28o SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 



also to the points of the compass, and to any other expres- 

 sion of numbers in a series of ten or twelve. 



And the Chinese days are not grouped into weeks of 

 seven days, with definite names, but by cycles of sixty 

 days.i— [Y.] 



THE MONGOL ALPHABET. 

 P. 67. 



So far as we know the earliest character employed by 

 the Mongols for writing their own language was that 

 which they borrowed from the Uighur Turks of the Kash- 

 gar country. This was the character commonly used in 

 the chancery of Chinghiz-Khan and his immediate succes- 

 sors. This Uighur character had been borrowed from the 

 old Syriac ; and as we find names in Syriac upon the 

 famous Christian monument of Singanfu (A.D. 781), there 

 can be little doubt that it had been introduced into Eastern 

 Turkestan by the Nestorian clergy. 



A Lama, Saja Pandita by name, was employed at the 

 court of Kublai Khan (latter part of thirteenth century) in 

 modifying this Syro-Uighur alphabet so as to fit it better to 

 the Mongol language. He is said to have introduced the 

 system of connecting the letters by continuous lines from 

 top to bottom, ' like the marks cut on tally-sticks.' Some 

 have alleged that even the old Syriac was written vertically ; 

 but in any case the language of William de Rubruk (1253), 

 in speaking of the Uighur writing, most precisely describes 

 the vertical direction of the modern Mongol script. Saja 

 died before he had completed his alphabetic system. 



His successor, Bashpa Lama, threw aside the Uighur 

 model, and invented a square character founded on a 

 Tibetan modification of the Dcvanagari. Kublai himself 

 persistently patronised this alphabet, and tried to force it 

 into use, but it took no root. 



Kubla'i's successor, Temur or Oljaitu Khan, commis- 



^ Substantially from Williams's Obscrvalioiis 0/ Comets . . . /rom 

 Chinese Atinals, \^j I. 



