On the Origin of the Indian Brahma Alphabet c10.4

c10.4

P. 31, l. 5. From Mr. Halhed’s Grammar of the Bengal language, p. 17 ff. (Calcutta, 1778), to which Dr. B. Liebich has drawn my attention, it appears that about the end of the last century the Bengal schoolmasters still used a set of twelve tables, including chiefly compound letters, which may be remotely connected with Hiuen Tsiang’s twelve *chang* and Huilin’s twelve *fan*. Mr. Halhed calls them the twelve *Phola*, which name according to the Jonesian transliteration would be *Phalā* and corresponds to the Sanskrit *phalaka*, ‘board, tablet’, and he states that they severally are *kya*, *kra*, *kna*, *kla*, *kva*, *kma*, *kṛ*, *kḷ*, *rka*, *ṅka*, *ska* and *siddhi*. He adds that *siddhi* is an abbreviation of *siddhir astu*¹ and that this *Phalā* consists of the sixteen vowels. Mr. Halhed also gives the contents of two other *Phalās* in full, which I copy here in transcription, as his grammar is rather rare.