Not only the Chinese but the Japanese also, who make use of the Chinese characters, appear to have been in this manner led to adopt, to a certain degree, a mode of writing by syllabic characters ; and they seem to have carried it farther than even the Chinese themselves ; as we are assured, they have a fixed syl labic alphabet, consisting of about fifty characters, the figures of them evidently borrowed from the represen tative characters, but the characters themselves denoting sounds, not ideas.
It is the opinion of M. Goguct, that those nations of Asia, known to the antients by the names of Syrians and Assyrians, used the syllabic way of writing. This opinion he grounds upon an ancient tradition preserved by Diodorus, according to which, the invention of writ ing is ascribed to the Syrians, but the Phoenicians are said to have improved and completed it. (Diod. lib. 5.) This, according to M. Goguet, denotes, that the Syrians invented syllabic writing, and the Phoenicians alphabetic characters. (Origin des loix. &c. lib. ii. c. 6.) M. Freret, in a paper on this subject, in the Memoirs of the ,Ica delude des Inscriptions, maintains, that syllabic writ ing was employed by the Abyssinians or Ethiopians, whose alphabet, he says, contained 200 characters ; by the Indian Brahmins, whose characters do not differ much from the Ethiopian, and amount to 240 ; by the people of Malabar, of Bengal, of Boutan, and of the two Thibets, whose writing is in use in all western and northern Tartary, from the frontiers of China to the north of the Caspian Sea ; by the inhabitants of Ceylon, of Siam, of Java, and probably other eastern na tions, which, says he, employ a kind of writing, wherein the syllables compounded of consonants and 'towels are expressed by a single character. These opinions, how ever, it must be owned, rest upon very questionable grounds ; M. Freret, in particular, has evidently been led into error, by mistaking for distinct syllabic character the abbreviated junctions of vowel and consonant fre quently occurring in oriental writing, abbreviations en tirely similar to the well-known contractions in Greek, which arc only different modes of writing certain letters when occurring together. But be this as it may, there can be no doubt that at least among the Chinese and Japanese, if not among any other people, the syllabic mode of writing has been to a certain degree super induced upon the symbolic or representative characters.
Thus far we may consider ourselves as pretty well supported by facts in our account of the progress of written characters ; but we are utterly unable to trace with any certainty the succeeding steps of the invention. It has been supposed, that when syllabic characters had come into common use, men would be prompted to simplify them, and rcduco their number, by resolving them into the fewest possible elementary sounds, and that thus, at length, an alphabet of vowels and consonants, or of mere letters, would be formed. This, however,
was by no means an easy or an obvious undertaking ; the vowels, indeed, are only syllabic sounds of the sim plest form, but the consonants being rather elements of sound than actual sounds themselves, and incapable of being distinctly articulated without the aid of a vowel, either prefixed or affixed, the resolution of these could not be effected without a very refined speculation con cerning the nature of articulate speech, and a careful analysis of the various organs employed in the utterance of language. By whom, or in what manner, this was accomplished, is still the great desideratum in tracing theoretically the history of the progress of alphabetic writing ; and nothing appears to have been yet dis covered capable of elucidating this stage of the in quiry. It is certain the resolution has been effected, but when and how it was done remains yet to be dis covered.
II. Though the progress of the mind in the inven tion of alphabetic characters cannot be completely traced, yet to follow out as far as possible the actual history of the invention, it may be in some measure satisfac tory, shortly to review the pretensions of the different nations, who have laid claim to the honour of the inven don.
This invention has been claimed by a number of different people. The Plwenicians, the Egyptians, the Chaldeans, and the Indians, have all made pretensions to it.
The Greeks ascribed the invention of their alphabet to Cadmus the Phoenician, who planted a colony in Thebes. By this, however, we are only to understand, that Cadmus was the first who made alphabetic characters known in Greece. That he was not regarded as the actual inventor is clear ; for Plato, the most learned of the Greeks, expressly says, that T/,aut the Egyptian was the first that divided letters into vowels and con sonants, mutes and liquids. This Thaw, or Thant, is also mentioned by Sanchoniatho, the Plinician his torian, as the inventor of letters, and is claimed by him as a Pha•ician ; he is said to have lived in the 12th or 13th generation after the creation, and to have been the son of Misor, and grandson of Hamyn. To reconcile these different accounts of the country of Thaut, Mr Jackson, in his Chronological Antiquities, maintains, that letters having been invented by Taaut, or Thoth, the Phoenician, son of Misraim, who lived about 500 years after the deluge, were introduced into Egypt by a second Taaut, who lived about 100 vears after the former. Taaut was Ly the Greeks called Ilermes, and by the Latins, Mercury ; and this second Hermes, w ho obtained the mune, of Trismegistus, was, according to Diodorus, the inventor of grammar, music, letters, and writing, as well as the author of numerous books, and many important inventions.