Fig. 136.—Tablet from Easter island.
The following remarks by Prof. de Lacouperie (b) are quoted on account of the eminence of his authority, though the subject is still under discussion:
The character of eastern India, the Vengi-Châlukya, was also carried to north Celebes islands. The people have not remained at the level required for the practical use of a phonetic writing. It is no more used as an alphabet. Curiously enough, it is employed as pictorial ornaments on the MSS. they now write in a pictographic style of the lowest scale. This I have seen on the facsimile (Bilderschriften des Ostindischen Archipels, Pl. I, 1, 11) published by Dr. A. B. Meyer, of Dresden, in his splendid album on the writings of this region.
In the Easter island, or Vaihu, some fourteen inscriptions have been found incised on wooden boards, perhaps of driftwood. The characters are peculiar. Most of them display strange shapes, in which, with a little imagination, forms of men, fishes, trees, birds, and many other things have been fancied. A curious characteristic is that the upper part of the signs are shaped somewhat like the head of the herronia or albatross. A pictorial tendency is obvious in all of these. Some persons in Europe have taken them for hieroglyphics, and have ventured to find a connection with the flora and fauna of the island. The knowledge of this writing is now lost; and it is not sure that the few priests and other men of the last generation who boasted of being able to read them could do so thoroughly. Anyhow, in 1770, some chiefs were still able to write down their names on a deed of gift when the island was taken in the name of Carlos III of Spain.
In examining carefully the characters I was struck by the forked heads of many of them, which reminded me of the forked matras of the Vengi-Châlukya inscriptions. A closer comparison with Pls. i to viii of the Elements of South Indian Paleography (A. C. Burnell, Elements of South Indian Paleography, from the fourth to the seventeenth century A. D., being An Introduction to the Study of South Indian Inscriptions and MSS., 2d edit., London and Mangalore, 1878; Pls. i, vii, viii are specially interesting for the forked matras) soon showed me that I was on the right track, and a further study of the Vaihu characters, and their analysis by comparing the small differences (vocalic notation) existing between several of them, convinced me that they are nothing else than a decayed form of the above writing of southern India returning to the hieroglyphical stage. With this clue, the inscriptions of Easter island are no more a sealed text. They can easily be read after a little training. Their language is Polynesian, and I can say that the vocabulary of the Samoan dialect has proved very useful to me for the purpose.
SECTION 3.
EUROPE.
In the more settled and civilized parts of Europe petroglyphs are now rarely found. This is, perhaps, accounted for in part by the many occasions for use of the inscribed rocks or by their demolition during the long period after the glyphs upon them had ceased to have their original interest and significance and before their value as now understood had become recognized. Yet from time to time such glyphs have been noticed, and they have been copied and described in publications.
But few of the petroglyphs in the civilized portions of Europe not familiar by publication have that kind of interest which requires their reproduction in the present paper. It may be sufficient to state in general terms that Europe is no exception to the rest of the world in the presence of petroglyphs.
A number of these extant in the British islands and in the Scandinavian peninsula, besides the few examples presented in this chapter, are described and illustrated in other parts of this work, and brief accounts of others recently noted in France, Spain, and Italy are also furnished.