NO. 5. — 1850.] THE ELU LANGUAGE. 303 



Besides the avoidance of evil feet, a serious clog in the 

 way of elegant versification, one other difficulty is chiefly 

 attributable to the necessity of avoiding the use of certain 

 letters which are deemed objectionable by writers of 

 great authority. The author of " Sidatsangarava " has 



laid down the following rule: — 



$&&<£>&>i&)d&)§)&i5®&q§) d 



^dZ5)d®&d&t3i&&iZL!®c[qZ)l22s d 



^t2o^&Qc:)(^&)dmdi® l c } g$t3d d 



The above, when freely rendered into English, means : — 



Of the alphabet," £>, 23, cs, ©, d, d, q, 03, q, and ° are evil 

 characters ; Q, o, Q, ©, and ea are human characters ; and the 

 rest, <g>, ®, 0, s), a>, <£, e), S3, <§, are divine characters ; any one of 

 which last must be preferred to the human characters, both in 

 the beginning of a stanza as well as before and after the name of 

 any person mentioned therein. The evil letters, as being 

 destructive of all prosperity, are to be avoided at those places. 



<^e3C5'£3S§^C33^Q)g^©@>C3j , 2S30©O33Q) ^3 



By dividing the alphabet! into four, so as to produce the 

 letters q, ©, js>, and Q respectively in the beginning of 

 each division, the following diagram consisting of eight 

 classes is produced : — 



* I. e., five vowels and twenty consonants, without reference to the 

 long vowels, since they are produced from the short. 



f The Sidatsangardva confines the Elu alphabet to ten vowels and 

 twenty consonants ; vide supra. 



