodhi Varmma, a mendicamt priest of Sakya, &c.” I read it as an invitation of 
a Gupta King to his people to worship Gatama. The construction is Japanese and of course 
the vocabulary is of the same nature. The Lat characters are-of inestimable value in Turanian 
paleography as they, by means of added lines and curves to the radical consonantal character, 
as in the Corean, give definite vowel values. A careful study of the Indian inscriptions and 
more accurate knowledge of Japanese will enable me to read with greater precision and definite- 
ness the Siberian inscriptions which are next to them in chronological order. For the Siberian 
Khitts and Chinese Khitan were but expatriated Indian Cathzi. 
