1 1*4 Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. [Sept. 



Well put it later than 1200 B. C, and I suppose Sanskrit scholars 

 claim a still higher antiquity for the Vedas ; but the word om being 

 a corruption of oman, the origin of this latter word must be put 

 further back still, just as the use of the Hebrew amen in a work 

 dated 1200 B. C, points to its existence at a much earlier age. If 

 then we have succeeded in shewing the improbability of the two 

 words having a common philological origin, we must next have 

 recourse to the supposition that one nation borrowed the word from 

 the other, and the idea of the Beni Israel at, say, B. C. 2000, having 

 any means of communication with the authors of the Veda is out 

 of the question. 



That at an extremely remote pre-historical period, the ancestors of 

 the Semitic race were identical with those of our own Aryan family 

 is possible, nay, probable ; but the acutest modern scholars, Gesenius, 

 and Kenan for instance, fail to find in Hebrew, more than the very 

 faintest traces of a common origin. When the scholars quoted in 

 Babu Rajendra Lai's note render om by amen they do so evidently 

 merely as to sense, and do not imply that there is any radical affinity 

 between the two words. 



3rd. There is no authority for Mr. Blochmann's assertion that 

 the initial a in amen is a softening, through an intermediate 'cun, of a 

 h initial. The whole process of derivation given by Mr. Blochmann 

 appears to me to be fanciful and unsupported. 



The word dinar, ' to speak,' is by Gesenius, who is followed by most 

 scholars, held to be another instance of an alejph prosthetic ; so that 

 the root is mar y which is a softening of bar l to bear ;' mar therefore 

 means ' to bear,' c to bring forth,' ' to bring out words from the mouth,' 

 1 to speak ;' hence in Arabic we get the sense ' to command,' which is 

 derived from the earlier Hebrew sense, and is not, as Mr. Blochmann 

 suggests, the original meaning : for, not to lay much stress on the 

 improbability of the process by which the idea of ' establishing, com- 

 manding' is made to change to the idea of simple speaking, it may 

 be noted that, in Hebrew, the idea of words as something carried or 

 brought out of the mouth, is very common. Instances are the ex- 

 sions i'(is(i kol, "he lifted up his voice" applied to weeping or 

 singing, (Num. xiv. 1 and passim) ; also shouting ; and lest it should 

 be urged, that these expressions refer to raising the voice to a loud 



