honour seems justly to belong. The phrase, embodied in the authorized version of the Scriptures and enshrined in the national heart, is become an heir-loom of the language.

In several points of view the universal adoption and establishment of a single version of the Scriptures is undoubtedly an unalloyed good. It is this probably, more than any other circumstance whatever, which has tended to keep to one common standard a language which is now spoken by so many millions, scattered over so many lands. This fixity of expression, however, while of advantage in almost every other way, renders it more difficult for the inquirer into the history of the language, to trace its successive changes, from the operation of which the only work that is certain to be in the hands of all is now withdrawn. When a fresh version of the Scriptures was issued at the interval of every few years, the comparison of the same passage in different renderings afforded an easy method of measuring the gradual changes which crept over parts of the language.

We should thus have been enabled, for instance, to ascertain both with ease and precision, at what period a word now so familiar as "ITS"-the possessive case of the neuter pronoun-was first introduced into English. At present the only information on the subject that can be derived from the comparison of the different versions of the Bible is, that so lately as 1611-the date of the issue of the authorized version--the word did not exist, or at all events was not considered to belong to that elevated portion of the language regarded as suitable for the translation of the sacred writings. There is one verse of the Bible in which the neuter pronoun would now be used very frequently in different cases, and it is curious to observe how it is dealt with in the various versions.

The recent editors of what is generally called Wickliffe's Bible, have, as has been already stated, printed two versions at length. The verse alluded to (which is the 9th of Numbers, chapter iv.) is far from alike in the two renderings. Wickliffe's is as follows:"And thei shulen take the iacynetyn mantil with the which thei shulen couer the candelstik with the lanterns and her toonges and snyters."

Purvey's runs thus

:

"Thei schulen take also a mentil of iacynt with which thei schulen hile the candilstike with hise lanternes and tongis and snytels."

"his

It will be observed that it is here a candlestick which is on one occasion referred to, with "her tongs," and in the other, with lanterns,"-in neither case with "its;" that in fact in one case the candlestick seems to be made of the feminine, and in the other of the masculine gender. The uncertainty prevailed for centuries after the time of Wickliffe. In Tyndale's version of the Pentateuch, printed. in 1530, the candlestick is both feminine and neuter :

"And they shall take a cloth of jacyncte and cover the candelsticke of light and hir lampes and hir snoffers and fyre pannes and all hir oyle vessels which they occupye aboute it and shall put upon her and on all hir instrumentes a couerynge of taxus skynnes and put it upon staues."

In Coverdale's version, printed in 1535, the passage is as follows:"And they shal take a yalowe clothe and cover the candilsticke of light therwith, and his lampes, with his snoffers and outquenchers," &c. &c.

In Matthews's Bible (1537), the candlestick is feminine again :"And they shall take a cloth of iacincte and couer the candelstycke of lyght and her lampes and her snoffers and fyre panes and all her oyle vessels which they occupye aboute it," &c.

Last of all comes the authorized version :

"And they shall take a cloth of blue and cover the candlestick of the light and his lamps and his tongs and his snuffdishes and all the oil vessels thereof wherewith they minister unto it.”

From the repetition of "his lamps, his tongs and his snuffdishes, in connexion with the "it" at the end of the verse, the pronouns in all cases referring to the candlestick, no other conclusion can be drawn than that the word "its" did not then exist, or was purposely excluded. The same phenomenon presents itself repeatedly in other portions of the same book, in which, from the nature of the subject, the occasion for these pronouns recurs more frequently than in other portions of the Scriptures. It has been suggested, that the regular possessive for it, before the introduction of its, was his; but it will be remarked, that if this observation be true, it will only apply to one stage of our language. The quotation from Matthews's Bible shows that in the time of Henry the Eighth, the candlestick could be spoken of with "her oil vessels which they occupy about it."

It would be a curious task to trace at what period the missing possessive pronoun found its way into our language and who introduced it. In Shakspeare there are frequent indications of its nonexistence. Thus in the opening speech of the king in Henry the Fourth we find—

"The edge of war, like an ill-sheathed sword,

Shall only cut his master."

and there is a still more apposite instance in the opening scene of Hamlet:

"When yon same star that 's westward from the pole,

Had made his course to illume that part of heaven
Where now it burns*."

The verbal indexes to Shakspeare and Milton, minute as they are, do not descend to words deemed so insignificant as "it" and "its ;' and without these and similar aids, it can only be by good fortune that any progress can be made in the search for so small an object over so wide a field. Perhaps at some future period the subject may be resumed.

* The passage from Hamlet was obligingly suggested to the writer by Mr. Campbell Clarke, at the meeting of the Philological Society.

VOL. VI.

JANUARY 28, 1853.

No. 128.

Professor MALDEN in the Chair.

The following paper was read

"

'An Attempt at an Outline of the Early Medo-Persian History, founded on the Rock-Inscriptions of Behistun taken in combination with the Accounts of Herodotus and Ctesias." By the Rev. J. W. Blakesley, late Fellow and Tutor of Trinity College, Cambridge.

The deciphering of the Behistun Inscription by Colonel Rawlinson, from the light which it has thrown upon the early history of Persia, has enabled us to form a truer estimate than before was possible, both of the nature of the sources of information possessed by Herodotus, and of the amount of allowance to be made in estimating his authority, hitherto regarded as paramount.

It is impossible to doubt, that in the main outline of the events recorded, the credit to be attached to the inscription is incomparably greater than that which can be claimed by any existing historian, or by the whole of them put together. The inscription is a formal account of the acts of Darius, sculptured by his own authority, and consequently possesses as authentic a character as a medal or a contemporaneous state paper; that is to say, its authority is absolute for events and dates, although the colour given to the events would naturally be made conformable to the views of the sovereign by whose order they were recorded.

The site of this inscription is the lower part of a naturally scarped precipice of enormous height-it is said nearly 1500 feet-in which the range of mountains constituting the northern boundary of the plain of Kermanshah suddenly terminates towards the east. At a height of about 100 feet from the base, a smooth surface has been formed by cutting into the rock, and in this, presenting the appearance of a bas-relief set in a frame, Darius, with a crown on his head and a bow in his hand, is represented as setting his foot upon a prostrate figure, who with stretched-out hands appears to ask for mercy. Nine other personages, with their hands pinioned behind them, and connected by a rope which passes round their necks, approach the monarch; and behind him stand two attendants, apparently of high rank,-as their costume, except for the crown, is the same as that of Darius himself-carrying the one a bow, the other a lance upon which he leans. In the air above the group hovers the figure of Ormuzd, which is substantially the same as that in the titlepage of Mr. Layard's 'Nineveh,' and over the heads of the human figures are tablets containing cuneiform or arrow-headed writing explaining who they are. But the most important part of the whole are the inscriptions in the same character containing the annals of the monarch. These Rawlinson has discovered to be trilingual,

although the elements of the words in each being cuneiform might induce the belief in a superficial observer that the language was the same throughout. To the three languages he gives the several names of Persian, Median, and Babylonian. The first is contained in five columns (of which the four first are twelve feet in length and about six in breadth), immediately under the group of figures just described. Judging from the scale given together with the drawing of the group*, the dignity of the personages seems to have been regarded in the size of which the sculptor represented them. Darius himself, and the figure upon which he is trampling (who is Gomates the Magian), are made full six feet in height. The two attendants on the king are no more than five feet six or seven inches, while the conquered chiefs with ropes round their necks barely rise above four feet, with the exception of the last, Sarukha the Sacan, who besides being a little taller than his companions in misfortune, wears a tiara, whereas they are all bare-headed.

Of the five columns, the first and third are, according to Rawlinson, very fairly legible. They contain ninety-six and ninety-two lines respectively, which are broken up the one into nineteen, the other into fourteen paragraphs, each beginning with the form Thátiya Dáryawush k'hshayathiya (Saith Darius the king). The second column extends to ninety-six lines, but it is much injured by a fissure in the rock, which extends along the whole length of the tablet. The fourth column contains ninety-two lines, the greater part lamentably injured. The last legible paragraph (the 18th) in this column furnishes a list of those individuals who alone were with Darius when he "slew Gomates the Magian, who was called Bartius;" and the very natural bias to bring the account given by Herodotus to aid in deciphering this, produced one or two erroneous guesses which a second careful inspection of the inscription on the spot has corrected. The assistants of Darius are now undoubtedly ascertained to have been Intaphernes son of Veispares, Otanes son of Socres, Gobryas son of Mardonius, Hydarnes son of Megabignes, Megabyzus son of Dadoes, and Ardomanes son of Vacces. Following this list of names there was once another paragraph, which is entirely obliterated, and appears never to have had any equivalent in the Median translation; -a singular circumstance, which suggests the conjecture that its obliteration may have been ordered during the lifetime of the monarch, perhaps as a conciliatory measure towards his Median subjects. The fifth column only extended to half the length of the other four, containing but thirty-five lines, and it is described by Rawlinson as having been of a supplemental character, and to have contained an account of two revolts; the one in Susiana, which was crushed by Gobryas, the other conducted by Sarukha, the chief of the Sacans who dwelt upon the Tigris, which was put down by Darius himself. Rawlinson states, however, that one side of this

In the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society,' vol. x., which is devoted to Rawlinson's Commentary on the Cuneiform Inscriptions of Babylonia and Assyria, and contains the interpretation of the Persian tablets on which the views in this communication rest.