substituted for the more usual m; and eight others may be passed as approximately correct (Nos. o, 11, 12, 22, 23, GO, GO, 81). The values he attached to about fifteen other signs were, however, higlily inaccurate and mis- leading?; and he was unable to assign anv value what- ever to twenty- two out of his eighty-two signs. ^
He could not identifv the sion for /: no doubt because there was no corresponding sound in the Persian l)v which he was guided, and he thought that no syllable beiran with in. He considers all the svllal)les bei^in with a consonant, though he detected two possible exceptions, where the syllables appear to be as (Xos. 8 and 82). Neitlier of these are in reality exceptions, l)ut there are numerous other instances where the vowel is the initial. None of his syllables exceed two letters, though later investigation has shown that there are several cases where a vowel separates two consonants. lie noticed that the sylla- bic sign was frequently replaced by two signs to express the simple consonant and the vowel. He observed the peculiarity that the language knows of no dillerence between the sounds of m and /r, both being written with the same letter; and he also showed that the sonants are generally absent, for while 1% ^>, t are represented, he could not find //, />, or </. Tie saw that the consonants are sometimes doubled in the middle of a word; and he conjectured that this form was adopted to indicate the disthiction. Thus, he thought the syllabic sign for irt might express either pi or bi; but if preceded by the alphal)etical sign for />, the two together denoted the surd.
At a time when the affinities of the language were entirely unknown St. ^lartin had given it the name of Median, no doubt under the supposition that it was
' Bonn edition, pp. 118-119. See Appendix C.
