of language. A few additional remarks, however, will, we hope, be deemed neither inappropriate nor unacceptable.*

It will naturally be supposed, that the number of characters requisite to hieroglyphical writing must be almost innumerable. But this is not in accordance with the testimony of those who are best qualified to judge. Bruce makes the number 514. Zoëga discovered 958. Champollion makes, in all, but 864; and supposes that some of these may be duplicates. It was absolutely necessary for the distinctness of the language, that the number should, in time, become limited. And, indeed, a variety of the hieroglyphic signs gradually becoming conventional, this could easily be effected. Moreover, the increasing prevalence of the use of the phonetic signs over the hieroglyphic, as the language approached its point of transition to the next general phase, would tend to contract the number of symbols usually employed, to the limits nearly of our common alphabets. It is found, indeed, that the number of phonetic signs, distinctly differing from one another, does not exceed forty-two.

The mode of reading hieroglyphic records was designated by the direction in which the faces of the various symbolic animals were turned; which was generally from right to left, though occasionally from left to right. In the prevailing method, from right to left, we see an approach of the Egyptian to the Shemitish languages. There are, also, other striking points of similarity. Some of the vowels, especially the medial vowels, were generally omitted in the hieroglyphic style, as they are in the Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac, and other cognate dialects.

* To a person, whose mind is imbued with the doctrine of Egyptian hieroglyphics, the conclusion is almost irresistible, that the impression of Gaudama's foot, given in the Rev. Mr. Malcom's Journal, Vol. I, p. 255, is to be referred to hieroglyphical writings. The nagahs, or serpents, encircling the foot, may be substituted for the simpler cartouches of the Egyptians, merely to suit Burman taste. It is observable, that the living creatures all face the left, indicating, that the reading is to be from left to right. But such is the case in Burman reading, generally; and the writer of the hieroglyphic record might not think it fit to depart far from the customs of his own nation. If the pictures are not significant, if they are not historical, we do not see why these particular ones should have been used rather than others; or, why they should have been arranged in their present order of combination; or, why particular figures, as the figure of water, in a compartment near the bottom, should have been inserted just as they are, whereas symmetry did by no means demand it. If the whole of the figures are not significant, may not a part of them be-the rest being thrown in by the priests to baffle the uninitiated? May not the picture contain a history of the transmigrations and transformations of Gaudama, or of events which happened to him in some state of being through which he passed?

Thus, for Ptolemy (Greek, Пrolɛuatos), on the Rosetta stone, Champollion found Ptolmês. Osiris was written Osrê. The usage of the Egyptians likewise coincided with that of the Hebrews in regard to certain divine names. It is well known, that the name Jehovah, called by the Jews the ineffable name (quia non potest effari), was never pronounced; but, whenever they met with it in reading, they pronounced another name in its stead. Champollion has found, by a comparison of various Egyptian manuscripts, that some hieroglyphic divine names were written in one way, and pronounced in another. By the same authority, we learn, that in hieroglyphic and hieratic texts, the names of divinities were written phonetically; and, in phonetic texts, always symbolically or hieroglyphically. This reminds us of a usage, which we have observed in some Persian work, in which there was a frequent repetition of the name of Jehovah. This name was not written in Persian letters, but in Hebrew, in a contracted form (→). Do we not see herein the germ of a sacred language, used only for religious purposes, as the Sunscrit, the Pali, &c.?

Besides the analogies already noticed between the Egyptian and Hebrew tongues, perhaps we may trace some additional ones without much aid from imagination. Indeed, we can almost suspect we see the transition from the former to the latter, by a bare comparison of the respective alphabets and signs, and even by a cursory examination of the alphabet of the latter. There is not a letter of the Hebrew alphabet, of which the name is not significant of some object in nature. The Egyptian phonetic characters and the Hebrew characters also agree in this, that the initial sound of the names of given objects is the same with the power of the letters for which those objects are made to stand. If now, we should substitute, in every case, the picture of the object the initial sound of whose name corresponds with the letter whose sound we wish to express, for the letter itself, a sentence written out in arbitrary characters would immediately become a series of pictures, which it would require the same skill to unravel, as to unravel a sentence of Egyptian hieroglyphics. Or, curtailing and rounding off those pictures, putting a part often for the whole, and a rude resemblance of an object for the object

itself, we should come substantially upon the demotic characters of the land of the Nile. It is not surprising, if Moses, who was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, adopted this latter method, or some sort of modification of it, in the written language in which he preserved

the records contained in the first five books of the Old Testament. Indeed, why may we not seek, in some such process as this, for the original of the written characters of the Hebrew? It is true, that the present forms of the Hebrew letters, except in a few instances, do not remind us of the objects of which the names of the letters are significative. But the application of those significant names to the letters, respectively, undoubtedly guides us to the fact, that the letters once had a form more nearly resembling the objects whose names they bear. The Samaritan alphabet, which is supposed by many to be substantially that of the old Hebrew, is, in some of its forms, much more nearly hieroglyphic than the present square character. The Hebrew yodh, for example, which signifies hand, would never suggest, by its appearance, the idea of a hand; but the corresponding Samaritan letter shows the edge of the hand very distinctly, with the thumb erected, and three of the fingers depending.

While the language of Egyptian hieroglyphics, newly modified and variously compounded, was laying a basis of immortality for itself in the written language of China (although China is unconscious of any obligation to the land of the Pharaohs), causes were at work which tended to supplant it, in its peculiar forms, at home. The Coptic, which has been demonstrated by Quatremère to be the same with the ancient Egyptian, on the introduction of Christianity into Egypt, adopted the characters, which had already come into use among the Greeks; retaining only a few demotic letters, such as were necessary to indicate certain Egyptian sounds, not expressible by any elements of the Greek alphabet. Associating the memory of their ancient idolatry with the hieroglyphical symbols, which were full of it, they were anxious,-true to the prevailing spirit of the regenerate,-to abolish every vestige of that which might renew the temptation to their former sins. Here, therefore, we dismiss the hieroglyphics of Egypt, to contemplate language in the next stage of its progress.

The transition from the natural signs of savage life and of the deaf and dumb to the picture writing of the Egyptians, and thence to the almost picture writing of the Chinese, was perfectly natural and easy. We have somewhere seen the remark that the resemblances between the signs employed in writing by the Chinese, and the Egyptian hieroglyphics are so striking, that some have been led to suppose that one of these nations must be a colony of the other. However that may be, it is certainly an interesting circumstance, that three continents are known, by the most trustworthy and imperishable records, to have invented picture writing, as the means of transmitting their history to posterity; the Chinese, in Asia; the Egyptians, in Africa, and the Mexicans, in America. It shows the elements from which all alphabetic writing has sprung, and the harmony of the manner in which independent minds are often led to kindred inventions or conclusions; perhaps, also, the original identity of the whole human race, from whose first pair have descended the rudiments of writing, which have since been developed and perfected more and more, till they have, at last, resulted in our present convenient forms.

We proceed now to speak of the apparent connection of the Chinese language with the ancient Egyptian on the one hand, and with the Indian languages of our own continent, and with modern arbitrary tongues, as they may be called, on the other.

All the Chinese writing was, originally, ideographic; that is, its written characters were descriptive of ideas, and not of sounds; a circumstance most natural to be expected in the infancy of a tongue. But Abel Remusat, Chinese professor at Paris, has discovered, that now "full half of the characters in common use are phonetic, in the sense of syllabic;" that is, not representing ideas, but the sounds of syllables. The signs used in the Chinese written language are either simple or composite. They appear in their elementary, uncompounded form, or they are combined with one another, a single character being compounded and recompounded, till it becomes almost impossible for a beginner to decipher the meaning of it. these simple forms, keys or radicals, as they are often called, the best grammars make but two hundred and fourteen; while the Egyptian hieroglyphic elements are,

VOL. IV. NO. XV.

45

Of

according to Champollion, eight hundred and sixty-four. The former, as we observed, are often compounded, so that several radicals enter into the composition of a single character. The latter, as might be judged natural in an earlier language, never admit of combination; or, if they do, in such a way that the elements are all preserved separately. We are here reminded that, as the Chinese language abounds in combinations of forms, so the language of the American Indians abounds in combinations of words. This accounts for the prodigious length of many words in printed Indian books; for example, in Eliot's Indian Bible. The transition of imperfectly civilized men from compound forms, presenting themselves to the eye, to compound sounds, presenting themselves to the ear, was most easy and natural. Nor is it necessary to suppose, if there be any connection between these natives of the eastern and of the western continent, that the uncultivated Indian has proceeded in the improvement of language beyond the educated Chinese. Far from it. The Indians, so far as we know, were entirely destitute of a written language (except some rude hieroglyphics, which perchance they brought with them from Asia), until the invention of the Cherokee, Guess.

But, we learn with interest, because of its important bearing on our subject, the fact of the existence of a common characteristic in the Chinese and Indian languages, viz., that both are, to a great extent, syllabic, though not alike monosyllabic. A philological confirmation is thus given to the commonly received theory of the passage of the latter to the new continent by way of Beering's Straits; or, further south, by way of islands, formerly breaking the distance between the main lands, but which have since become extinct. Yet the difference of the Chinese family of languages from the American Indian family is immense. In the Chinese, every word is a monosyllable; in the Indian, many are polysyllabic, even to excess. In the former, each word has four or five tones, varying its signification; in the latter, every word has only its own tone. In the Chinese, grammatical relations are indicated by subsidiary characters. For example, the possessive case of a word is expressed by setting a peculiar sign, used for that purpose, below the word, that is, immediately succeeding it. In the Indian,