■qct. — jiAR. i 858-59.] for the Indian characters. 243d 



the origin of all the alphabetical characters that are now known 

 in the world. 



About a year and a half ago I had a conversation with Mr; 

 Hunt, of the American Mission Press in Madras, respecting the 

 introduction of the use of capitals into Tamil printing, and showed 

 him a few of the more ancient forms of the Tamil characters ; which 

 seemed to me to be suitable for the purpose in view, inasmuch as they 

 bore the same relation to the Tamil character now in use of greater 

 antiquity and greater simplicity which is borne by the Roman 

 capitals to the smaller type of our books. I endeavoured after- 

 wards to make out in this manner a complete set of suitable capi- 

 tals ; but the further I went the more I felt convinced of the accu- 

 racy of the hypothesis (first started by Kopp in 1821) of the Semi- 

 tic origin of the Indian characters;, It appeared to me to be certain, 

 not only that all Indian characters had one and the same origin, 

 but that the oldest form of the Indian characters was nearly iden- 

 tical with the Phenician, which was the origin of, and substantially 

 identical with, the old Roman. (See Weber's Lecture on this 

 subject in his Indische Skizzen, 1857.) If so, I began to think, 

 why stop short half way, by seeking only the advantage of the 

 Tamil people, when by going a little further a great additional 

 advantage to the whole empire might be secured ? If we have to 

 go back a thousand years in search of Tamil capitals, which, when 

 they are discovered, are found to differ almost as much from the 

 modern Tamil characters as the Roman do, Why not at once go 

 back a thousand years more, and re-introduce the oldest characters 

 of all (or at least, their most faithful existing representatives), and 

 which are by far the best fitted of all for universal use, the Roman 

 characters themselves ? 



II. The next point which deserves attention is the number and 

 importance of the advantages that might be expected to flow from 

 the use of the Roman character. 



Some of those advantages would be realised by Europeans at 

 the very outset, as soon as a few books came to be published in this 

 character, whilst others would remain in abeyance till it came to 

 be generally used by the Natives themselves. 



a. The use of the Roman character would facilitate the study 

 of the Native languages by Europeans. It would, of course, be 



