1 842.] General Meeting of the Asiatic Society of Paris. 435 



None of these systems, however, were universally adopted, and 

 the European public is not willing to tolerate the introduction of new 

 characters into its alphabet. 



B. It has been proposed to represent Arabic and Indian sounds by 

 groups of European characters, as dh, th, kh, tt, ss, etc. This system 

 has produced a great number of essays, but it has real inconveniencies ; 

 for if partially applied only, as the greater part of the learned do, the 

 object which was in view with regard to it, is not attained; and if 

 carried to the extreme, it renders strange the form of Oriental words, 

 affording combinations of characters, which must appear barbarous to a 

 European reader, as " Ckasr or Qasr, Hhadrat, Hadjdjadj," etc. More- 

 over, the system of expressing by double characters the simple ones 

 which we do not possess, has the great drawback of leaving the reader 

 in the dark concerning the orthography of the original, because he can- 

 not know, whether the double character represent two characters, or be 

 only the conventional representative of a single one. 



C. Lastly, others have tried to modify the Latin alphabet by marks, 

 not very apparent, which without producing new characters, exhibit 

 various forms, by which the letters of Oriental alphabets may be easily 

 exposed. This system, I think, was first proposed by Sir W. Jones, 

 and adopted by the Asiatic Society of Calcutta, which, however, did not 

 always adhere to it. According to it, the vowels are multiplied by 

 accents, when they are short or long, and the consonants by points 

 above or below. This system has had many imitators, and almost all 

 Indian scholars have made similar ones for their rendering. Gilchrist 

 has partly preserved it ; the Geographical Society of London has adopt- 

 ed it with a few modifications ; Mr. Erchhoff in France has made use of 

 it in his parallel of the European languages ; and lately, has Mr. Brock- 

 haus proposed a similar one in Germany ; Mr. Weijers has published 

 another, resting on the same basis, and Mr. Ami, of Turin, has formed 

 characters, on which he marks the different t, d, s, etc. of the Arabs 

 by the same points, by which they are distinguished in the Arabic 

 language. This method has the inconvenience easily to occasion errors, 

 and to require a much larger printing apparatus, but it atones for these 

 material difficulties by evident advantages. The European is not in- 

 convenienced in his reading, for if he do not know the signification 

 of the points added to the characters, he may easily overlook them, and 



3 M 



