siderable remains of which, indeed, preserved with unusual care, were discovered at Isfahán by the Arabs in A.D. 961.1 This material, while it would on the one hand, in its smooth surface, offer ample facilities for the unchecked flow of the

appeared. He came to restore the Iranian empire; he collected all the writings from the various places were they were scattered. It (the Dinkart) was then (thus) restored, and made just as perfect as the original light (copy) which had been kept in the treasury of Shapán ('Shaspígán-Haug) [=" See extract from Hamza, note 1, below.]

"The beginning of the Ardái Víráf Námah" (from two Pahlaví MSS.).

1. "It is thus reported that after the religion had been received and established by the holy Zertosht, it was up to the completion of 300 years in its purity, and men were without doubts (there were no heresies). 2. After (that time) the evil spirit, the devil, the impious, instigated, in order to make man doubt the truth of religion, the wicked Alexander, the Roman [], residing in Mudhrai (Egypt) that he came to wage a heavy fight and war against the Iránian country. 3. He killed the ruler of Iran, destroyed the residence [] and empire, and laid it waste. 4. And the religious books, that is, the whole Avesta and Zand, which were written on prepared cow-skins with gold ink, were deposited at Istakhr Bábegán, in the fort of the library. But Aharman, the evil-doer, brought Alexander, the Roman, who resided in Egypt, that he burnt (the books), and killed the Desturs, the Judges, the Herbads, the Mobeds,” etc.

An old and .چند دستوبران و دا توبران و هیریتان و مگوپتان]

Pahlavi Glossary, or the "Farhang-i-oím yak," the original Pehlvi work upon which Anquetil's vocabulary was based, edited by Hoshengji Jamaspji, and printed under the supervision of Dr. Martin Haug. Stuttgart, 1867."

1 Hamza Isfahani (obiit. A.H. 350, A.D. 961) gives an interesting narrative of the discovery of certain ancient Persian archives, written on birch-bark. I quote the substance of the passage in the Latin translation of Dr. Gottwaldt-Anno CCCL. (A.D. 961), latus ejus aedificii quod Saraveih nominatur atque intra urbem Djei (Isfahan) situm est, corruit et domum retexit, in qua fere L utres erant, e corio confecti atque inscripti literis, quales antea nemo viderat. Quando ibi depositi fuissent, ignotum erat. Cum a me quaesitum esset, quae de mirabili illo ædificio scirem, hominibus promsi librum Abu Mascharis, astrologi Balchensis, cujus nomen est: Liber de diversitate Tabularum astronomicarum. Ibi ille : Reges (Persarum), inquit, tanto studio tenebantur disciplinas conservandi, tanta cupiditate eas per omne aevum perpetuandi, tanta sollicitudine eas ab injuriis aëris et humi defendendi, ut iis inter materias scriptorias eam eligerent, quae illas injurias optime ferret, vetustati diutissime resisteret ac mucori et obliterationi minime obnoxia esset, id est, librum (corticem interiorem) fagi, qui liber vocatur tûz. Hoc exemplum imitati Seres et Indi atque populi iis finitimi ad arcus, quibus ad sagitandum utuntur Ad arcem igitur, quæ nunc intra Djei sita est, profecti ibi disciplinas deposuerunt. Illud ædificium, nomine Saraveih, ad nostra usque tempora perduravit; atque ex eo ipso cognitum est, quis id condiderit, propterea quod abhinc multos annos latere ejus ædificii collapso camera in conspectum venit, ex argilla secta constructa, ubi multi majorum libri inventi sunt, in quibus depositae erant variae eorum disciplinae, omnes lingua persica antiqua scripti in cortice tûz. Hamzae Ispahanensis (Annalium Libri, x. pp. 152, XXV.) St. Petersbourg, 1844.-Abú Rihán Al Bírúní (circà 940 A.D.) also records: Mais dans les provinces du centre et du nord de l'Inde, on emploie l'écorce intérieure d'un arbre appelé touz [j] C'est avec l'écorce d'un arbre du même genre qu'on recouvre les arcs; celle-ci se nomme boudj [z] (Bhúrjja).

Renaud, Mem. sur l'Inde, p. 305. See also Prinsep's Essays, ii. 45.

pen, would, in the extreme tenuity of its texture, demand some more equable and uniform support than the primitive expedient of extended forefingers: and, as improved appliances were enlisted in its cause, it may have come to be held in deserved favour, especially when its other merits, so gravely enlarged upon by the local annalist, are taken into consideration. Certain it is that to this day, among the Bhoteahs and other natives of the Himalaya, birch-bark maintains its ancient uses, and many a petition and other documents engrossed on its surface find their way among the "stamped papers " and the like civilized records of the Courts of the British Government in those mountains. It is then to the enhanced freedom of penmanship incident to the employment of birch-bark that I am disposed to attribute the leading peculiarities of this style of writing. The material in question secured to the amanuensis an unchecked power of forming curves and an unrestrained action of the pen in any given direction; but its ultimate effect upon the identity of the Sassanian character was mainly due to the gift of continuous onward movement in the line of writing, which eventually developed itself into the Kufic scheme, where a single line drawn from right to left constituted the basis of the entire alphabet in its conjunct form,1 and the innate contrast between the two styles of writing maintains itself to the last, and may be detected at the present day in the pervading descending stroke of the Hebrew finals, and in the prolonged sweep, in the general line of writing, of certain Arabic terminal letters; while, under the larger and more comprehensive view of the same question, we may trace in the contrasted formation and relative location of the short vowels, a practical and conclusive illustration of the original caligraphic type of either system.

The ruling ideal of this Pehlvi scheme of writing proceeded upon a groundwork of curves, the leading model of which declares itself in the letter, which commenced towards the top of the general line of writing, being extended slightly upward and continued backwards and downwards,

1 I do not know whether the singular identity of the employment of a central leading-line, in our own Oghams, has as yet been the subject of notice.

after the fashion of a reversed Roman C. This formation enters more or less into the composition of the letters, •, ), L, M, LS, J, p,,,, and i long. In process of time, as the writing became more cursive, the initial point of the i, and of those letters which more immediately followed its tracing, was thrown higher up and further back in the ordinary line, while the concluding turn of the curve was prolonged and occasionally run into other letters. The single character in this alphabetical series that was discriminated in its final form, from its normal initial or medial representative, was the short ; and the manner in which this was effected would almost imply that it was intended in the very act to check the onward flow of the writing in the way of an upward stop, as the final was made to commence even below the middle of the horizontal line of letters and the concluding point of the three-quarters of a circle was not allowed to reach the ordinary foot lines [].

It remains for me to notice more particularly a few of the letters of either alphabet with reference to their derivation and values, and their relative bearing upon the corresponding signs of other systems. First in order presents itself the independently-organized symbol for ch, a letter of considerable importance in Aryan tongues, but which the Greeks and Romans, in servilely following Semitic originals, so strangely failed to provide a literal representative for. The ChaldæoPehlvi contented itself with a like deficiency, and supplied the place of the ch by sh. The Sassanian character ୯ ch was clearly based upon the h of its own alphabetical scheme, the additional power being given by the foot-stroke backwards, which was one of the leading peculiarities of this style of writing. The letter in its adapted form bears a faint, but not impossibly an intentional, resemblance to the Bactrian ch.

The Sassanian alphabet, again, is itself defective in the Semitic aspiratekh, which the Greeks converted into H, a sound that fell short of the compound 1 hu in Sassanian,

which was, perhaps, the best equivalent that the latter writing admitted of. It is to be remarked that, in spite of Indian influences, the Bactrian kh itself did not, for some time, assume a very definite or constant form.1

in

The greatest obstacle, without any exception, to a satisfactory and positive interpretation of the early Sassanian inscriptions is incident to the inconvenient identity of the sign which has to answer for the sounds both of r and w. The ChaldæoPehlvi forms of >r and w, like the Bactrian r and v, have something in common, and the association survives in the modern Hebrew, 1; but in all these cases there is a distinct, though not very marked, means of discrimination. Whereas, in the Sassanian-Pehlvi, there is not only no aid to the ,determination of whether the symbol 2 stands for, or,; but many cases, where it is clearly the former, it has often to be read by the light of modern interpretation, as J. Moreover, whenever two of these signs occur together, thus 22 they present all the above alternatives, and, in addition, may chance to represent an oft-recurring malformation of the letter due either to imperfect execution in the original, or, more frequently, to faulty copying by the modern draftsman; but in some cases the double 22 constitutes the authorised and constant formation of the, altogether apart from any possible errors of original designers, contemporary engravers, or travellers from the West, who have in later days made these inscriptions known to us. The alphabet had not yet arrived at the equally perplexing transformation whereby the letters w and N came to hold a single literal representative in common in the )=w and )=N of the ArabicoPehlvi coins and modern MSS. writing; but this latter, the "grand Schiboleth du Pehlvie" of Joseph Müller,3 is far 1 Prinsep's Essays, ii. 147.

2

و

2 The eventual complication or conglomeration of signs under which the 2 as fell into community and association with the symbol, the ancient, is still an enigma; but as it does not come within the range of the writing of the Sassanian Inscriptions, I commend it to the attention of those who still find a difficulty in reconciling the Parsi "Anhoma" with the proper Auhărma of earlier date. (See, for instance, Oím Yak, p. xxvii.)

3 Journal Asiatique, 1839. “Essai sur la langue Pehlvie." J.R.A.S. xii. 269.

less obstructive in practice than the earlier association of R and w. In order to meet this peculiarity in the Sassanian writing, I have had the letter 2 cut in fac-simile and prepared for use with the modern Pehlvi type.

The s of the joint alphabets demands a passing comment, as in its near identity in both systems, and the complete dissimilarity of either outline to any archaic or other derivative form of the letter in Phoenician, it would seem that its origin must be sought for elsewhere; it is singular that the Bactrian symbol for ș Tin 250 B.C. Ñ (in Aryan Indian ), and the Armenian correspondent of s D in B.c. 189, should so nearly accord, and that their general formation should be preserved so completely in the Pehlvi alphabets of the Sassanians, The following are the gradational representatives of each class The concluding example is taken from the Sassanian section of the Hájíábád sculpture, and its configuration is aptly illustrative of the method in which the normal letter was formed, namely, by a second application of the pen to the leading design. In the present instance the body of the character is composed of the often-recurring with a reduced ≈ supplemented to it. The accelerated penmanship of more practised scribes gradually transformed the letter first into က and eventually into and, whence it finally progressed into the Pehlvi », the Zends, and the Arabic

.س

I have still to advert to two very serious difficulties in the decipherment of these alphabets; the one dependent upon the great similarity existing between the signs for E and z in the Chaldæo-Pehlvi, which often renders them hopelessly indistinguishable; this is the case even in the positive reproduction of the inscription at Hájíábád, so it may be imagined what amount of reliance is to be placed upon the drawings of mere copyists. As a general rule the letter E is simple and direct in its downward course, while the z is more curved in its sweep, and more marked in the initial and final points.

The second obstruction to assured interpretation consists more in the oral sound to be attributed to the several letters 2=R and L in the Sassanian writing. At times it would