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270
EPIGRAPHIA INDICA.
[Vol. XI,
Ring. The order of the Tibetan alphabet is of Indian origin. But it is strange to observe, that the group of g Sal byed was divided into two parts, by inserting the Ring between them. The Tibetan alphabet was arranged as follows:
r9t (17 ts
25 r . inid
(24 y
18
tsh
26
1
gSal byed
gSal byed
Rins
gSal byd
chh
13 p | 14 ph
15 b 18 ñ
( 16 m As we see, there are seven Rins, instead of six. Regarding tho gSal byed, Dr. Vogel's note will soffice. Let me add a few words about the Rins. The sibilants ts, tsh, and ds are distinguished from the signs for the ordinary palatals by an additional stroke.-The Tibetan w is a combination of land b. We may say it is a b with a prefixed l. Also b with other prefixes may become a w; thus, the West Tibetan pronunciation of the word dban, power, is wan.-The Tibetan & was derived directly from the most ancient form of the Tibetans, by omitting the stroke on the left side of the s.-The letter is simply an inverted .-'The Tibetan character for 'a may have been developed from the Indian g. 'A as initial is in many dialects pronounced like gh. But as a prefix it generally has a nasal sound. Before the noone of the Tibetan g was properly developed, the characters for g and 'a may have looked much the same. To distingaish then, 'a was furnished for a time with an additional stroke. Compare the accompanying tables.1
It is strange that a, the first letter of the Indian alphabet, should be found at the end of the Tibetan alphabet. I am rather inclined to believe that it was a later development. In many ancient documents, the Tibetan a looks almost exactly like a ya, and there are a number of words in which an original ya has been dropped, or been turned into a vowel-bearer a. Thus, yuri becomes 'ani; yid becomes id; yor becomes 'on, etc. But in its later development the letter a became decidedly similar to the a of the Takari fcript, for which reason it was derived from it by General Cunningham. As has been noticed, old forms of the a in Ladakh are furnished with a hook at the lower left hand corner.
Lantsha and Vartula. Dr. Vogel has favoured me with the following note on Lañtsha: “As regards the Lanthsa, it is based on the Indian script of the tenth century. A charactoristio of this script, to which Bühler bas drawn attention, are the small tails, slanting to the right from the ends of the verticals. These are most prominent in the Någari of the 10th century. Notice also the long straight topstrokes found in Nagari. Notice especially the letters gha, ja, ya (bipartite), ra (with loop). See plates in Sarat Ch. Das' Sacred and Ornamental Characters of Tibet,' J. A. 8. B., Vol. LVII, and Hodgson's plates in Asiat. Res., Vol. XVI (1828).
There are several incomplete tables of Tibetan alphabets from the eighth or ninth century among the documents of the Stein collection. There, the arrangement of the characters is in the following respect different from the present day arrangement. The letter 6 (often pronounced t) is not placed between ph and m, as shown abore, but between land . Thas it has the place of the o in the Sanskrit alphabet. In the same tables the letter 100 appears as a ba with a superadded 'a. This ancient alpuabut consists of 29 lettors only.
