SIS 



ON LE^GIBLE LANGUAGE. 



the earliest and most extensive commercial nation ; as embracing not 

 merely the maritime coast of Palestine, of which Tyre and Sidon were 

 the chief cities, but the whole country of the Canaanites and the Hebrews, 

 under whatever name it may have passed at different periods, and from 

 different circumstances ; as Syria, Assyria, Syropbaenicia, Sidonia, Aram ; 

 and, of course, as touching upon, or rather crossing Mesopotamia, Baby- 

 lonia, and Chaldea. And I hence obtain an answer to those, on the one 

 hand, who contend that alphabetic characters had their origin in Syria ; 

 and to those, on the other, who assert the same m respect to Chaldea, 

 persuading themselves, upon a tradition current among the Jews and 

 Arabians, that Abraham introduced them into Egypt on his migrating 

 from Ur of the Chaldees, at the command of the Almighty, seven gene- 

 rations after the period we have just been contemplating. The fact is, 

 that all these countries spoke the same language, or, at the utmost, dialects 

 of the same language, that in no instance differed farther from each other 

 than the Scottish differs from the English ; and all used the same alphabet, 

 or alphabets that possessed as little variation ; and hence there can be 

 no doubt, that, in whatever part of this quarter of the globe the system 

 of alphabetic characters originated, they were readily and rapidly intro- 

 duced into every other part. Abraham might, hence, have learnt them 

 in Chaldea, or in Canaan, and communicated them wherever he sojourn- 

 ed ; as Ishmael, probably, communicated them shortly afterward to 

 Arabia, upon his exile from his father's house. 



The proper Phoenician alphabet seems to have consisted of not more 

 than thirteen letters at first ; it afterv;ards had three added to it, making 

 sixteen in the whole, and in this number it seems to have been earliest em- 

 ployed by many of the adjoining countries, and is distinguished by the 

 name of the Samaritan, or ancient Hebrew, the term^ and characters being 

 nearly the same as the Phoenician. The Chaldeans introduced some kind 

 of change into the form of the letters, made them more elegant, and 

 added six other letters, since the Samaritan alphabet did not seem suffi- 

 ciently full to express all the articulations of their speech. And in this 

 manner, with various changes and augmentations, the Phoenician alpha- 

 bet can be traced throughout every part of ancient and modern Europe ; 

 every region of Africa, where writing of any kind is current, and the 

 western countries of Asia. 



Over a very extensive portion of this last continent, however, we meet 

 with an alphabet that has no common origin or conformity of principle 

 with any hitherto described. This is the Nagari, or Deva-nagari, as it is 

 called by way of pre-eminence. It consists of not less than fifty letters, 

 of which sixteen are vowels and thirty-four consonants, all arranged in 

 the order of the alphabet, with a systematic precision that is to be found 

 nowhere else. The vowels take the lead, beginning with those most 

 easily uttered, and terminatmg with those which approach towards a con- 

 sonant sound. The consonants then follow in five regular series of guttu- 

 rals, compounds, palatines, dentals, and labials : the whole closing with 

 letters expressive of sounds that do not exactly enter into any of the pre- 

 ceding series, and which may be regarded as forming a general appendix. 

 This alphabet is asserted by many learned Bramins to be of a higher anti- 

 quity than any other; and there can be no doubt that it has a just claim 

 to a very remote date. But its very perfection is a sufficient confutation 

 of its having been invented first of all : something far more rude and in- 

 condite must have preceded and paved the way for it ; and in the com- 



