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272
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[OCTOBER, 1879.
be fully prepared to trace the survival of this designation among the later sovereigns of the far East. The earliest counterpart of the title appears in the Sassanian Series, under the form of us Kadi in connexion with the name of Varahran II." It occurs frequently on the coins of Yezdegird I. and is constant on those of Firuz; and Khusrû Parviz had a special Royal seal for the province of Khorasân engraved with the words sa ... las Khorásán Khudah. So that, whether ethno. logically or geographically, we arrive naturally at the continued use of the term on the local money of Bokhårå under the Khalif Mansur.
One of the most interesting questions connected with these coins, is the palæographic associations of their legends which may be formulated thus, do these strange characters, which embody the sounds of Bokhara Khudaldo, represent the original letters of the ancient Soghdian alphabet, or are they the outcome of a hybrid collection of symbols from current and more recent systems of writing? My own impressions are still in favour of the latter theory. On my first examination of this class of coin in 1858, I remarked that their "alphabetical devices" seemed "to pertain to inore westerly nations, though the sites of discovery connect (the coins) with the Central Asian types," enumerated in the conjoint classification, and I further remarked upon the fact, that "the forms of the letters" gave "it (the alphabet) a decidedly Phoenician aspect." This verdict must remain unimpaired with regard to the 1st, 2nd, 5th, 7th, 8th, 9th, and 11th letters of the legend, consisting of eleven letters in all, the two compound letters doing duty for the Pehlvi equivalent of; khu have the second conjunct letter ider.tical in form with the other , 's or Waw's. So that we have virtually only two characters remaining to account for, i.e. the triangular letter which constitutes the in ge and the reversed form of 20 which represents the l = 4. Whatever may have boen the derivation of this letter
? its combination with, to form the equivalent of the later Arabic ¿ points to Pehlvi teaching and acknowledged conventional practice; and its appearance on these pieces indicates the mere imitation of the system of Pehlvi orthography in use upon their prototypes.
There is a letter very similar to this triangular $ = h, which stands for an Hebrew = i in Aramean in Gesenius' Table No. IV." and a nearly similar form is given to the same letter in the Duc de Laynes' Alphabets Pl. xi, a; Prinsep's Essays. The kh may, after all, have been represented, in the anomalous conversion of sounds, by an initial iu or eu. It will be remembered that the has always been a Turkish difficulty, which survives to this day in Tophana and Hiva. The peculiar shape of the a, in its backward curve, reminds us of the Syriac definition of that letter, but the earliest type of that character on the stèle of Mesha (the Moabite Stone) with the omission of its downstroke might well have formed the model upon which many early varieties were designed and improved upon. There are other coincidences to be detected in this system of writing, which seem to connect it with Syrian (Nestorian) teachings," the fuller examination of which may be reserved for a future opportunity.
Albîr ûn i tells us, that the whole stock of the primitive literature of Kharizm was utterly destroyed, root and branch, by Kotaibah bin Musliin-even as the Khalif O'mar, on the other extremity of the Arab conquests, sanctioned the conflagration of the Library of Alexandria. If this eradication of all ancient records, and the coincident extermination of the living exponents of traditional lore, was practically carried out, to the extent the Kharizmian author would imply-we can well understand and account for the necessity of a reconstruction of alphabetspartaking alike of what had been preserved and recovered from local sources, readjusted to the advanced spread of independent forms of writing and intermixture of speech. Albîrûni's invaluable
"Wardán Khodsal" roi de Bokhåra 535, and Albirdnt Åsar 'ul Bákya, Sachau's text, p. 102. 8155 uljes kustu
| بخارا خدا خوارزم شاہ and ملوک مرر ما هو يه
19 Masaudi, tom. II. p. 228-9. J.R.A.S. N. S. vol. III, p. 319.
Prinsep's Essays, vol. II. p. 116. 1. Carpentras Insc. Ist Cent. A.D. See also F. Lenormant (Paris, 1872). Alphabet Aranéen des Papyrue, tom. I, Plate xi. and Pls. xii. to xiii, xv.. xvi.; as well as Dr. J. Euting's Tables, Strasbourg, 1877.
* Gibbon, Cap. xlvii. vol. V. p. 259, edition of 1867.
10 Ockley, History of the Saracens, A.H. 21 = A.D. 611, under Omar. Gibbon.
J. R. Asiatic Society N. 8. vol. III. p. 284.
19 Num. Chron. vol. XII, p. 110, coin No. 29; sce also pp. 283 287.
