266 Lassen on the History traced [No. 99. 



met with in that language ? That this was not the case, the 

 names Philoxenos and Hermaios will hereafter prove. The na- 

 tive e must have been considered too grave to be equivalent to 

 the light Greek e ; the written characters at least had not an 6, 

 as evident from its not having been used in the above named 

 instances; consequently there remains scarcely any other course 

 than to write i. For the principle of Historical Comparative 

 Grammar, under which in Zend and Greek, e would be pro- 

 duced by shortening an original a, cannot be applied to words, 

 written down* from merely hearing them pronounced. We 

 might rather here apply the analogy of the Pracrit, which seeks 

 to substitute an i for the shortened e, as in shortening the sound 

 e, produced by the coalition of a and i, the element i prevails. 



Were the language upon the coins Zend, we must expect 

 an e ; but if it were the dialect of a country upon the Indian 

 side of the Hindu Koosh, we should not be surprised by fall- 

 ing in with the Indian system of vowels. 



On the fact, that upon the coins, i only is always substituted 

 for the four Greek vowels e, h y, v, or for the sounds a, e, ee, y, 

 I ground the proposition, that the mode of writing Greek names 

 was based upon the system of native sounds, according to which 

 the foreign names were changed. It is included in this proposi- 

 tion, that it will by no means be necessary to refer in every 

 peculiarity (observable in the native character), to Grecian or- 

 thography. Should we misapprehend this principle, we should 

 run the risk of thinking we recognized the native characters in 

 incorrect positions. 



4. Ji P. Apollodotos is sufficient to establish this letter. 

 Both my predecessors have already adopted it. In Philoxenus 

 also occurs the initial J 1 , from which it is evident, that, the 

 Greek <j> not being in the native language, P was substituted 

 for it ; the Zend, and the old Persian have f, the Sanscrit and 

 Pracrit only ph, or P, with a prolonged aspiration. By the 

 want of f in the language upon the coins, we may observe an 

 affinity to the character of the Indian languages, and a diversity 

 from that of Iran. But because there was no letter corres- 

 ponding to the Greek 0, it still does not follow, that f did not 

 * As they would be in the language under consideration. — Trans. 



