794 Note on the Nautical Instruments of the Arabs. [Dec. 



Jj.hu siliwdr, the w substituted for b. 



tJ k M'"' spheil, Canopus, is used by the Maldive sailors as the south 

 cardinal point, — for what reason I was unable to discover. They also 

 use the Indian word dakhan. 



Note on the Maldive Alphabet. 



While conversing with the Ustud-muallim one day on the above 

 subject, I got him to write down the names as seen above in the Ara- 

 bic character : being curious, however, about the modification of the 

 £ ain introduced, I inquired whether the Maldive population had any 

 distinct alphabet of their own, to which he replied in the affirmative, 

 and gave it me in writing just as I have lithographed it in Plate 

 XLIX — a most whimsical system, and calculated to puzzle antiquari- 

 ans egregiously should they chance to stumble upon an inscription in 

 the Maldives without possessing the key to it ! 



At first he told me they had but nine letters, (the second row in the 

 plate,) m, ph, d, t, I, g, n, s, d ; but on my observing that he made 

 use of a letter not in this list for the k of Calcutta, he said — " Oh yes, 

 there are the other nine" (the upper row) — meaning, as I presumed, 

 that they were not indigenous but extraneous signs introduced to ex- 

 press foreign sounds : they are, in fact, the nine Arabic numerals with 

 a dash above them to distinguish them from the ciphers. He wrote 

 with greater fluency in tbese his native characters than in the Arabic. 



The system of vowel marks is partly an imitation of the Arabic and 

 partly of the Indian method ; the long vowels being denoted by dou- 

 bling the diacritical stroke : the nasal n is marked like the Sanscrit 

 anaswara, but the letter p is also inserted. It was striking to ob- 

 serve how readily his ear distinguished the sound of a diphthong, 

 and how correctly he expressed it with a double character. The 

 order of writing is from left to right, contrary to the Arabic 

 mode, and none of the letters admit of being joined together or 

 abbreviated ; but I pretend to no more knowledge of the alpha- 

 bet, or language, than is comprehended in the plate itself, and 

 need not, therefore, attempt to expand the materials of a short inter- 

 view between two parties but imperfectly understanding one ano- 

 ther, into a treatise on the unknown and, perchance, non-exi stent lite- 

 rature of these simple islanders. — It will, doubtless, surprise many that 

 they should have arrived at all at the possession of an alphabet of 

 their own. Among the specimens in the plate I have introduced the 

 names of the cardinal points as given above. 



