We have already said that Burnouf was connected by ties of friendship with Lassen from an early age. Lassen was a Norwegian, born at Bergen in 1800, and consequently a year older than his friend. He was educated at Christiania, and at the age of twenty-two he left Norway to continue his studies at Heidelberg. He obtained a travelling studentship from the Prussian Government, and visited London and Paris in the years 1824-6. During his stay in the latter capital he made the acquaintance of Burnouf, and collaborated with him in the production of the ‘Essai sur le Pali’ (1826). On his return to Germany he settled at Bonn, whither he was attracted by the presence of Schlegel and Bopp. Like them, he was devoted to the study of Sanscrit and the literature of India; and in conjunction with Schlegel he became the founder of Sanscrit philology in Germany. In 1829, he assisted him in the publication of the Râmâyana, and subsequently edited other ancient texts. In 1830, he received a Professorship at the University with the munificent stipend of three hundred thalers, or about forty-five pounds, a year; and ten years later, when he had attained a wide celebrity, a chair of Indian Languages and Literature was created for him with a salary of seven hundred thalers. Here he spent his life, writing and lecturing on his favourite studies, which also included modern Persian and English literature. His chief works were the ‘Prakrit Grammatik’ (1837), the Vendidad (1852), and notably the ‘Indische Alterthumskunde,’ begun in 1847 and continued down to 1867.

Lassen was troubled during the greater portion of his life by a weakness of sight, which from 1840 became a serious impediment to his studies. His last lectures were delivered in the session 1868-9, but he lived on to 1876, when he died in the city which partly from his own labours had acquired the name of ‘the second Benares, on the shore of a second Ganges.’

When he left Paris in 1826 he continued to correspond with Burnouf, and received letters from him subscribed with the cuneiform sign for B (𐎲). Burnouf had in fact long devoted himself to cuneiform studies, as is apparent from his edition of the Yaçna in 1833; but it is not stated when Lassen first directed his attention to the same subject. Both scholars published their essays upon it in 1836. When Burnouf communicated his Memoir to the Academy of Inscriptions, in March 1836, Lassen confesses that he was entirely taken by surprise.[433] His own Memoir on the subject was already in the press, and his preface is dated in May. Both essays were published about the same time, though we cannot say which had the actual priority of appearance. It is perfectly certain that neither scholar was dependent upon the published work of the other, and if they had not been personal friends, the question of the complete independence of their discoveries could never have arisen. As it is, however, we know that in the summer preceding the publication of the Memoirs, Burnouf visited Bonn, and had much conversation with Lassen on the subject of their common pursuits.[434] He told him that he had ‘deciphered the names of all the old Persian provinces,’ which sufficiently indicated the direction of his studies; and it is quite possible that he told him also of his identification of the letters k and z as well as b. At all events, his Memoir preceded by a clear month (April) the writing of Lassen’s preface, and he is entitled to claim these two letters. Whatever confidences Burnouf may have imparted, Lassen was evidently more reticent, for although the discoveries of the Bonn professor embraced the re-discovered b of Münter and the k and z of Burnouf, they include also several other correct values of which Burnouf had no knowledge.

Lassen was not without enemies, and among them the bitterest was Holtzmann, whom we shall afterwards meet as a contributor to cuneiform studies. It appears that Lassen, writing to a friend in November 1835, expressed great surprise to find that Burnouf had deciphered the names of the Persian provinces. Holtzmann took this to mean that Lassen had till then known nothing of either the I inscription or the Persian provinces, and that he had borrowed the whole idea of his book and part of its substance from his friend. There is, however, nothing inconsistent with the far more probable assumption that he had been at work upon it long before the summer visit of Burnouf, and was possibly annoyed as well as surprised to find that his friend had gone so far upon the same track. Much has been said of this matter, and it has even been attempted to raise it to the dignity of a grave literary scandal; but it seems to have originated in a misunderstanding of Holtzmann, prompted possibly by personal antipathy, and to have been fostered by those unamiable persons who love to sow discord, and whose delight it is to sever friendships that are the chief joy of life. Happily, in this case their efforts were unsuccessful. It is certain at least that the friendly relations between the two scholars were never interrupted, and M. Jacquet, who knew both, said that they had worked simultaneously and without communication with each other.[435] It is quite possible also that Grotefend’s previous mention of the inscription had escaped Lassen’s notice. However this may be, we give his own account of the discovery. He tells us he was attracted to the I inscription by recollecting the statement of Herodotus that Darius set up a column on the banks of the Bosphorus with an inscription in Assyrian and Greek, recording the names of the nations that had followed his banner. He considered that the sculptured staircase at Persepolis undoubtedly portrayed the representatives of various nations bearing tribute to the great King, and he thought that there must be a record of their names somewhere among the ruins. Accordingly, with such assistance as he could obtain from Grotefend’s alphabet, he examined the various inscriptions in Niebuhr and Le Bruyn, till at length he discovered what he sought in the I inscription of the former.[436] It was natural to suppose that the nations would be arranged in geographical order and follow somewhat the same succession as in Herodotus. The names given by the Greek historian, some of which are also found in the Zend-Avesta, would afford a clue to their pronunciation in the cuneiform language, and he might hope with this assistance to carry on the work so successfully begun by Grotefend. It was in consequence of the discovery of the names of the three kings in the B and G inscriptions that Grotefend had been able to fix the values of some of the signs; and it was natural to suppose that the list now brought to light, which contained twenty-four proper names, would yield results of proportionately greater importance. Indeed Lassen believed that he had by this means found the values of almost all the signs that still remained doubtful or unknown. Many other scholars had already indulged the same delusion. St. Martin boasted that his system was ‘à l’abri de la critique.’[437] Burnouf felt convinced that after his own labours ‘there could be no further doubt except with reference to the letters that rarely occur.’[438] Lassen was certainly more successful than any of his predecessors, Grotefend alone excepted. He can lay an indisputable claim to having correctly deciphered six additional signs; and this number may be raised to eight if, as is not improbable, he independently discovered the k and z of Burnouf; and to ten, if we allow two other letters to pass, the w (𐎺, No. 10) and the t (𐏂, No. 13), which he brought very close to their true values of v and tr—or ti as Spiegel writes it.[439]

At the time we have now reached, the forty-two signs collected by Niebuhr had been reduced to thirty-three by the elimination of the diagonal and of eight others found to be defective. Lassen accounted for all the thirty-three that remained, and he added three others he found elsewhere. Of these one (𐎦) is treated by Grotefend as a defective sign for n; but it turned out to be a genuine letter.[440] Burnouf was the first to recognise its claim, and it figures as one of his three conjectural signs for gh. Lassen gives it the definite value of g, which was correct, for it was eventually determined as g before u. The two other signs he added, ([cuneiform character]) t and ([cuneiform character]) v, were both ascertained to be defective, and he subsequently dropped them from his alphabet. At this period, therefore, he admitted thirty-four genuine signs and two defective. His alphabet contained twenty-three correct values as opposed to the thirteen of Grotefend and the sixteen of Burnouf. It was made up of the

twenty-three in all. There were also two added by himself nearly correct—w (10), t (13), which, as approximate values, may be allowed to pass, especially in consideration of the German pronunciation of w. Nine were incorrect—i (16), k (19), o (25), z (26), h (27), n (28), g (32), g (33), s (40).

But it contained a peculiarity of its own into which Lassen was betrayed by a desire to press the grammatical forms of Zend upon the cuneiform language. In the first place he insisted with not less force than Burnouf, in distinguishing the long and short vowels. Each of the vowels a, i, u are accordingly allotted two distinct signs, and one of his defective signs is pressed into the service in order to secure a û. But in addition to this his a (𐏃), when it occurs in the middle of a word, takes the value of ang; and in a similar position his î and û may become y and v. Still more remarkable is his treatment of diphthongs. He observed three instances in which two signs are seen frequently to follow each other. Of one of these accidental combinations he made a long ê,[442] of the second an ô[443] and of the third a q.[444] He forfeited much of the advantage of his greater command of correct values by falling into these errors. He, however, boldly recognised that some consonants are represented by more than one cuneiform sign, among which he includes t with four signs; s, v, n and m with two each. He was not uniformly correct in the signs he allotted nor in their number; but if he gave too many to t, which has only two, he did not give enough to m, which has three.

Lassen gave full credit to Grotefend for his ingenious discovery, and he admitted that the values established upon the authority of the three proper names were in all probability correct. But, so far as was known, Grotefend had never published any account of the method he followed to determine the other signs, a method that resulted in the production of words that had no resemblance to any human language, and that could not in fact be pronounced by any human tongue. Lassen did not put himself forward as an opponent of Grotefend, but as a continuator of his work from the point where he considered his predecessor had left it.[445] He would not even accept his reading of ‘Cyrus’ in the Murgab inscription, and in this his scepticism landed him in serious error. Lassen’s method was much the same as that of Burnouf. The signs not explained in the three proper names he regarded as doubtful or unknown, and he sought for them elsewhere especially in the proper names in the I inscription, where it might be possible to determine their sound by their occurrence in a word identified as that of some well-known country or province. The result of his special study of this text was that he made out correctly no less than nineteen of the twenty-four names it contains, which compares favourably with the eight of Burnouf. But in addition to these he added three that are not to be found in the original, by fancying he saw proper names in what are in fact merely common words. His nineteen names, however, provided him with abundant material to continue the work of decipherment.

One result of his study became immediately apparent to him. The constant agglomeration of consonants without the intervention of a vowel proved that in some cases the vowel must be inherent in the consonant. He arrived at this conclusion from the word ‘Çprd,’ which he found as the name of a country in his inscription, and which he concluded was Çapardia, or the Sapeires of Herodotus.[446]. We have seen that Burnouf was led to the same inference from the appearance of such forms as ‘izrk’ and ‘Aurmzda.’[447] Lassen also observed instances, such as the word ‘imam,’ where the word is sometimes written with and sometimes without the a (𐎠).[448] He at length laid down the rule that an a is only distinctly expressed at the beginning of a word, and in the middle before h or another vowel. On all other occasions, he says, it is inherent in all the consonants, unless distinctly excluded by the occurrence of another vowel.[449] This rule he afterwards applied more distinctly to the short a (𐏃), and adds that it is expressed when it follows the long â (𐎠), never after i or u.[450] In his transliterations he assumes the truth of this rule, and he invariably separates two consonants by the interposition of an a.

We have said that he may indisputably claim to have added six new values correctly to the alphabet, i, t, m, d, g (25), g (44).[451] The sign for i is the second letter in ‘Hystaspes,’ and it had been variously given the value of o by Grotefend and y by St. Martin, according as they followed the form ‘Goshtasp’ or ‘Vyschtaspo.’ But Lassen pointed out that the correct Zend form is ‘Vistaçpa,’ and he consequently, preferred i, a rendering confirmed by the word ‘imam,’ ‘this,’ which corresponds exactly to the Zend and Sanscrit word.[452] This alteration got rid of Burnouf’s (h)ôma (‘excellent’), which went to join the goodly company of Jamshid and the constellation of Moro.

The name ‘Katpatuk’ for Cappadocia, which Burnouf had already cited with good effect, was turned to farther account by Lassen. He not only used it to confirm the sign for k (𐎣) with which it begins and ends; but it enabled him to find a true sign for t, by comparison with other words in which it occurs.[453]

We have already said that Burnouf suspected that m was the true value of the sign Grotefend made an h, and that he only rejected it because he could not reconcile himself to the existence of two signs for the same sound. Lassen was less influenced by such considerations, and when he came to a word that transliterated ‘A r—i n,’ he had no scruple in completing it by writing an m for the unknown letter. Indeed the word occurred exactly where, from geographical considerations he would be led to expect ‘Armenia,’ and the conclusion would have been irresistible even if it had not been confirmed by the name ‘Chorasmia’ which he observed a little farther down in his list.[454] He made the useful remark that the sign was always preceded by i, the full signification of which was not then apparent. We now know that it is precisely the m before i.

The discovery of the sign for d was a happy intuition, and rested on slight evidence. He found in the eighteenth line a name of which he knew four letters, a i—u s, and he divined that the unknown letter was d, which enabled him to read ‘Aidus’ = India.[455] This guess was confirmed by one other instance only, where the same sign will make ‘daquista,’ which he thought was Zend for ‘the wisest.’ The word is really ‘duvaishtam’ and has quite another signification.

We have not noticed how he arrived at the value g for Grotefend’s u, or for the sign which Grotefend thought was a defective n. We find them without explanation in the place where they appear to be mentioned for the first time.[456] The first is g before a; the other g before u.

In addition to the six correct values just enumerated, Lassen was also very nearly successful in two others—w (𐎺, 10) and t (𐏂, 13), really v before a and tr before a. The latter he correctly acknowledged in a later work.

The first is the e of Grotefend in his ‘Darheusch.’ Lassen had the Hebrew form of the name ‘Darjavesch’ in his mind, and no doubt he suspected the presence of the sound of v in the Old Persian word. The discovery of the w was certainly ingenious, though scarcely convincing, if it had not been supported from other sources.[457] At the end of the B inscription there is a word in the nominative, ‘Akunush,’ which is found elsewhere with the accusative termination m, but, instead of the u, the sign now under discussion is substituted—that is, instead of ‘nus,’ we have n 𐎺 m. Now, he argued, it is impossible either in Zend or Sanscrit for a word whose theme ends with u to lose it in the accusative; and therefore the unknown sign must either be a u or the corresponding half-vocal v.[458] But in Darius, the letter that follows is a u, and therefore it must be the half-vocal—the only question being whether it is the Zend v or w. He eventually erroneously decided for the w, and pointed to two other words wᵃsna and wᵃzᵃrk, where as a w it would make excellent sense.[459]

With regard to the t, it will be recollected that Grotefend gave the value of n to a sign that completed the word ‘bun,’ to which he gave the meaning ‘stirps.’ This word had long been a stumbling-block to Zend scholars, and Lassen determined to get rid of it. He showed in the first place that the b or p at the beginning could not be interchangeable, and the word must at all events be treated as ‘pun’; but he proposed to alter it still further by reading ‘put.’ By this means he came nearer to its obvious meaning, ‘son’—that is, to the Zend ‘putra.’ He found this innovation supported by another word, k s t m, to which he thought he could attach a Zend meaning.[460]

The nine incorrect values he admitted into his alphabet[461] show little or no improvement on those suggested by Grotefend or Burnouf; and unfortunately the decipherer himself can rarely distinguish the incorrect values from the correct. A glance over a page of Lassen’s transliteration will show the havoc these nine incorrect letters have made in his work. But, as we have said, he introduced errors peculiar to himself that were even more fatal than his failure to identify all the signs correctly. For example, he remarked that the sign he took for a short a (𐏃) seemed composed of the sign for n (𐎴) and an angular wedge which might be an abbreviation of the sign itself. He was led to this hypothesis by comparison with the Zend, where ă is clearly a combination of a and n.[462] He goes farther and gives the short a and n the guttural sound of ang, when it is found before the letter he thought was h (𐎹, 27; really y), and he cites several instances which he thinks will justify this opinion. He recognises, however, that the rule even thus limited is not always applicable.[463]

Another error, due also to the deference he professed for Zend analogies, arose from the supposition that the two letters which he took for u and w had together the value of q. He compared them to the sound of q which is produced in Zend by the two letters sv or hv, the latter being modified into uv in the Old Persian.[464] Equally disastrous was his introduction of the two diphthongs hi for ê, and au for ô. He observed that these two letters are occasionally found together, and he concluded they must correspond to the Sanscrit diphthong ai = ê and au = ô. The occurrence of an h for an a in one of them was a matter of small difficulty. Indeed he had actually found the ai = ê in Aidus = India; and suggests that hi may be the form it assumes as a medial.[465] The most eccentric peculiarities of his transliteration may be traced to these unfortunate errors. His transformation of a into ng appears in his ‘Aurᵃngha Mᵃzdanga’ for ‘Aurahya Mazdaha.’ The diphthong uv with the sound of q seemed at first to yield a better result. By it he was able to read ‘Quarᵃzmiᵃh’ and ‘Arᵃqᵃtis,’ which are more suggestive of the true words Chorasmia and Arachosia than the correct forms ‘Uvarazamiya’ and ‘Harauvatish.’[466] But, on the other hand, it led him to read ‘qan’ or ‘qwan’ (Chaonia) for ‘Uvaja’ (Susa), ‘Aqᵃ’ for ‘Hauv,’ Patᵃqᵃ for ‘patuv,’ ‘Dᵃqistᵃn’ for ‘duvaishtam,’ and so forth. The diphthong hi (really yi) for the long ê produced ‘tesam’ in the place of ‘tyᵃisham.’ The diphthong au (really ku) for the long ô was still more disastrous. Burnouf, when he wrote ‘aqunuch,’ had nearly reached the correct transliteration of ‘akunaush,’ but it becomes scarcely recognisable in the ‘aônus’ of Lassen. The first sign of this diphthong had been long since correctly determined by Grotefend as a k. But its identification depended in great measure on the belief that Murgab, where it is the first letter in the inscription, represents the ancient Pasargadae, the city of Cyrus. Lassen would by no means accept this as sufficient proof, for even upon that hypothesis the inscription might not necessarily belong to Cyrus. St. Martin read it ‘Houschousch,’ and conjectured that this name referred to ‘Ochus.’ Lassen accepted this view, and saw in the first two signs, which he took for au, the strongest confirmation that they had the value of the ô long in Ochus. In 1845, when the result of his farther studies were published, we find that his original alphabet has undergone considerable improvement. He has suppressed the second signs for each of the vowels a, i and u, and the two diphthongs for the long ê and ô, that caused so much trouble, have disappeared. We hear no more of the double letters for q, nor of the second value ng which he ascribed to his initial a, now found to be more correctly h. He has also struck out the two defective signs he admitted for t and û. For the rest, the improvement consists chiefly in sweeping away the errors into which his love of Zend analogies had at first hurried him. The only addition he made to the number of his correct values was thr, suggested by Grotefend, to which, as we have said, he had previously nearly approached. The remaining signs now correctly represented are due to M. Beer and M. Jacquet, who wrote in the interval that separated the two Memoirs by Lassen.

Lassen’s translations are naturally much affected by the nine incorrect values he still retained, and by the errors he introduced himself. Yet if we compare the transliteration and translation of the Le Bruyn No. 131, as given by Burnouf and Lassen, we cannot fail to recognise the superiority of the latter. For the ‘Bu izrk’ of the one we have ‘Baga wazark’ of the other, which closely anticipates the ‘Baga vazraka’ of the correct version. The ‘Omam buiom,’ the ‘Homa excellent,’ is replaced by ‘imam buvam,’ ‘this earth;’ and many similar improvements may be noted throughout. Both writers succeeded fairly well in rendering the simple phrases, but great diversity still existed as to the meaning of the obscurer passages. Both alike declare that Auramazda is the creator of heaven and of man; and that he has established Darius or Xerxes as King. But when we proceed to the second paragraph of the inscription our translators go far astray. The passage beginning ‘king of countries’ is thus variously rendered:[467]

Lassen finishes thus: ‘Xerxes, rex magnus: ex voluntate Auramazdis (palatium) domitor Darius rex constituit. Is meus pater. Memet tuere, Auramazdes, heic felicitate: tum hoc ibi palatium, tum hoc patris Darii regis palatium, excelse Auramazdes, tuere heic felicitate’—a passage rendered by Menant: ‘Xerxès, le grand roi, déclare: Par la volonté d’Ormuzd, Darius mon père a construit cette demeure. Qu’Ormuzd me protège avec les autres Dieux, qu’Ormuzd avec les autres Dieux protègent mon œuvre et l’œuvre de mon père le roi Darius.’ The I inscription, from which Lassen derived so much assistance, fared badly at his hands when he attempted to translate its concluding lines. Even in the list of proper names he committed what must now appear to be the stupendous blunder of mistaking three common words for the names of three provinces of the Empire. The words so honoured are: ‘ushkahyâ,’ ‘darayahyâ,’ ‘parauvaiy,’ which figure as ‘Uscangha’ (the Uxii), ‘Drangha’ (the Drangii) and ‘Parutah’ (the Aparyten).[468]

His transliteration of the others is naturally frequently defective, but nevertheless he identified twenty correctly. The four he failed in are Susa, Arabia, Egypt and Ionia. It would have been difficult for him to recognise either Susa or Egypt, even if his transliteration had been more perfect. The first is represented in the cuneiform by three signs—u v j—and reads ‘uvaja,’ which certainly does not suggest Susa. But Lassen turned the uv into q; as the last letter in his opinion was n (𐎩, 28) he evolved q’n, from whence Chaona. The word for Egypt, as correctly transliterated ‘M’udray,’ would perhaps have been even more embarrassing than his own ‘Gudraha,’ in which he agreed with Burnouf in recognising ‘Gordyene.’ The word he read ‘Arbela’ was correctly translated ‘Arabia’ by Burnouf; and a somewhat too pedantic learning reconciled him to ‘Huns,’ which Burnouf had rightly rejected.[469]