298 THE COPTIC ELEMENT IN 



Sanskrit and other Oriental languages of the Indo European family, 

 is to be regarded as the root without the article or as the corruption 

 of an early form beginning with p, inclining towards the quinque of 

 the Latin. In the majority of cases that have come under my notice 

 in which p and k sounds replaced each other in the beginning of 

 words or rather of syllables or roots, I have been able to account for 

 the transformation by reference to the Semitic form of the root. This 

 I have found almost invariably to begin with such letters as the 

 Hebrew j^, pf and 1^, the first two of which are represented by the 

 Arabic hha and kha, and the last by ain and ghain. Our English 

 translation of the Bible, like the Septuagint version, varies in its 

 rendition of these letters as they occiir in proper names. Generally, 

 however, it gives the softer sound, even vi^here the Septuagint is 

 hard. Thus P'^^H ^^ made Hebron while the Septuagint is 

 GhehrQn and t^^V" sinks the ayin in Jabez while the Greek version 

 reads Igahes.^^ In the passage of Hebrew words through other 

 languages this disagreement and inconsistency holds good ; sometimes 

 we find the letters mentioned represented by simple vowels and some- 

 times by aspirates and gutturals even to the hardest of hard k checks. 

 "When the Coptic article has been prefixed to a root of this kind the 

 power of the aspirate is either lost altogether or else it is absorbed 

 in the prefix, which assumes the form oiph,f, v. When the article is not 

 prefixed, the guttural sounds of pf and ^ remain, or are exaggeraited , 

 into those of k and g, or become softened into that of s : e. g. 

 Phanuphis and Canopus from the root 21^1^- ^ nmst admit, how- 

 ever, that there are many cases which cannot be explained in this 

 way, and among these that of the numeral ^?;e is onet^ It would not 

 be difficult to connect the first part of the Hebrew, Syriac and 

 Arabic HAMESH or CHAMSAH, the Ostiak chajem, the Siamese, 

 Thibetan, Chinese and Burmese cha, gna, ong, ngah with the Armen- 

 ian Jiino and the Latin quinque, since m and n are interchangeable, 

 and it is as possible for final s to be hardened as for the k sound to 

 be softened. Dropping the k sound and prefixing the Coptic article, 

 we might embrace the Scandinavian fern and fimm, the Sanskrit 

 pancJia and the Persian penj ; but the yEolic pempe, the Welsh 

 pump, the Maesogothic fim/smd the modern German fiinf, by means 

 of their final p or /, almost threaten with destruction the whole 

 theory of the Coptic article, more especially as we find that termin- 



ss 1 Chron. ii. 42, 43, iv. 9, 10. 



