838 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION F. 
No. 20.—ALPHABETIC OR SYLLABIC CHARACTERS 
IN CAVES ON THE GLENELG RIVER, N.W. AUS- 
TRALIA. 
By Rev. Joon Camppett, LL.D., Professor of Church History, 
Montreal. 
(Read Tuesday, January 11, 1898.) 
Tue characters of the brief inscription you have sent me a copy of 
are easily recognisable as those of the ancient Turunian syllabary 
employed by the ancestors of the Japanese and kindred peoples, 
of which inscriptions are found in Siberia and Japan, and of 
which the Corean alphabet is the lineal descendant. The Buddhist 
syllabary of India and the south-east of Asia has the same origin, 
but isof adifferent type; so that I have but little hesitation incalling 
the Australian inscription ancient Japanese—as ancient, perhaps, 
as the tenth or eleventh century, for in 1125 a.p., as the Khitan, 
the Japanese were expelled from China, and doubtless carried 
with them their modified Chinese characters now in use, which 
superseded the old syllabary to such an extent that the Japanese 
cannot read their old inscriptions. In the Survey of the Northern 
and Western Coasts of Australia, by Captain Flinders, R.N., 
Hist. Records of N.S. Wales, p. 78, is an account of Malay visits 
to its coast for the trepang fishery, but I know of no authority 
for a Japanese expedition to it. In the light of many inscriptions 
read by me, I transliterate as follows :— 
cIl¢ ] {See 
ki fa) chi oO sa chi 
or or or or 
gi u shi shi 
Put into words these read :— 
kiochi osa shi 
hopeless number is 
Osa governs kiocht in the genitive by position ; hence we read, 
“The number of the hopeless (ones) is.” Here we have the 
meaning of the dots in the right hand, which are no doubt units, 
21, 24, 17, in all 62, perhaps purposely put in three unequal lines 
to mark a triple distinction of rank, vessel, habitation, or sub- 
ordinate local origin. 
Norr.—The inscription referred to will be found on Plate IX, A.A.A.S. Reports, Vol. vi, 
Brisbane Session, 1895. 
