Early South Indian Palaeography c8.s2.22

c8.s2.22

⁴¹ *Ibid.*, p. 212. "Symbols are less obvious and more artificial than signs, they are usually conventional, and are not only abstract, but metaphysical, and often need explanation from history, religion and customs. They do not depict but suggest objects: do not speak directly through the eye to the intelligence, but presuppose in the mind knowledge of an event or fact which the sign calls. The symbols of the ark, dove, olive-branch and rainbow would be the cross and the crescent to those ignorant of history". (quoted from Garrick Mallery, '*Sign Language* among North American Indians', *First American Report of the Bureau of Ethnology*, 1879-80 (1881).