1864.] Proceedings of tie Asiatic Society. 447 



there had been changes, scarcely less important, from the Celtic and 

 Gothic alphabets to the German and Soman. Captain Lees had 

 quoted the tenacity with which the Germans and Greeks cling to 

 their own alphabets in support of his argument. But in the first 

 place the difference between those alphabets and the Eoman is trifling, 

 and the trouble of decyphering them slight. In the second, in each 

 case there had been a patriotic feeling recently at work in favour of 

 the old alphabet: the wars of Napoleon had thoroughly disgusted 

 the Germans with everything French, and therefore with the Eoman 

 Alphabet : and the newly emancipated Greeks were anxious to prove 

 their descent from the contemporaries of Thucydides and Plato. 

 Besides, in Germany, the Eoman alphabet was making way. Ewald, 

 for instance, had printed his history and commentaries in that charac- 

 ter. Again, the Dravidian language in Southern India used alpha- 

 bets derived from the Devanagri; though they had no affinity to 

 Sanscrit, and therefore they might as well use the Eoman. Hence, 

 as the change appeared from historical examples to be practicable, 

 it ought to be adopted, not merely from theological or economical, or 

 any partial consideration, but from the general fact that the multi- 

 tude, variety, and needless diversities of the Indian Alphabets, made 

 it absolutely impossible to master all the Indian languages, and effec- 

 tually separated from each other the natives of different parts of the 

 peninsula. Captain Lees had scarcely stated with sufficient force the 

 terrible medley of characters with which the country was afflicted. 

 Dialects differing less than those of Yorkshire and Somersetshire, were 

 written in different characters. The two great parent alphabets had 

 branched out into at least twenty varieties. Orissa had a different 

 form from Bengal : each of the three Dravidian tongues had its own 

 alphabet. A change seemed essential to the civilization of India, and 

 though to attempt to force one upon the people would be wrong, and 

 must end in ludicrous failure, yet books in every living Indian language 

 should be printed in Eoman character, and left to make their own way. 

 Mr. W. L. Heeley maintained that alphabets, like constitutions, 

 were developed by nature, and suited to the instincts of the several 

 races which used them, and that it would be highly difficult, if not 

 impossible, to impose a strange alphabet upon any race which had 

 developed one by its own efforts. We have not yet obtained a 

 scientific analysis of the circumstances under which alphabets had 



m 



