June3] PROCEEDINGS. [1890.forms,such as anyone might invent,buttheyare precisely of un
common types, and which are to be found in ancient syllabaries
and alphabets, as Cypriote, Khita, Libyan, Chinese, Moso, Lolo,
Runes,as will be seen fromthe Vy characters beforegiven,as in the
examplesBe, Mo, Ne, Ni, Me, Ba.
As Duala and his friends could not consult Cypriote,inscrip
tions at Hamath, or Anglo-Saxon MSS., his title to invention
maybe safely dismissed. Thereis every probabilitythatthe sylla
bary is not originally Vy, but belonging to some neighbouring
race, andthe explanation is that Duala adapted it to Vy in his
fashion, and with some alterations, which is his title to inven
tiveness. Thesyllabaryitselfis of ancient origin.
The great value of it is that the names of the syllablesare
in many casesidentifiableas Vy words, and thusare recognizable
as ideographs and their meaningcanbe ascertained. Witha better
knowledge of the Vy vocabulary this material maybe increased.
Hitherto we have sought for the phonetic relations of Cypriote,
Akkadian,andKhita,ratherthanfor the ideographic value. Some
few ideographs we get from the Phoenician alphabet.
The ideographic value can be worked out from Cuneiform,
Egyptian,andShwowenChinese,and further in time fromCypriote,
Vy,Khita,Lolo, and Moso. Thephoneticsare of far less value
for decipherment and transliteration than has been assumed, for
the sound of an ideograph will vary accordingto the language, as is
shownby ideographs identicalin Cypriote and Vy.
We have to go back to a remote epochof characters beyond
eventhe syllabary. As the alphabet is a selection froma syllabary,
causinga great savingof labour andeffectingan enormous advance
in culture, so is a syllabary, such as the Cypriote, a selection
from the great body of ideographs, of which we have examples
in Egyptian and Chinese, for the radicals form but a small part
of the mass available in Chinese. The first stage, belongingap
parently to the epoch of sign or gesture language, was the con
stitutionof an enormous massof ideographs, fromwhichEgyptian,
Cuneiform, and Chinese are derived. In the epoch of spoken
languagesyllabarieshad becomepossible. In all groups of characters,
general,syllabic,or alphabetic, we have to recognize the results of
selection.
It has not been my mission or my business to decipher or trans
literate Khita,havingdevoted myselfto other pursuits. Eighteen
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