The interchange of these two signs in ‘Kurus’ finally disposed of a supposition started by Burnouf and supported so lately as Holtzmann,[569] that 𐎽 might be l, and that the Persians pronounced the name of their great king ‘Kulus.’
Considerations of the same kind greatly assisted Rawlinson in rectifying some of his values. For example, in the case of 𐎦, which he had hitherto read gh, he found that it replaced 𐎥 the g before a, in order to form the locative singular ‘Margauw;’ and consequently he had no hesitation ‘in placing the two characters, not merely in the same class, but in the same grade of that class.’ It is therefore now found among the gutturals as g before u.[570]
Precisely the same considerations led to the rectification of 28 (𐎩) j’h to j. He found the locative of Susiana (‘uwajaiya’) written 𐎩 · 𐎡, i.e. ji, which he knew from grammatical considerations must stand for jai; and he therefore concluded that 𐎩 is j before a; which is correct.
A farther result of this classification is to supply the sounds of the missing vowels e and o, for when i or u follow a consonant with an inherent a, the diphthongs ai and au are produced, which correspond phonetically and grammatically to the diphthongs ê and ô in Sanscrit.[571] Such were the results communicated by Rawlinson in his Supplementary Note, which, as we have seen, crossed the detailed account of Hincks’s paper on the same subject. It was received in London on October 8, and its substance was read at a meeting of the Society on December 6, and noticed in the ‘Athenæum’ of December 19.[572] The alterations in the method of transliteration required by the new system were, as we have said, carried out under the supervision of Mr. Norris.[573]
Rawlinson has not drawn up a formal grammar of Old Persian, but he loses no opportunity of comparing its forms with Sanscrit and Zend, and pointing out wherein they agree and wherein they differ. He shows that the initial letter a, so frequently employed, is used to express the temporal augment in the past tenses of verbs, and according to the analogy of the Sanscrit it is short. But the short a of Sanscrit terminations is changed into long a in the cuneiform; and the mute terminal consonants of the former are usually omitted, as in the endings ‘as,’ ‘at,’ ‘an,’ ‘am,’ a rule applicable to both nouns and verbs. He shows also that the suffixes in i, so common in Sanscrit and Zend, are all lengthened into ‘iya’; a rule also applicable to the terminal u.[574] If he had finished his chapter on the Vocabulary, the student might have been able from it to put together a complete grammar. Under their initial letters we find ‘adam,’ the personal pronoun ‘ego’; ‘aniya,’ ‘alius’; the two demonstrative pronouns ‘ava,’ ‘that,’ and ‘iyam,’ ‘this’;[575] correctly traced through all their cases so far as they were known—and the same is done for the cases of the verbs ‘am‘iy,’ ‘I am,’ and ‘thah,’ ‘to say’;[576] and in each he shows the close similarity they exhibit to Sanscrit and Zend. In his notes to the translation he dwells especially on the construction of the sentences and upon the historical questions raised by the subject-matter of the text. He gives an elaborate analysis of each letter of the cuneiform alphabet, comparing its use and pronunciation with those of other languages. He can draw a wealth of illustration at pleasure from the kindred languages of Sanscrit, Zend, Pehlevi, Persian, as well as from Pali, Devanagari, Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, and Turkish; and although he displays an amount of knowledge that is truly surprising, he defers with unaffected humility to ‘the more experienced philologist.’[577] He classifies Old Persian as belonging to ‘the Arian type, resembling Sanscrit very closely in its grammatical structure; but in its orthographical development more nearly approximating to the Zend: while in the peculiarity of organisation which requires the juxtaposition of certain consonants with certain vowels it exhibits something of a Scythic character.’[578] He was not disposed to admit the antiquity then beginning to be claimed for Zend. He thought that in comparison with Old Persian it was modern. He imagined that the latter became gradually extinct after the age of Alexander, and that it was succeeded by Zend and Pehlevi, the former as a hieratic and the other as a demotic language but both derived from it.[579] He was clear at least that Old Persian could never have descended from Zend, though he reluctantly admits the possibility of their contemporary existence. His unwillingness to allow the antiquity of Zend was due in great measure to the legendary character of the Zendavesta, a book which he considered could not have been written till after the cuneiform Persian had been entirely forgotten. Otherwise, he said, ‘the priesthood could neither have had the audacity nor the desire to darken authentic history by the distorted and incomplete allusions to Jemshid and the Kayanian monarchs which are found in the Vendidád Sadé and in the ancient hymns.’[580]
The appearance of Rawlinson’s work was received with feelings of enthusiasm in Germany. The reproach that England had hitherto neglected the cuneiform records was at length effaced, and in such a manner as to entitle her to claim the first place in the roll of discovery. Benfey declared that few, if any, of the contributions made in recent times in the field of Oriental research could compare with it in importance.[581] Major Rawlinson, he says, displays an extraordinary aptitude for decipherment, and an accuracy and depth of philological learning that render it peculiarly fortunate that such an important document should have fallen into his hands. In mere length, the inscription exceeds by more than a hundred lines all those published by Lassen put together. It consists of five columns of about four hundred and ten lines, and, although there is considerable repetition, it nevertheless offers a great variety of words and phrases which added immensely to the knowledge previously acquired.[582] One great difficulty with which he had to grapple was the very imperfect state of the text. A glance over the plates will show the numerous blanks left in the writing in consequence of injury to the rock. Rawlinson’s copy was so carefully executed that he committed only one serious error, the omission of a line in the fourth column. The other imperfections are due entirely to the ravages of time. In the first column there is a large fissure on the right hand, extending from the top to the twenty-fifth line, and again from the sixty-third line to the end, besides numerous occasional gaps elsewhere. But the second column is in a much worse condition. ‘A fissure, varying in breadth, caused by the percolation of water, bisects it and destroys the continuity of the writing throughout its whole extent.’[583] The third is nearly perfect, except at the bottom, where several lines are wholly lost. The fourth column is worse than the second; ‘a fissure transects the tablet longitudinally,’ and in the lower half ‘the rock is more or less broken by the trickling of the water.’ But when we come to the fifth, we find ‘a state of such deplorable mutilation that it would be waste of time and ingenuity to undertake an analysis of the text, or to attempt anything like a connected and intelligible translation.’ In the face of these difficulties he was obliged to have recourse to very elaborate and ingenious restorations. At the end of the second column, for instance, he found the Susian copy perfect, and this enabled him to ‘restore’ the Persian text. It is one of the first instances of a long translation from the Susian, and his version of it turned out afterwards to be correct.[584] In the numerous repetitions that occur so frequently, he found a safe guide in other passages of the inscriptions. Sometimes, however, he had to work on much less solid foundation, as when he sought help from other sentences that were only ‘of nearly similar construction’; or when his restoration was ‘generally borne out by the context’; or merely by considerations of ‘grammatical propriety.’ In such cases he could never arrive at more than a high probability. He had frequently to measure the length of a blank and then tax his memory to supply one or more words with the required number of letters that would fit into the vacant place and at the same time make sense. Sometimes, as in the fourth column, the sense was so obscure that he feared his ‘restorations will be considered rather bold than felicitous.’[585] Occasionally his courage failed him altogether, and he was obliged to confess that ‘I cannot restore the [passage] even conjecturally.’ It is remarkable how uniformly successful his ‘conjectural restorations’ were found to be. He imposed the most admirable restraint upon the intuitive faculty with which he was so eminently gifted; and his emendations exhibit a patience and sobriety that many scholars engaged in similar work might advantageously study. When he had surmounted the imperfections of the text so far as possible, he set himself to the task of translation, and achieved the most notable success in this department of literature. When we consider that he had to unravel the intricacies of long sentences, determine the grammatical relations of multitudes of new words and fix their meaning by a patient comparison with Zend or Sanscrit analogies, the unfailing divination he displays is absolutely marvellous. A careful comparison of this first translation with that now accepted as correct will show comparatively few alterations, although the labours of many scholars have since been devoted to a rigorous study of the same text. The main body of the translation remains the same, word for word, down to the minutest particulars. Some doubtful passages, concerning which Rawlinson himself entertained doubts, have been cleared up; but it rarely happens even in these that the original translation was in fault as to the general meaning.
The long list of commentators begins with Benfey, whose tract on the subject was sent to the press in January 1847, when he could only have seen the first part of Rawlinson’s work. Some of Benfey’s suggestions have been accepted, others definitely rejected. A few instances will illustrate the nature and extent of the earliest attempt at revision. Almost the first error occurs in Column I. par. 10, where we find: ‘The troubles of the state ceased which Bardius excited.’ Rawlinson warns us that ‘this sentence cannot be read with any certainty,’ on account of a blank in the inscription, and the doubt attaching to the word ‘azada.’ Benfey derives this word from the Sanscrit ‘ajatá,’ which signifies ‘deprived of children,’ and he translates the passage: ‘The kingdom was deprived of heirs because Bardius was killed.’[586] But this alteration turned out to be quite unauthorised. ‘Azda,’ as the word is now written, is identified with the Armenian ‘azd,’ ‘information,’ corresponding to the Sanscrit ‘addhâ,’ ‘certain’; and Rawlinson himself corrected the passage in 1873 to ‘It was not known to the state that Bardius was killed.’ The accepted version given by Spiegel is ‘The army had no information that Bardius was killed.’[587] Soon after, we are told that ‘Cambyses, unable to endure his [misfortunes], died’ (par. 11). Benfey attributes his death to ‘overwhelming anger’ (übergrossem Zorn); but Oppert showed that the word really means ‘suicide.’ In 1873, Rawlinson had made the rectification himself.[588] Not more happy was the substitution of ‘Liebet mich’ for the often repeated exclamation Rawlinson renders ‘Hail to thee!’ and which properly signifies ‘Go forth!’ as Rawlinson said in 1873.
There are, however, some instances where the commentator makes a useful correction. The erroneous reading, ‘he would frequently address the state’ (par. 13), he altered to ‘er möchte das Reich mit Macht vernichten,’ which approaches Spiegel, ‘er möchte viele Leute tödten,’ or, as Rawlinson said in 1873, ‘he slew many people.’ So also the passage ‘afterwards Dadarses remained away from me in the field’ (Col. II. par. 9), is improved to ‘dann erwartete mich dem Befehl gemäss Dadarses.’ This Rawlinson changed in 1873 to ‘afterwards Dadarses waited for me there,’ the accepted version being ‘dort erwartete mich Dadarses so lange’ etc. It will be observed that the critic was himself liable to fall into superfluous additions not far removed from error. Sometimes, however, he avoided this trap, as when he substituted ‘he lied’ (Col. IV. par. 1) for Rawlinson’s ‘impostor,’ and ‘if you so think’ (par. 5) for ‘if it should be thus kept up.’ But in a large proportion of cases Benfey follows his leader into error with perfect complacency. In one or two places Rawlinson is obliged to confess that the difficulties are so great that translation is almost impossible. One of these occurs in the description of the religious reform after the death of Gomates, the Magian (Col. I. par. 14). Referring to this passage, he says: ‘Of several of the most important words the orthography is doubtful; of others the etymology is almost impenetrable, and the construction, moreover, in some parts renders the division into sentences a matter of serious embarrassment.’[589] But the difficulties have been found almost as insuperable by his successors. They have not been able to derive assistance from the Susian and Babylonian columns, where the difficulties are even greater. The meaning of some words still remains a mystery, and even the general drift of the passage is open to discussion. Spiegel[590] warns his readers that the explanation of the whole paragraph is still so uncertain that no opinion as to the religious history of the times can be prudently based upon it. But such passages as these are fortunately of rare occurrence; and from the moment of Rawlinson’s publication the contents of the inscription were known as thoroughly as they are at the present day. The careful study of two generations of scholars has changed a word here and a word there, and cleared up the meaning of a few doubtful passages, but in all substantial respects the translation remains unaltered.
Rawlinson’s revised translation of the inscriptions published two years before by Lassen forms the concluding chapter of his Memoir. We have already had occasion to contrast the merits and demerits of the two translators. Rawlinson’s transliteration presents an entirely modern appearance in consequence of the correctness of the values of so many signs. There are still a few errors, owing chiefly to the prolongation of the final syllable in such words as ‘thatiya,’ ‘tyaia,’ and others, an error already signalled by Hincks. But these are of small importance. As regards the translations, he brought from the study of the Behistun record a knowledge of the language that no one else then possessed, and he was able at once to resolve difficulties that had baffled all previous attempts. Such expressions as ‘generosus [sum]’ finally disappeared for the correct rendering ‘he says.’ Sentences that were hitherto entirely misapprehended now appear in their correct form. ‘The son of Arcis’ gives place to ‘the son of a Persian, an Arian of Arian descent.’ The last paragraph of the same inscription is satisfactorily explained. Even where he fell short of success, as in the end of the I inscription, he made important contributions to the elucidation of intricate passages.
Rawlinson added the inscription on the Venice vase, not known to Lassen. It had been recently published by Longpérier in the ‘Revue Archéologique’ (1844), who thought it should be referred to Artaxerxes I. Rawlinson translated it ‘Artaxerxes the King,’ and assigned it to Artaxerxes Ochus. Opinion has since been divided upon the subject; Spiegel and Menant follow Longpérier; Oppert and Weissbach follow Rawlinson.