1840.] from Bactrian and Indo- Scythian coins, 27 '5 



short i (i-arti) ; likewise, rijaii from ri-ati. The Pracrit would 

 admit the hiatus in Lysias, and Diomedes, 



I shall yet add on the orthography of hirmajo the following 

 remarks. We can find no affix to the r showing it to he r by 

 itself, and not ra. There is indeed no sign of pause, no virdma, 

 any more than is met with in the arrow-headed writing. We 

 must then also here decide on purely philological grounds, whe- 

 ther a consonant, having no other vowel sign, is to be read with 

 a or without it. The one peculiarity explains the other.* 



Messrs. Prinsep and Grotefend read, according to the Greek, 

 the symbol 1 in Azes as z, and the symbol A in Azilises as zi. 

 Mr. Prinsep is inclined to admit also its denoting g* ( of ) ;t 

 but as we have found J. as expressive of this letter, we cannot 

 agree in this supposition. On the other hand, it is more dif- 

 ficult to decide, whether A be the representative of z (soft s).f 

 I observe, however, that Azes and Azilises are not originally 

 Greek names. The Greek orthography may therefore exhibit 

 itself as expressive of permutative pronunciation, and the prin- 

 cipal question would be, what sound both kings gave those 

 names in their own tongue ? Though this be here mere matter 

 of conjecture, yet, I think, I could maintain this one point, viz. 

 that the language, as related to the Sanscrit and Pracrit, had 

 not the sibilant sound z of the Zend and old Persian languages, 

 nor the French and Portuguese j, nor the Persian « ; it must 

 therefore denote such a sound by another letter. A French j, 

 very softly pronounced, may indeed sound to the ear as a y, 

 on the other hand, z as well as the French j, proceed from 

 y. If then those Indo-Scythian names sounded as Azes and 

 Azilises, the Greek representation of them would be, on the one 

 hand, a most proper one, and on the other, that upon the coins, 

 would serve as helping to give a proximate idea (of the sounds.) 



That A denotes j, is too much confirmed by the above men- 

 tioned Greek names, to be given up; and to adopt two different 



* In this somewhat obscure passage I understand Prof. Lassen to mean, 

 that the absence of the virdma in the arrow-headed characters explains the 

 similar peculiarity observable here.— Trans. 



| As. T. iv. 330. 

 J Diez Romanische Grammatik 1. 220. 



2 N 



