1864.] 



Application of the JR:>man Alphabet. 



351 



their ideas regarding the antiquity of the Hindu era, its cycles have 

 been elaborated into a system of imgas, which carry us back to ages 

 quite sufficiently remote to satisfy the most ardent votary of the 

 geologic theory. 



Nor if we pursue the enquiry in the opposite direction, do we find 

 greater encouragement for the reception of a change of alphabets. 

 We cannot trace the Koran to its origin, for it was not created. The 

 doctrine is one of the most noted heresies of Islamism. The Koran 

 is co-existent and co-eternal with the Supreme Being, written in the 

 Arabic characters on the lawh i Mahfuz, or sacred tablet, which is 

 guarded by the angel Gabriel. As regards the Koran, moreover, an 

 especial virtue is inherent not only in the words of the text ; but in 

 the actual letters in which they are written, for the book would not 

 be the Koran, if transcribed in any others. 



To obtain sympathy or support, then, from the learned in India, for 

 any system that proposes the general substitution of a foreign alpha- 

 bet for those they have been led to consider as sacred, I look upon as 

 impossible. But were it possible, the difficulty of inducing any peo- 

 ple to accept a new alphabet for the purposes of ordinary reading and 

 writing, when they have one which they have used for centuries, 

 which is already familiar to them, and which they find to answer all the 

 purposes of life, is of itself of sufficient magnitude, to render it unwise 

 in the advocates for so great a revolution, to encounter any obstacles 

 that might be avoided. As an illustration of this minor difficulty, I 

 may instance the Greek, the German, and the Russian alphabets, ail 

 of which still exist in certain portions of Europe, to the exclusion of 

 the Eoman alphabet, which has been adopted in all other countries. 

 Some years ago indeed it was proposed to the Greeks to adopt the 

 Eoman characters ; but the patriarchs rejected the idea with scorn. 

 In Germany it has frequently, I believe, been attempted to introduce 

 the Eoman letters more generally, but except in books intended for 

 exportation, the change does not appear to have found favour, and it is 

 a singularly apt illustration of this difficulty, that the very articles in 

 which Dr. Sprenger has so ably advocated the universal adaptation of 

 Eoman alphabet to Oriental languages, are printed in the old and 

 familiar German type. Now the difference between the German and the 

 Eoman characters is comparatively trifling, and as the powers of the 

 letters are precisely the same, for all practical purposes, the one alphabet 



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