1866.] Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. 197 



», e. the syllable hash with the accessory r traced by Gresenius himself 

 over an 'ain and a yod to an aleph, the same as I did with "ION 

 He may also compare "HN 3 *)t?3J 9 *)jTD and in general the remarks 

 made by Gresenius under the letters D, #, 17 &c. Mr. Beames' 

 knowledge of Shemitic languages will also suggest to him examples 

 like fcPN and ^y and J,y ; "l^tt, 1^7, '?**>, 12$ ^ai^^, ^, 

 liJp and even, dialectically, ^.^. Hence my views are not only not 

 unsupported, but even supported by Gresenius himself. 



" Mr. Beames will now fall back on another remark made by him, 

 viz. that the prosthetic Aleph is " far more common," than a final 

 modifying n. In this case I would invite Mr. Beames to look into 

 an Arabic Dictionary like the ^^° or the ^\y^> or the nice " Dic- 

 tionaire Arabe" by Farhat, where the roots are arranged according to 

 the last of the three radicals. He will be able to judge with his 

 own eyes, that the number of roots ending in n is at least sixty times 

 as great, as the number of the roots commencing with an Alif as 

 given in Freytag. 



" The question whether the ultimate biliteral root of aman be 

 am or man involves the more important question of the value 

 of the consonants in Shemitic roots, and the reduction of the 

 latter to simple ideas arising from perception, or to onomatopoeias. 

 There is a" probability even, that the root aman in its meaning 

 "nursing" ought to be traced to Dtf mother, so that we would have 

 an onomatopoeia with an accessory n, whilst the other meanings might 

 belong to the biliteral am, 



" I pass over Mr. Beanies' peculiar views regarding the age of the 

 Pentateuch as a whole, which he places as far back as 1200 B. C, 

 from which idea however modern critics have good reason to differ." 



H. Blochmann. 



2M July, 1866. 



The receipt of the following communications was announced. 



From C. Campbell, Esq. Notes on the History and Topography of 

 the Ancient Cities of Delhi. 



2. From P. Carnegy, Esq, through the Honorable G. Campbell ; 

 Notes and Queries on the past history of different clans and races of 

 " Oude." 



