but had this other alphabet forced upon them in their dealings with their rulers. The Kharoşţhī is then the gradual development under local conditions of the Aramaic alphabet of the Persian period. As Stein’s explorations show, both alphabets may be found on opposite sides of the same piece of wood.
The history of the Brāhmī alphabet is more difficult. In its later forms it is so unlike other alphabets that many scholars have regarded it as an invention within India itself. The discovery of earlier inscriptions than were hitherto known has, however, caused this view to be discarded, and the problem is to decide from which form of the Semitic alphabet it is derived. Taylor (The Alphabet, ii. p. 314 ff.), following Weber, argues that it comes from the Sabaeans who were carrying on trade with India as early as 1000 B.C. Even if the alphabet had not reached India till the 6th century B.C., there would be time, he contends, for the peculiarities of the Indian form of it to develop before the period when records begin. The alphabet, according to Taylor, shows no resemblance to any northern Semitic script, while its stiff, straight lines and its forms seem like the Sabaean. Bühler, on the other hand, shows from literary evidence that writing was in common use in India in the 5th, possibly in the 6th, century B.C. The oldest alphabet must have been the Brāhmī lipi, which is found all over India. But he rejects Taylor’s derivation of this alphabet from the Sabaean script, and contends that it is borrowed from the North Semitic. To the pedantry of the Hindu he attributes its main characteristics, viz. (a) letters made as upright as possible, and with few exceptions equal in height; (b) the majority of the letters constructed of vertical lines, with appendages attached mostly at the foot, occasionally at the foot and at the top, or (rarely) in the middle, but never at the top alone; (c) at the tops of the characters the ends of vertical lines, less frequently straight horizontal lines, still more rarely curves or the points of angles opening downwards, and quite exceptionally, in the symbol ma, two lines rising upwards. A remarkable feature of the alphabet is that the letters are hung from and do not stand upon a line, a characteristic which, as Bühler notes (Indian Studies, iii. p. 57 n.), belongs even to the most ancient MSS., and to the Asoka inscriptions of the 3rd century B.C. When these specially Indian features have been allowed for, Bühler contends that the symbols borrowed from the Semitic alphabet can be carried back to the forms of the Phoenician and Moabite alphabets. The proof deals with each symbol separately; as might be expected of its author, it is both scholarly and ingenious, but, it must be admitted, not very convincing. Further evidence as to the early history of this alphabet must be discovered before we can definitely decide what its origin may be. That such evidence will be forthcoming there is little doubt. Even since Bühler wrote, the vase, the top of which is reproduced (see Plate), has been discovered on the borders of Nepal in a stupa where some of the relics of Buddha were kept. The inscription is of the same type as the Asoka inscriptions, but, in Bühler’s opinion (Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, xxx., 1898, p. 389), is older than Asoka’s time. It reads as follows: iyaṃ salilanidhane Budhasa bhagavate sakiyanam sukitibhatinaṃ sabhagiṇikanaṃ saputadalanaṃ. “This casket of relics of the blessed Buddha is the pious foundation (so Pischel, no doubt rightly, Zeitsch. d. deutsch. morg. Gesell. lvi. 158) of the Sākyas, their brothers and their sisters, together with children and wives.”
How this alphabet was modified locally, and how it spread to other Eastern lands, must be sought in the specialist works to which reference has already been made. Its extension to new and hitherto unknown languages was in 1910 in process of being rapidly demonstrated by English and German expeditions in Chinese Turkestan.
Authorities.—Owing to the rapid increase of materials, all early works are out of date. The best general accounts, though already somewhat antiquated, are: (1) The Alphabet (2 vols., with references to earlier works), by Canon Isaac Taylor (1883), reprinted from the stereotyped plates with small necessary corrections (1899); and (2) Histoire de l’écriture dans l’antiquité, by M. Philippe Berger (Paris, 1891, 2nd ed. 1892). An excellent popular account is The Story of the Alphabet, by E. Clodd (no date, about 1900). Faulmann’s Illustrierte Geschichte der Schrift (1880) is a popular work with good illustrations. For the beginnings of the alphabet, Dr A. J. Evans’s Scripta Minoa (vol. i., 1909) is indispensable, whether his theories hold their ground or not. The Semitic alphabet is excellently treated by Lidzbarski in the Jewish Encyclopaedia (1901); his Nordsemitische Epigraphik (1898) has excellent facsimiles and tables of the alphabets, and there are many contributions to the history of the alphabet in the same writer’s Ephemeris für semitische Epigraphik (Giessen, since 1900). See also “Writing” (by A. A. Bevan) in the Encyclopaedia Biblica, and “Alphabet” (by Isaac Taylor) in Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible. A very good article, now somewhat antiquated, is Schlottmann’s “Schrift und Schriftzeichen” in Riehm’s Handwörterbuch des biblischen Altertums (1884, reprinted 1894). For Greek epigraphy the fullest and also most recent work is W. Larfeld’s Handbuch der griechischen Epigraphik (vol. ii., 1902; vol. i., 1907) (see especially Herkunft und Alter des griechischen Alphabets, i. 330 ff.). For the history of the Greek alphabet the fundamental work was A. Kirchhoff’s Studien zur Geschichte des griechischen Alphabets (4th ed., 1887): his theories were adopted and worked out on a much larger scale in E. S. Roberts’s Introduction to Greek Epigraphy, pt. i. “The Archaic Inscriptions and the Greek Alphabet” (1887), pt. ii. (with E. A. Gardner) “The Inscriptions of Attica” (1905). See also Salomon Reinach’s Traité d’épigraphie grecque (1885). in Iwan von Müller’s Handbuch der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft important articles on both Greek and Latin epigraphy and alphabets have appeared (Greek in edition 1 by G. Heinrichs, 1886; in edition 2 by W. Larfeld, 1892; Latin by Emil Hübner). See also “Alphabet,” by W. Deecke, in Baumeister’s Denkmäler des klassischen Altertums (1884), and by Szanto (Greek) and Joh. Schmidt (Italic) in Pauly’s Realencyclopädie edited by Wissowa (1894). Mommsen’s Die unteritalischen Dialekte (1850) is not without value even now. Other literature and references to fuller bibliographies in separate departments have been given in the notes. Elsewhere in this edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica the articles on the various languages and under the headings Inscriptions, Palaeography, Writing, &c., should be consulted, while separate articles are given on each letter of the English alphabet. The writer is indebted to Dr A. J. Evans for a photograph of the Cretan linear script, and to Professors A. A. Bevan and Rapson of Cambridge, and to Mr F. W. Thomas, librarian of the India Office, for help in their respective departments of Semitic and Indian languages. (P. Gi.)
’AL-PHASI, ISAAC (1013–1103), Jewish rabbi and codifier, known as Riph, was born near Fez in 1013 and died at Lucena in 1103. ’Al-Phasi means the “man of Fez” (medieval Jews were often named after their birthplaces). He was forced to leave Fez when an old man of 75, being accused on some unknown political charge. He then settled in Spain where he was held in much esteem. His magnanimous character was illustrated by two incidents. When ’Al-phasi’s opponent Isaac ’Albalia died, ’Al-phasi received ’Albalia’s son with the greatest kindness and adopted him as a son. When, again, ’Al-phasi was himself on the point of death, he recommended as his successor in the Lucena rabbinate, not his own son, but his pupil Joseph ibn Migash. The latter became the teacher of Maimonides, and thus ’Al-phasi’s teaching as well as his work must have directly influenced Maimonides. ’Al-phasi’s fame rests on his Talmudical Digest called Halakhoth or Decisions. The Talmud was condensed by him with a special view to practical law. He omitted all the homiletical passages, and also excluded those parts of the Talmud which deal with religious duties practicable only in Palestine. ’Al-phasi thus occupies an important place in the development of the Spanish method of studying the Talmud. In contradistinction to the French rabbis, the Spanish sought to simplify the Talmud and free it from casuistical detail. ’Al-phasi succeeded in producing a Digest, which became the object of close study, and led in its turn to the great Codes of Maimonides and of Joseph Qaro.
ALPHEGE [Ælfheah], SAINT (954–1023), archbishop of Canterbury, came of a noble family, but in early life gave up everything for religion. Having assumed the monastic habit in the monastery of Deerhurst, he pased thence to Bath, where he became an anchorite and ultimately abbot, distinguishing himself by his piety and the austerity of his life. In 984 he was appointed through Dunstan’s influence to the bishopric of Winchester, and in 1006 he succeeded Ælfric as archbishop of Canterbury. At the sack of Canterbury by the Danes in 1011 Ælfheah was captured and kept in prison for seven months. Refusing to pay a ransom he was barbarously murdered at Greenwich on the 19th of April 1012. He was buried in St Paul’s, whence his body was removed by Canute to Canterbury with all the ceremony of a great act of state in 1023.
Lives of St. Alphege in prose (which survives) and in verse were written by command of Lanfranc by the Canterbury monk Osbern (d. c. 1090), who says that his account of the solemn translation to Canterbury in 1023 was received from the dean, Godric, one of Alphege’s own scholars.
ALPHEUS (Ἀλφειός; mod. Ruphia), the chief river of Peloponnesus. Strictly Ruphia is the modern name for the ancient Ladon, a tributary which rises in N.E. Elis, but the name has been given to the whole river. The Alpheus proper rises near Asea; but its passage thither by subterranean channels from the Tegean plain and its union with the Eurotas are probably mythical (see W. Loring, in Journ. Hell. Studies, xv. p. 67). It consists for the most part of a shallow and rapid stream, occupying but a small part of its broad, stony bed. It empties itself into the Ionian sea. Pliny states that in ancient times it was navigable for six Roman miles from its mouth. Alpheus
