and barbarous, must be learned by all men of business in India, as the letters from the princes of the country are seldom written in any other manner. A fpecimen of these different forms of writing is engraved, and inferted at the end of this Grammar. OF NOUNS; AND FIRST, OF GENDERS. THE reader will foon perceive with pleasure a great resemblance between the Perfian and English languages, in the facility and fimplicity of their form and conftruction: the former, as well as the latter, has no difference of termination to mark the gender, either in substantives or adjectives: all inanimate things are neuter, and animals of different fexes either have different names, as pufer پسر ner نر شیر ماده ,heeri ner a lion شیر نر male, and a made female ; as a boy, keneez a girl, or are distinguished by the words fheeri madé a lioness. Sometimes, indeed, a word is made feminine, after the manner of the Arabians, by having added to it, as amicus, a mashúka a mistress, amica, as in this verse : ,malhuk a friend معشوق کل در برومي بر کف و معشوقه بکامست Flowers are in my bofom, wine in my hand; and my mistress yields to my defire. But in general, when the Perfians adopt an Arabick noun of the feminine gender, they make it neuter, and change the final ୪ زت into نة thus nimet a benefit is written : and almost all the Perfian nouns ending in, which are very numerous, are borrowed from the Arabs. OF CASES. The Perfian fubftantives, like ours, have but one variation of cafe, which is formed by adding the fyllable to the nominative in both numbers; and answers often to the dative, but generally to the accufative cafe in other languages; as, Nominative, pufer a child. Dative and Acc. puferra to a child or the child. When the accufative is used indefinitely, the fyllable is omitted, as gul chíden to gather a flower, that is, any flower; but when the noun is definite or limited, that syllable is added to it, as gulra chíd be gathered the flower, that is, the particular flower. There is no genitive case in Perfian, but when two substantives of different meanings come together, a kefra or short e (~) is added in reading to the former of them, and the latter remains unaltered, the musk of Tartary, which must be read mushke Khoten. fame rule must be obferved before a pronoun poffeffive; as pusere men my child: and before an adjective; as shemshire tabnak a bright scymitar. If the first word ends in or the " is affixed to it; as lŵų pasha a baska, Juogo Ṣlių pasháï The پسر من شمشیر تابناک ي letter -mi ميوهاي شيرين,mivaha fruits میوها .Moufel the bafba of Moufel ୪ vaháï shireen sweet fruits: if nouns ending in come before other nouns or adjectives, the mark Hamza is added to them, as cheshméï heyvan the fountain of life. چشمه حیوان The The other cafes are expreffed for the most part, as in our language, by particles placed before the nominative, as Vocative, Ablative, The poets, indeed, often form a vocative cafe by adding to the shaha O king; thus Sadi ufes bulbula as the vocative of bulbul a nightingale. nominative, as öl fakia O cup-bearer, بلبلا مژده بهار بیار خبر بد ببوم باز بگذار ai puser O child. az puser from a child. Bring, O nightingale, the tidings of spring; leave all unpleasant news to the owl. اورا دیدم o In fome old compofitions the particle mer is prefixed to the accufative cafe; as mer ora deedem I saw him ; is either obsolete or inelegant, and is seldom used by the moderns. but this The reader, who has been used to the inflexions of European languages, will, perhaps, be pleased to see an example of Persian nouns, as they answer to the cafes in Latin: Singular. Nom. a rose, rofa. gul a rose, rofa. Plural. Gen. break our vows of repentance in the midst of the roses. O Hafiz, thou defireft, like the nightingales, the presence of the rose : let thy very foul be a ransom for the earth where the keeper of the rofe-garden walks! I shall in this manner quote a few Perfian couplets, as examples of the principal rules in this grammar: fuch quotations will give fome variety to a subject naturally barren and unpleasant; will ferve as a specimen of the oriental style; and will be more easily retained in the memory than rules delivered in mere profe. OF THE ARTICLE. Our article a is supplied in Persian by adding the letter S to a noun, which restrains it to the fingular number fingle rofes as guli a كلي رفتم بباغ صبحدمي تا چينم كلي آمد بكوش ناكهم آواز بلبلي خواه و كل نشان كن One morning I went into the garden to gather a rose, when on a fudden the voice of a nightingale ftruck my ear. Without this termination gul would fignify rofes or flowers collectively, as |