Feb.4] SOCIETYOF BIBLICAL ARCH/EOLOGY. [1890.
self-evident. So we have ma and tta (Cantonese) for "an old
woman,""a mother"; ma and naofor veined stones, suchas the
agate,opal,carnelian,onyx,jasper; ma, "to rail at, scold," "gabble"
(tsiu ma, " to gabble overone's wine"), and nan, " gabble," nao,
"noisy wrangling,"nao nao, "babbling, nao, "to scold,to rail";
mao, "bewildered,confused," andnao, "perturbation of intellect,"
"beclouded,"nao, "to disturb, to vex''; miehandnieh, "to pull
out" (hairs); mi and ni, "hidden"; min and nin (now zhan),
"a cord"; mu,"small, inferior,"nu, "a child," nil, " young," nun,
"small,young";mo, "the pulse,""thebloodrunningin the veins,"
andno, "to bleedat the nose"; met, "flowing water,"man, "an
overflow,"mi-mi,"full,"mien,"a flood," andni, "many, abundance
of,""rising,overflow"(thesame characteris also readmi, in the
sense of "a vast expanse of water"). Many otherinstances of
this phenomenon might be adduced from the Chinese; and, as
I have observed,it is present also in Accadian, where we find
na, nab, iamu, "heaven,"as well as mu, me,"heaven"; na, ni,
nu, zikaru, "male,""servant," as well as mu, zikaru; nu, salmu,
as well as mi, salmu; nun,rabil,ruM,as well as mu, rabti, umun,
rubii;nu-gig= mu-gib, "notsick,"an epithet of the goddess Ishtar
and the Kedeshah : nin and mulu,beltu,"lady."
But we have already seen that Accadian possesses G-forms
corresponding to these m(n) forms, e.g., gi-§, gi-n, "male,"gig,
ge, salmu, "g ugunu = umun, belu,beltu,"lord"or "lady." The
case is thus exactlyparallelto that of the Chinese, whichpresents
us with the three forms i, ji, ni, as the pronunciation of one and
the same characterin three differentdialects. In some instances
Chinese has preserved the M-form, where our existing documents,
so far as yet known, supplyonlythe N-form for the Accadian, and
viceversa. Thus the negative particles in Accadian are nu, na,
nam; while in Chinese we have the M-forms me, met, mieh, mo,
mu, wei, wu. In a solitary instance,however,the Accadian exhibits
the alternative M-formof the negative, viz.,in the epithet of Ishtar
justnowspecified,mu-gib,the softer equivalentof nu-gig. Even
if we had not this curious instance of correspondence with the
prevailingmodern use,the variation between the two vocabularies
would present no more difficulty than the fact that in Accadian
itselfbothmu and nu were usedin the sense of zikaru, " male."
The commonnegativepuh or pu, whichappearsin the three
dialects as pat, put, pen, presents no difficulty, if we bear in
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