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Show 482 TilE MONOGENISTS AND of Oppcrt and De Saulcy in Franco; whilst, in Germany, the father of cuneiform decipherers, Grotcfcnd, frequently prefers a reading of his own. Out of this embarrassing state of aftairs, a fooling of mistrust has gradually arisen, especially at Paris, tho centre of archroological criticism; which has found voice, at last, in the pages of Ronan; 249 than whom, amid masters of Somitish tongues and history, none are better qualified to judge. "If one must fool grateful toward those persons who venture into those unknown lands, whilst exposing themselves to a thousand chances of error and of ill success, the greatest reserve is commanded in presence of contradictory results, obtained through an uncertain method, and sometimes presented without any demonstration. Is it not excusable to doubt, in such matters, when one sees the man who has made for himself tho greatest renown in Assyrian .studies, M. Rawlinson, sustain that the Assyrians did not distinguish proper names by the sound, lmt by the sense; and that, in order to indi ate tho name of a king, for instance, it was permitted to employ all tho synonymos which could approximately render tho same idea;- that the name of each god is often represented by monograms differing from each other, and arbitrarily chosen ; -that tho same given character was read in several ways, and must be considered in turns as ideographic or phonetic, alphabetic or syllabic,250 according to tho Hoods of intorprctation;-whon one sees, I say, M. Rawlinson avow that many of his readings are given exclusively for the convenience of identification [as amongst one of the last beautiful "confirmations" -Daniel's herbivorous Nobochadnassar !j; that it is often permitted to modify the forms of characters to render them more intelligible: -when, ~astl~, one sees, upon such fmil hypotheses, a chronology and a ch1moncal pantheon of the ancient empire of Assyria constr~ ctod? What must we think of tho inscriptions, called Medic, wh10h would be written, if one must credit the same Savant, in a language wherei~ the declension would be Turkish, the general structure of tho d1scourso Indo-European, tho conjugation Tartar and Celtic, the pronoun Semitic, the vocabulary Turkish, mixed with Persian and with Semitic? To this method I prefer even that of M. Norris, who, porsuad~d, li~<e ~M. Westergaard and De Saulcy, that the language of tho mscnptwns of tho third species is Scythic or : lli~toire et Syst~me compart de& La11gues Stmitiques, Paris, 1855; pp. 64-9, 70. It 1s n~ver~holess tr~e, that a sign does often possess these different powers, and must 80 be :ca~, m lneroglyph1os; but in the latter form of writing (whether ouneatics possess suc.h mdJccs to the mothou of reading or not), tho groups themselves furnish tho key by wh1ch to know its value. Con f. Ll!IJ'Stus, Le/lre d Rosellini, Annali 1837 pp. 81-47 :-BuNSBN,_ E:ypt's Place, 1848, I, PP· 604-GOO :-DB Rouot!, Mtmoire sur ;e 1~mt~eau d' Ahmes, 18Gl, P· !18 .-and Bmon, Orystat Palace IIand-Book, 18M, pp. 222-9, 248. TilE POLYGENJSTS. 48~ Tartaric (what I do not moan to deny), undertakes to explain thoro through Ostiak and Tchercmiss, and claims to give us, with the help of the inscriptions, a complete Scythic grammar. One must be profoundly wanting in tho sentiment of philology, to imagi no that, by as embling upon one's table a few dictionaries, tho infinitoly-clclicato problem can be solved, if it be not insoluble, of an unknown tongue written in an alphabet in major portion unknown. Evon wore tho language of tho inscriptions perfectly detcrrnin d, it could not be, save through an intimate knowledge of all tho neigh boring idioms, that one might arrive at giving with certainty tho grammatical explanation and the interpretation of such obscure texts." Taking China, on our way back to Egypt from Chaldoa, it is to be remarked that, since the labors, hitherto unimpeachable, of tho Jesuit missionaries, 200 years ago, little or nothing has been dono, in that impenetrable country, by European criticism of their ancient monuments or annals, to invalidate the sketch of Chinese chronology borrowed from Pauthier.251 No preconceived opinions (or desires), on my part, induce supproesion of doubts as to tho historic claims of this Sinologico-J osuit account of Chinamen's antiquity to absolute credence. There arc improbable circumstances about tho ro-fincling copies of their ancient books, after the destruction of libraries by Chi-hoang-ti,252 about B. o. 213, -parallel with librarian auto-dafe's elsewhere-on which some more positive nanation might be consoling; and Davis 253 has remarked bow, in tho :flowery empire itself, "a famous commentator, named Choofootse, observes : 'It is impossible to give entire credit to the accounts of those remote ages.' China has, in fact, bor mythology, in common with all other nations." She had, also, at very early timos,-hundrcds of years prior to tho Grecian Thales-ber a tronomical observations. Among those (if any point seemed certain in Chinese or other histories) were two eclipses of the sun, recorded as having taken place in tho reign of TorroNa-KANG, whom Father Amiot's table places about B. o. 2159-4 7.254 The former was computed, by Gaubil, to have occurred on tl1e 13th Oct., 2155 D. o.; and by Frcret and Cassini, during D. o. 2007: tho latter by Rothman, resuming Chinese supputations, in tho J·nlian year 2128. Now, it is unfortunate that, with tho precise "Tables Abr6g6es, composees par M. Largetoau pour faciliter lo Oalaul des Syzygies ecliptiques et non ecliptiques," neither this astronomer nor 261 'I'Ijpts of Afankind, pp. 695-7. 263 PAuTunm, O!tine, Paris, Svo, 1837; pp. 222, 286. 268 The Ohinese, 12mo, London, I, p. 157. 2154 PAUTHtEll, Olline d'apr~s lea documents cMnois, Paris, Svo, 1837, p. 480 :--" Ilistoire critique du Chou-king"-.Livres Sacrta de t'Orimt, Paris, Svo, 1843; pp. 8-5. ,~,, ,. I ~' I |
