25 



nearer than modern Sanscrit to the language of Darius, con- 

 veyed in the legends of the first kind ; and the dialect of the 

 Vedas comes yet nearer to it than does the Zend : or, in other 

 words, the older the form we look to of the Sanscrit, the more 

 closely it is found to agree with the language of the legends in 

 question ; the age of which legends, consequently, supplies a 

 limit to its age. 



3. Arguments derived from those legends to prove the 

 Sanscrit a language artificially formed, in addition to, and 

 confirmation of, those adduced in the Second Part of the 

 author's work " On the ancient orthography of the Jews." 



4. The Zend proved to be of considerably lower age 

 than the language of the legends in question. 



5. The Zend-Avesta hence shewn to be a spurious fabri- 

 cation of the Parsis, or priests of Zoroaster. 



Q. The alphabet of the cuneatic writing of the first kind 

 proved to be a derivative one, with regard to both the powers 

 and the shapes of its elements. 



7. Various considerations adduced tending to shew this 

 alphabet to be, in the main, derived from the Greek one. 



8. The vocalic structure of this alphabet proved to be 

 of Shemitic origin ; first, by the number of its vowel-letters 

 (three), as well as by the circumstance of the second of those 

 letters being used to express either e or ^, and the third either o 

 or u ; and, secondly, by the traces of a yet older vocalization 

 occasionally to be met with in this writing, according to which 

 the letters A, y, andw are diverted from their proper uses to de- 

 note respectively a, e ori, and o or u, precisely in the same man- 

 ner as the Shemitic Haleph, Yod, and Waw are also employed. 

 On the other hand, the ingenious attempt of Dr. Hincks to 

 account for the shifting of the phonetic values of the cunei- 

 form i and u into e and o respectively, by an operation analo- 

 gous to that of the Sanscrit guna, shewn to be defective. 



9. Application of the principles laid down, under the head 

 of the preceding observation, to the correction of the received 



