66 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA, ETC. and the persecution that drove them to Upper Asia, spread still further the influence of the Syriac language, and carried it to Tartary, Thibet, India, and even China. The navigation of the Indian Ocean, and the colonisation of India, were in the time of the Ptolemies almost monopolised by the Arabs and Syrians, and an unceasing current of emigration bore the Semitic dialects to the coasts of Hindostan ; and there exists at the present day a Christian community in India (perhaps the same which Cosmas-Indicopleustes saw in the sixth century), which has preserved in its liturgy the use of Syriac* li It will be seen," says M. Kenan f, " what an im- portant part the Syriac language played in Asia, from the third to the ninth century of our era, after it had become the instrument of Christian preaching. Like the Greek for the Hellenic East, and Latin for the West, Syriac became the Christian and ecclesiastical language of Upper Asia." We may then affirm, without fear of mistake, that the Christian missionaries, whose names are cited in the Chinese text of the inscription, and on the side columns in Syriac characters, belonged to the Church of Syria, which, as is known, was one of the first founded by the Apostles. The Syriac characters in question per- fectly resemble the estranghelo, used by the Syrians in the eighth century. The names are well known, and have always been employed by the hierarchy of the Syrian church. " It may easily be supposed, also, that the neophytes received the Syriac from their masters
- Quatremere, "Memoire sur les Nabatiens," p. 140.
f " Histoire Generate cles Langues Semitiques."
