150 PROCEEDINGS OP THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 



the Turanian character in the land of the Indian Cathaei, Dr. Emil 

 Schlagintweit, of Munich, directed me to the Lat inscriptions of 

 northern Hindostan. As I wrote the other day to Dr. Leitner, of 

 Lahore, who is interested in my researches and has published my 

 comparisons of inscriptions, it may seem presumptuous to ignore th© 

 labors of Prinsep, Cunningham, and Dowson in this field, who have 

 acted on the supposition that the phonetic values of the Lat charac- 

 ters are those of corresponding early Sanscrit letters, and have pub- 

 lished unsatisfactory translations of them.^^ Nevertheless, I am 

 convinced that the Lat inscriptions are in the old Turanian syllabary, 

 of which they are the most perfect specimens, as they are the first to 

 exhibit the vowel notation which really makes them alphabetic like 

 the Corean. The Corean vowel notation is the same virtually as 

 that of the Lat inscriptions. To what extent the Aryan Indians 

 borrowed the Turanian letters, or what phonetic uses they put them 

 to, I am not yet in a position to say. 



So far, I have found no links to bind the Punjab with Syria in 

 the chain of Turanian script. From Syria westward, various mem- 



Kiitan was derived the mediaeval name Catliay. They were expelled in 1125 and their plac& 

 taken by the Mantchu Nyuche. Klaproth, Asia Polyglocta, 194. Sheketang or Shekingtang, 

 the second Emperor of this dynasty, ascended the throne in 936 A.D., under the name of 

 Howtsin. Gutzlafif's Sketch of Chinese History, Vol. I., p. 33S. It is said that the invaders 

 came from the desert of Kobi, but it is more than a coincidence that in the region of Siberia 

 about the head waters of the Yenisei, where most of the Siberian inscriptions have been found, 

 the natives call themselves individually ket, kit, khitt, hitt, hilt, according to their diflferent 

 tribes, and that one important tribe in former days, of which but a remnant is found, is that 

 of the Kotten. Malte Brun, Geography, in loc, says that the Tartars caU the mounds of the 

 Yenisei country to which the inscriptions belong Li Katei, which he translates, "the tombs 

 of the Cathayans." 



12 The first great student of the ancient characters called Lat ('because chiefly found upon ther 

 monuments so denominated) was Mr. James Prinsep, the author of Indian Antiquities. The 

 chief present workers in the same field are Major-General Alexander Cunningham, C.S.I., 

 Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India, in his elaborate and valuable reports, 

 and Professor Dowson, in the Transactions of the Asiatic Society and elsewhere. I call the 

 translations given by these scholarly men unsatisfactory, because many of them are incomplete- 

 and can only furnish a general signification, a few present unwieldy compounds like Cheh- 

 hichchha, and others represent pillars which eastern royalty might have envied as the gifts of 

 mendicant monks. In the third volume of General Cunningham's admirable reports of the 

 ArchEeological Survey of India, Plate XVJ., inscription D is read on p. 48 in the text as "the 

 religious gift of Bodhi Varmma, a mendicant priest of Sakya, &c." I read it as an invitation of 

 a Gupta King to his people to worship Gatama. The construction is Japanese and of course 

 the vocabulary is of the same nature. The Lat characters are of inestimable value in Turanian 

 paleography as they, by means of added lines and curves to the radical consonantal character, 

 as in the Corean, give definite vowel values. A careful study of the Indian inscriptions and 

 more accurate knowledge of Japanese will enable me to read with greater precision and definite- 

 ness the Siberian inscriptions which are next to them in chronological order. For the Siberian. 

 Khitts and Chinese Khitan were but expatriated Indian Cathsei. 



