CEYLON BRANCH — ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY. 



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prevails. Thus the inital letter (i) which corresponds to 

 the linear position of the lips, has often the sound of at 

 which requires two very different positions, while e has often 

 no sound at all, often the corrupt power of impressing its 

 own sound upon the letter a as in the word name, and often 

 the sound of i as in the word me ; a in like manner has often 

 the sound of e. English orthography is in a wretched state. 

 But in most of the other countries of Europe, especially in 

 Italy, the spoken and written languages agree more perfectly. 



Nor can we find fault, if the phonic value of the letters of 

 the Roman alphabet must still be taken from the mouth of 

 a Roman, Now this, as will presently appear, brings them 

 to a perfect correspondence with the vowels in the languages 

 of India, a state of things which is no longer wonderful, 

 when we consider that the principal languages of Europe 

 and those of India equally (especially when considered as 

 written languages) have flowed from the same fountain, of 

 which we may consider the Latin in the West, and the 

 Sanskrit in the East, as the most classical developments. 

 No wonder then, if a parallelism exists between their vowel 

 systems. The elaborate Grammarians of Sanskrit indeed, 

 place the liquid syllables ri and tri among the vowels, and 

 regarding them as such, have subjected them to euphonic 

 changes in that particular language, to which they would 

 not be subject as syllables. Hence in writing Sanskrit in 

 the Roman alphabet, it would be necessary to attach to these 

 letters some diacritical mark, to indicate when they were 

 used as vowels, when as consonants. But Sanskrit is so 

 much the creature of study, so little that of life, and its 

 alphabet is so much the very symbol and formula of its gram- 

 mar, that independently of there being no urgency in the 

 case, since it is a dead language, there are other reasons 

 why it should be left to repose undisturbed in its own Deva 

 Nagari. Let it not be inferred, however, that the Deva 



