1866.] Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. 195 



pitch, I would refer to Exodus xxiii. 1 ; " lo tissd shema shave" thou 

 shalt not utter a false report," where no idea of raising the voice can 

 be entertained. 



4th. The reference to the misty idea of the Rabbis proves nothing. 

 The jugglery of those quasi-learned persons has long been looked 

 upon by scholars as unworthy of attention. If the word amen were 

 really a compound of " Elohim melek n'eemdn," which is, I. suppose, 

 what the Babu (or his authority rather) means, then any philological 

 connection between the syllable am looked on as a radical Semitic 

 syllable and om, falls to the ground at once. 



" I think, therefore, that from a Semitic point of view, any connec- 

 tion between the two words is impossible, and the Babu's idea,that some 

 mysterious importance was attached to amen, is a mistake. Amen is 

 the Hebrew for " yes" and nothing more. The Evangelists often 

 leave a word or two of our Saviour's native Syriac, when translating 

 his sayings into Greek, and this is one ; and from its being retained in 

 the Grospels, it has come to form part of modern Christian ecclesiastical 

 phraseology, but never had, or has, and probably never will have any 

 mystic meaning. 



John Beames. 



Mr. Blochmann's note in reply is as follows : 



" Mr. Beames in his paper endeavours to correct a remark made 

 by me some time ago on the word " amen," which Babu Rajendra 

 Lai Mitra had compared with the Sanscrit om. 



11 Mr. Beames and I agree in three points : — 



1. That there is no connection between amen and om, as proposed 

 by the learned Babu. 



2. That the original meaning of the biliteral root in aman is 

 supporting. 



3. That the ultimate roots of the Shemitic languages are biliteral. 

 " The point of difference between us is that Mr. Beames says, that 



of the triliteral aman the original biliteral root is man, the Aleph 

 being accessory, whilst I still maintain, that the biliteral am is the 

 ultimate root, the final n being the accessory. 



" Mr. Beames does not appear to have seen this, because he misun- 

 derstood altogether the term "accessory." He advises me not to 

 confound grammatical processes with radical ones, evidently under the 



