38 Major Price’s Extracts from the Mualijdt-i-Darda Shekohi. 
demonstrated that speech is nobler and more refined than the faculty of 
writing. 
But the mind of the intelligent is in itself essentially above the necessity 
of either speech or writing, his want merely arising from the desire of con- 
veying knowledge to others, whether in speech, by means of the tongue, or 
in writing, by means of his fingers. Speech is, moreover, less obnoxious to 
doubt or ambiguity than is experienced by the hearer of what is read, or 
the reciter of what is written; because in writing there are many letters 
bearing a close resemblance to each other to the eye, while to the ear they 
are not all alike, as may frequently be observed when the writer sets down 
such words as ~s > jo > khayr, har, jaz, and khaber, which without the 
diacritical points, are exactly similar, and in which the reader may reason- 
ably doubt as to which the writer designs to indicate, while the hearer 
entertains no doubt on the subject: neither does he suspect that, under 
words which the writer has set down in characters so much alike, something 
else may be intended than meets the eye. Hence again, I say, and I 
trust have sufficiently demonstrated, that speech must always have the 
precedence over writing, 
Metaphorically, speech is spiritual, and writing corporeal; and I will 
also say, that speech is to writing what the soul is to the body; for do you 
not perceive, in the instance of one who searches into the meaning of things, 
and it must be for his use that the thing is written, that speech furnishes to 
the inquirer that information which relieves him from the necessity of 
perusing what is so written.* I say further, that as speech is the soul of 
writing, so is meaning the soul of speech; for do we not observe, that 
when he who hears has secured that meaning which is the basis of speech, 
he no longer needs either letter or words, but throws all aside, and seizes 
on the meaning alone. 
From these considerations it becomes further manifest, that meaning is 
* The construction of this passage is so perplexing, that Iam compelled to give the lines in 
the original: ys Gems gl pg jl ate SI, Uses) Bay 9 Jy ati jl pe S ee 5 
Ops GLI Lg ots yal pay Gj) 1) eG! sudo which, in other words, may be rendered 
to the following effect; “ Do you not perceive that, as by the written medium the searcher after 
meaning, for whose use the thing has been written, is rendered independent .of speech, so is the 
same, through the perusal of what is written, rendered equally independent of oral information.” 
How we are to understand this as an illustration of the fact, “ that speech is to writing as the 
soul to the body,” it would be difficult to explain.—D. P. 
