348 



Application of the Soman Alphabet. 



[No. 4, 



Arabic alphabet ; but though he has dealt only with this one charac- 

 ter, his proposal seems to be more comprehensive. In India, how- 

 ever, though we have a great many alphabets, all are offshoots of 

 two parent stems, or possibly in the remotest antiquity of only one. 

 These two great progenitors of the large family of alphabets and 

 modifications of alphabets with which medals and inscriptions have 

 furnished us, are the Pali, or the true primitive alphabet of India, and 

 the Phoenician, or Phcenico -Babylonian alphabets. Eeading briefly 

 the historic records of these alphabets, so far as they go, we find 

 that though the limits of the Pali language and its alphabets are 

 not very accurately known, from the widely extended rano-e over 

 which lai and rock-cut inscriptions in this character have been found 

 we must concede to them an extensive domain. These inscriptions 

 are chiefly to be found in the central belt and northern part of the 

 Peninsula, and they carry us back 2,400 years, or to about 550 B. C. 

 though probably the characters of this alphabet may have been in 

 use at a much earlier period. The pure Sanskrit element would 

 not seem to have made its appearance in India for several centuries 

 later, or rather I should say, we have no rock-ctct record of it. 

 Coexistent with the Pali alphabet, which occupied the central 

 division of India, for at least 250 years B. C, were the Bactrian 

 alphabet of the North- Western, and the Dravidian languages, (ap- 

 parently without any written characters) of the southern division of 

 the Peninsula, the limits of the former extending almost to the confines 

 of Persia, and those of the latter from the Vindian hills and the 

 river Narbudda, to Cape Commorin. The early history of the Bra- 

 vidian colony and their languages, is somewhat obscure ; but there is 

 internal evidence in the structure of some of their languages, viz. 

 Tamil and Telugu, to prove that, though they have occupied the South 

 of India from very remote ages, they were of Scythian origin, and it is 

 assumed that they entered India by the same route as the Sanskrit- 

 speaking people. Their languages then, though at present not wholly 

 unalliedto the Indo- Aryan family, are not of them ; but their alphabets 

 would seem to have been remotely derived from the same models, though 

 how they came to differ in their existing forms so widely is not clear. 

 That they are more modern does not admit of a doubt, but for the 

 rest the matter is involved in much uncertainty. The points regarding 

 which we are left in the dark are— When did the Sanskrit -speaking colony 



