THE NUMERALS IX THE ETRUSCAN LANGUAGE. 473 



■and this sound comes clearly out in the Fr. p o i n g , the " fist." 

 I think therefore that q u i n q u e, is a descriptive word; for, when 

 we were boys at school and wished to connnunicate the time up 

 or down the form, we extended the arm and then closed and 

 opened tlie p o i n g, each operation counting five minutes ; and, 

 in the same way, our Australian natives count, by extending the 

 fingers of the hand. The L. cunct-u s, " the whole," may be 

 the same word as k o i g " five." 



I have already said that the m is an essential letter in the 

 Aryan numeral " five," as it is in k a m h, pronounced k a v ; 

 now the position of z in the Etruscan alphabet Ijetween the 

 digamma and the aspirate h, and the fact that v , s, and z are 

 spirants, show us that these letters are closely allied; hence 

 I say that k a v may become k a z , and, with the vowel 

 weakened, the Eti'. CEZ, cis, ci, "five," just as the G. 

 t r i a m h becomes t r e a s . 



If additional proof be required in support of my view of the 

 derivation of the numeral " five," I may cite the Dravidian lan- 

 guagesof India, and the Scythic languages of Europe. The original 

 root of "five" is, as I have said, gam, "to seize, lay hold of," 

 from which nouns are formed to mean " hand," and hence " five." 

 From this root the 8. has 9 a m a, the " hand," where the c repre- 

 sents an earlier k or g, the g of the root; and from the same 

 root the H.-Ar. has c h a m e s h, k a m s, " five;" the added s here 

 is important and occurs in Sanskrit too ; for, from another root- 

 word, g a m, " to say, to speak," the S. has 9 a m s, "to say," 

 9amsa, "praise, speech." Now, this 9am s may be softened 

 into 9 as, just as the S. y am becomes yams, and then yas; 

 (c/*. the root g a m, " to leap," which gives the S. 9 a s and 9 a 9.) 

 In the Dravidian languages, y often takes the place of the m of 

 these root-words ; for instance, the S. kama, "desire," is from 

 the same root as the Dr. k a y, " to be hot, to burn," and from a 

 root g am, " to lean towards," the Dr. has s Tiy ; hence our root 

 gam, "to seize," gives the Dr. k e i, the "hand," and, in the 

 Telugu dialect, c h e y i, which is a nearer approach to the root 

 form. Other forms of this word for " hand," cognate to the 

 Dravidian, are the Hungax'ian kez (for kams, kas, asaboA^e;, 

 and the Permian k i ; these forms bring us very near to the 

 Eti-uscan cez, cis and c i, "hand, five;" through the intervention 

 of ms. 



The cardinal number "five," in some of the Dravidian dialects, 

 is a y d u, e i d u, e i n d u. I take a y - d u to be for k a y -d u, by 

 dropping the initial k, as is connnonly done, and this k a y comes 

 from our root gam. Dr. Caldwell himself says, that the ei may 

 be for k e i, "hand," and that the numeral adjective is e i or e in 

 all the dialects, in some e i n or e i m ; an abstract noun from the 

 root is eimei (eim = keim, from gam). 



