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SEPTEMBER, 1878.]
CORRESPONDENCE AND MISCELLANEA.
231
In these cases, therefore, the final letter of the alphabet counts as 21, and not as 22. No. 21, in the ordinary course of Eastern letter notation, is equivalent to 300, and as such the Greeks received the T, out of its regular Phoenician order, and adopted it into their own system, which goes far to suggest that this Phrygian medium was the true channel of communication, in opposition to the tentative numerals of the Egyptians, which the Phoenicians perhaps suggested to the Latins. So much avowedly depends upon the sequent order of the letters that we find in the proper Hebrew alphabet then tau = 400, and where the current Hebrew adds a second D p (=of), then grows into 500.
To reiterate somewhat, in order to test and check the dates bearing upon the mechanical adaptation of letter figures. I will re-state the case from another point of view. The missing of the Aramean writing regains its place in the ac cepted Greek scheme under the Phænician influ. ences, to which it was so largely indebted, and from whose alphabetical notation the letter perhaps had never been absent. So also the Hebrew
yod =10 is constant in the Greek series of letter numbers. The Greek scheme of amalgamation evidently experienced a second jerk in the number of 90, where it had to supply a figure like a reversed P or a revived (koph), as inconsecutive a form as the revised equivalent of the sia, in order, perchance, to retain or bring back the = P to its proper numeral position as 100, the fixed succeeding to its ancient function as 200, and the T to its coincident value of 300, from which, as the 21st letter of the primitive Moabite and Phrygian order of notation, it ought never to have been displaced.
E. Thomas.
But, in the first instance, all the external evidence goes to show that no foreign invaders found the Hindus in original possession of anything of the sort. The scanty records which we have of Greek and Roman contact with ancient India may be ransacked in vain for any positive evidence on the subject, while their silence is strong negative testimony per contra.
No Muhammadan historian mentions gunpowder before A.D. 1317; and Sir H. Elliot thinks the earliest date at which it can have got to India A.D. 1400, and does not put much faith in a Chinese account of something like a firearm in A.D. 1259 (Elliot and Dowson's Hist. Ind. vol. VI. pp. 456, 459, 460). Col. Yule, referring to a
Fire-Pao' used in China in the 13th century, agrees with MM. Favé and Reinaud that it was probably a sort of rocket. Now, if the Hindas ever had anything of the sort, how did they come to forget all about it before they came in contact with Western races capable of bearing testimony to the fact P or, if they had not forgotten it, how is it that Greek, Arab, and Persian are equally silent on the subject? The Hindu armourer is conservative enough. The sword, the battle-axe, the war-quoit, are the same to-day in steel that they are in the stone of sculptures 1200 years old; and, in respect of the first weapons, the Muslim invaders had no sooner settled in India than they adopted the peculiar and inconvenient Indian hilt. It is hardly likely that so important an art as that of the artillerist would have dropped out of sight, and its only record be found in a Sanskřit manuscript not very well known; and this is the next point to which I wish to draw attention.
"The sago Sukra Acharya" has already appear, ed in these columns as the contemporary of the V&man Avatar and of Brihaspati (Ind. Ant. vol. IV. p. 243, vol. V. p. 5). Was he the author of the work quoted by Babu Râm Dås Sen? And if not, who was? The Babu says that the Slokas quoted do not seem mere modern interpolations. His authority upon this point is superior to mine, and I must bow to it till some scholar of weight has examined the MS. and given his opinion on it. But, from the evidence above given, it seems to me that if they are not such interpolations the whole work must be a forgery of, at best, the 17th century--a period which I am led to select by the mention of the flint.
W. F. SINCLAIR.
THE FIREARMS OF THE HINDUS. SIR, -Under the above heading Babu Ram Das Sen (ante, p. 136) appears to claim for the Hindus of some unknown but very ancient period a knowledge of military projectiles at least equal to that possessed by their descendants in the last century. He speaks of the Agni-Astra as mentioned in the Agni Purana and Múdra Rakshasa, and as more particularly described in the Sukra-Niti, a work said to have been written by the sage SukraAcharya; from which he quotes descriptions which as translated undoubtedly refer to true firearms.
M. Lenormant detecta no teths in the Moab stone, in the Lions of Nimrud, or the Inscriptions in Cyprus and Malta, nor is the letter entered in any of the four varieties of Hebrew Archnique" in Pl. vii, though he discovers the letter in some pierres gravées, the widus of which is not defined.
Finally, under the Italian aspect, though the Umbrians and Etruscans used the e, the Romans and Oscans mado up the letter of the ordinary combined TH.
Marco Polo, vol. I. p. 334.
