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SYLLABIC SYSTEMS OF WRITING
185 the Bible Christian Mission, decided to reduce the Miao language in written form by inventing a special system of writing. They accomplished this task about 1904. The new script was a syllabary, consisting of very simple, purely geometric symbols (Fig. 95, 1), According to the missionaries the success of the invention "was immediate and phenomenal. It is said that when the first copies of one of these hill-folk's Gospels reached Yünnan-fu, the provincial capital, every copy had been sold within two hours, although the consignment made up twenty-nine horse-loads."
Pollard's system has been adopted for, and adapted to, the Hwa Miao and Chuan dialects, and to some other non-Chinese dialects, such as Kopu (Fig. 93, 2), spoken mainly in Luchuan and Hsintien (Yün-nan), as well as Laka (Fig. 95, 3), Nosu (Fig. 95, 4), and the eastern dialect of Lisu (Fig. 95, 5), also spoken in Yün-nan.
The Lisu or Li-su or Li-zu, a hill tribe of Yün-nan, living mainly in the upper valleys of the rivers Salween and Mekong, as well as in the Salween valley of northern Burma, are considered by some scholars as the most ancient inhabitants of south-western China. Their language seems to have affinities with Lo-lo dialects. On the other hand, some customs of theirs suggest Indonesian affinities, whereas Haddon classified them as belonging to the group called by him protomorphs(?); according to other scholars they have Caucasian affinities.
Similar syllabic systems have been devised for the western or Hwa dialect of Lisu as well as for its already mentioned eastern dialect (Fig. 95, 6) spoken in Yün-nan and in northern Burma, and for Lo-lo spoken in the north-western portion of Yün-nan (Fig. 95. 7). The former was invented about 1915, by American Baptist missionaries; the latter, about 1930, by missionaries of the British and Foreign Bible Society. Both the systems consist of Roman capital letters in different positions of the signs, and with quite different phonetic values from those of the Roman alphabet.
N.B.-For the script of the island of Woleai see . 116-118; if this script rere a true syllabary it should have been dealt with in this chapter, but itt system is still Uncertain.
