774 ON THE ALPHABETS OF THE INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO. 
double or single, by being inverted or supine, or by one or more 
dots over them. It may safely be said that the Bugis letters bear 
no resemblance to those of Sumatra, of Java, or even to the obso¬ 
lete alphabet of Sumbavva. 
Sir Stamford Raffles has given an engraving of another alphabet 
of Celebes, said to be found in old manuscripts. It consists of 18 
characters, the vowel a being one, and the rest consonants, not in¬ 
cluding the aspirate which is wanting, as well as the three aspirat¬ 
ed consonants of the current alphabet. It has the classification of 
the Dewanagri, and in point.of form differs wholly, not only from 
the alphabet in use, but from every other of the Archipelago. 
The last alphabet of the Archipelago is the Phillippine, that of the 
Tagala nation of the great island of Lu gon or Luconia, the only one 
existing in the whole of this great group, but which seems, at one 
time, to have been used among all the civilized tribes of the neigh¬ 
bouring islands, having spread even to Magindanau and Sulus. The 
Philippine alphabet is more meagre than that of the western nations 
of the Archipelago, and consists of no more than 15 substantive let¬ 
ters, including the vowel a and the aspirates,—consequently of no 
more than 13 consonants. The letters c. j, ii. and w, universal in 
the languages of the west, are wanting in it, not to say the palatals 
*d and ‘t of the Javanese. 
The vowel characters are three, expressing, e. i. and o or u. The 
vowel a is inherent in every consonant, and the vowel marks have 
the same application to substantive letters, vowel a included, as in 
Javanese. The form of the letters is rather bold, and more com¬ 
plex than that of Sumatran alphabets. The consonant y is repre¬ 
sented by a character which resembles an Italic V. and m and p 
have the same torm, with a small distinctive process. It has adopt¬ 
ed, but more imperfectly than those of Celebes and Sumatra, the 
Hindu classification. 
We have then, in all throughout the Archipelago, no fewer than 
nine distinct alphabets, every one of which appears to be a separate 
and a native invention. But they are not only distinct from each 
other ; they differ equally from all foreign alphabets. 
Some, indeed, have fancied that the Malayan alphabets may have 
been borrowed from the Hindus, but there is assuredly no solid 
ground for such an hypothesis. Some improvements in details, there 
is no doubt, they did receive from this source, but on examination, 
they are not found to be essential. The most striking of them is 
