Earliest monuments known are not earlier than the 1st c. p.c. The Rabbinical is a current handwriting in use till the 12th c. A.D. ' • now superseded by the Spanish, the German, and the beautiful Raschi text. There are several forms of debased modern manuscript. It should be noticed that there are no Jewish manuscripts older than the 3d c. A.D., and that no vowels were pointed before the 5th century.
The modern Neskhi appears on the tomb at Kbartoom, in Nubia, of the second generation after the prophet. The Cutie, the beautiful characters erected upon a long straight bar, and used in ornamental inscriptions, had originally only the 22 letters of the Phenician, but they early added six precessed letters; yet not in the same order in the Barbary or Mograb alphabet. The Neskhi turned the letters into a new order, easily memorized by a mnemonic verse, but based really on their forms, those alike being brought together. It is current, with some exceptions, reversed, differentiated for four places, and pointed for vowels. The Cutlc is handsomer for inscriptions, but, as illuminated with a reed pen, it may be questioned whether so graceful an alphabet has ever been invented. Like all systems of which the letters differ widely in shape, it is not, except when in too fine a type, tiresome to the eye. There are various forms of more or less cursive shape, known by different names. The Persian Tazalik reduces the short twists to one long waving stroke. All foreign nations—and Arabic is the English of the East—make needed letters by pointing those nearest in Arabic. Such alphabets are the Malay, the Turk, the Indian, and the Afghan.
Wigur in 7th c. A.D., Manzliu in the 16th. Some differentiate for place, and connect; all write in column from above, down, which also appears to have been once true of the Estranghelo, from which they come. Kabunk has 7 vowels and 18 consonants, the arrangement, as in all these alphabets, being arbitrary.
Eastern Aramaic of the Achemenian empire gradually changes, as may be traced on monuments, until it appears on the Sassanian coins. The MS. is exceedingly hard to read, the 4 vowels and 19 consonants being exceedingly alike, and ligatures and con tractions numerous. The language is a conventional one, containing both Indo-German and Shemitic, and exceedingly difficult to understand: writing reversed, and words separated by a point. Zend is the language of the Avestas, and there may be distin guished an older and a newer form. An alphabet of 51 signs, which, like the last, have the flowing look of Arabic Neskhi, but many of the tails of the letters turn against the grain: writing disconnected, reversed, with ligatures. The Armenian began in the 5th C. A.D., till when they used Sassanian or Greek. They have large and small letters,
both in type and cursive. The Georgian is of two types, older and newer. Both have 41 letters; and the Armenian, though undoubtedly Indo-German, appears to have been influenced to assume many strong explosives and double letters.
On old coins of Cabul of about 150-22 B.C. are found letters and numerals of an alpha bet, evidently debased Aramaic, but more of a Syrian than of a Pehl wi type. It has neither mother nor daughter that we at present know, and has not been attached to the Aramaic branch, where it properly belongs, for that reason. The whole of Indian paleography is unsettled, and for a reason which always causes confusion; the relative antiquity of its alphabets and cultivation being closely bound up with religion, all native observations on the subject are puerile or deceptive, nor is the student fitted for researches which belong to the :sphere of the archaeologist. Late discoveries of inscrip tions on copper, on stone, and in caves, enable us to correct many extravagant claims for Indian antiquity, yet there still remain uncertainties and illusions which only critical research can dispel. It must be remembered that northern India, Brahmani till the 5th c. B.C., became Buddhi from the 3d c. B. C. to the Gth C. A.D., the wave spreading from the town of Bihar, then Magadha. The Magadhi alphabet is without the band-line above the letters, but each consonant implies the a vowel, since when several follow without a vowel they go each below the other. We have inscriptions of king Acoka, 3d c. D.C.; from Guzerat, 2d c. n.c.; from Allahabad. 5th c. A.D., and several prob ably slightly older than any. The difference is hardly so much as might be,ex pected in so long a time, and all the Sanskrit letters are present, at least in the latest. Pali, its descendant, easily known by its wanting the band-line, coming into use in Bud dhism just before its final expulsion from hither India, naturally became finally identi fied with that religion, and furnished the alphabets for the languages influenced by its missionary exile. There seems to have been a n.w. center, necessarily Brahmani, which, thrown into the background by Buddhism, contributed, after the downfall of the latter, to the formation of a new character, the ancestor of the modern hither Indian alphabets, and which, as it was used in committing to writing the sacred Brahmanical books, we may call the Vaidik. Such a supposed type, a floating mixture of old n.e. and n.w. types, must have existed, for a reciprocal influence is evident between modern Devana gari and the Sindhi and Multani.