Samaria. The writing of Palestine was probably identical originally with that of the Phoenicians, and the Samaritan script, which is still in use for biblical purposes, has retained to the present day a considerable resemblance with that of Tyre and Sidon. The expatriation and partial repatriation of the Jews and Israelites during the seventh and sixth centuries B.C., had the effect of leaving only a small remnant in the north of the land who preserved their ancient writing. From that time to this some of the descendants of the Samarians have continued to write their Pentateuch (which for them is the whole of the Bible) in the ancient characters of the Hebrew language (a specimen is found on plate 4). All the rest of the Jews, in whatever part of the world they may have been, have retained the square character (with its various Rabbinical modifications) which they learned in ChaldaBa in the seventh century B.C. But the Hebrew language never returned to the Holy Land. Hebrew, as spoken among the Samaritans, underwent the same Aramaisation as the language of the Judseans, and from three or four centuries B.C. down to the eighth century of our era, the language of all Syria was Syriac with local dialects, and Greek in the great cities. The usual character in which Syriac was written has already been mentioned, but the Samaritans wrote even their semi-Syriac speech in the old characters of their Bible; and there is a really Samaritan Pentateuch different from the Hebrew Pentateuch in Samaritan letters which corresponds in Samaritan literature to the Chaldee Targums of the Jews. None of the Hebraeo-Aramaic dialects long survived in Syria the conquest of the Arabs. Syriac still lived on in Western Persia and in Mongolia, and in India for a time, but only survived as a dead liturgical language. Chalda3O-Hebraic made its way westwards to Morocco, Italy, Spain and Gaul. The faithful in Samaria, now nearly extinct, clung to their Pentateuch and their religion through all vicissitudes, and have never ceased to write the Bible in the Hebrew script of ancient Palestine.
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| The taʿlīq script is a script style in Arabic calligraphy designed specifically to satisfy the needs of the Per- sian language. It was widely used, especially in Persianate societies, until being replaced by the Nastaʿlīq script. Taʿlīq (tâlik) is also generally used as the name for the Nastaʿlīq script in the Turkish language and often in the Arabic language. |
Arabia. Arabian writing before the time of Mohammad is only known to us under the name of Haurani and Nabathaean in the North, of Himyaritic in the South. None of these scripts resembles the Islamic characters called distinctively Arabic. The Gospel-script (Estrangelo) of the Syrians is the nearest of all the Aramaic hands to that used by the earliest Mohammadans, which (from its special cultivation in the town of Cufa) is called Cufic. But even here, the resemblance is not so close as to make it improbable that there was a link between them in some lost script of pre-Christian days. The Cufic writing which prevailed for three centuries as the mode of writing the Koran cannot strictly be shown to be the mother of the Naskhi which replaced it and has flourished for a thousand years. It is clearly older than the Naskhi in its forms, but the Naskhi has been proved to have existed contemporaneously with the Cufic almost from the beginning of Mohammadanism. After the third century of the Hijra, the Cufic was only retained for ornamentation and head-lines. By that time the Arab conquests had created a vast Mohammadan empire; the Syrians, the Persians, and the Egyptians were obliged to give up their old scripts, and to accept that of their conquerors. Arabic writing occupied not only all the seats in which Phoenician letters had been used fifteen centuries before, but even a far larger area. The writing and the language were used and known from Seville to the frontiers of India. Soon after, India likewise fell a prey; and Arabic letters have been used there ever since by the Mohammadan population. The elegant script called Talik, which was peculiar to the Persians (but has been borrowed in India), was developed in the fourteenth century. It differs little, except in gracefulness, from the typical Naskhi.
India and the further East. The characters ill which the Pracrit inscriptions of Northern India were engraved on stone, in the third century B.C., descended, with considerable modifications of form, to the various tribes of Hindus who developed the modern languages of India, now called Hindi, Gujarati, Mahratti, Panjabi, Bengali. All these languages are akin, their differences being produced by segregation and by local contact with aboriginal or foreign populations. Their character two thousand years ago (before local diversities were perpetuated in names) is described by the term Prakrit (^Natural) as distinguished from the title given to another form of the language, namely Sanskrit (=Artificial) which is believed to represent a far more ancient stage of Indian speech. In this artificial language the earliest traditions and literature of the Hindo-Aryan race are preserved, but it is supposed to have died out of speech (if ever it was spoken) several centuries before the Christian era. However that may be, we have no monument or record to show that it was written till the tenth century after Christ, and the Sanscrit alphabet is undeniably not more than eight or nine centuries old, having been artificially elaborated from the much simpler script of Asoka's time.
The graphic systems of Southern India, Ceylon, Thibet. Burma, and Siam were all derived from the script of Aryan India after Budhism had begun to spread. In North-Eastern Asia, the Mongolian script (and out of it, the Manchurian) were formed from the writing of the Nestorian Christians who carried their Syriac books to the frontiers of China.
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| Samaritan MS. on Vellum, Probably Sec. XV. from the book of Leviticus. |
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