The Institutes of Akbar 73.5

73.5

There are fifty-two articulate sounds in Hindí, so and so many in Greek, and eighteen in Persian. In Arabic, there are twenty-eight letters represented by eighteen signs, or by only fifteen, when we count the joined letters, and if we take the Hamzah as one with the Alif. The reason for writing an Alif and a Lám, (لا) separately at the end of the single letters in the Arabic Alphabet, is merely to give an example of a sákin letter, which must necessarily be joined to another letter; and the reason why the letter Lám is preferred as an example, is because the letter Lám is the middle letter of the word alif, and the letter alif the middle letter of the word Lám. The vowel-signs did not exist in ancient times, instead of which letters were dotted with a different kind of ink; thus a red dot placed over a letter expressed that the letter was followed by an a; a red dot in front of the letter signified an u; and a red dot below a letter, an i. It was Khalíl ibn i Ahmad, the famous inventor of the Metrical Art of the Arabians, who fixed the forms of the vowel-signs as they are now in use.