The brilliant success which attended Grotefend's earlier efforts, soon attracted the attention of other philologists to the subject. M. Saint Martin read a memoir before the Asiatic Society of Paris in 1822, but did not make any additions to our previous knowledge. Professor Rask next took it up, and discovered the value of two additional characters. M. Burnouf followed in 1836, with an elaborate memoir, in which he disclosed some important discoveries.[72] Professor Lassen, in his Memoir published in 1836, and in a series of papers continued up to the present day,[73] has identified at least twelve characters, which had been mistaken by all his predecessors, and which, says Maj. Rawlinson, "may entitle him almost to contest with Professor Grotefend the palm of alphabetical discovery." In 1835, Major Rawlinson, then residing in Persia, turned his attention to the subject, and decyphered some of the proper names on the tablets at Hamadan. In the following year he applied himself to the great inscription at Behistun, the largest and most remarkable that is known in Persia, and succeeded in making out several lines of its contents. The result of Major Rawlinson's first attempt at decyphering the Behistun inscription, was the identification of several proper names, and consequently the values of additional characters towards the completion of the alphabet.[74] But more was wanted than the alphabet, which only enabled the student to make out proper names, but not to advance beyond; and it was the lack of this knowledge which prevented the sagacious and indefatigable Grotefend from carrying out to any great extent, the discoveries which he had so well begun. The language of the inscriptions must next be studied; and as the Zend had been the medium through which the first links in the chain of interpretation had been obtained, it was naturally resorted to for aid to farther progress. The Zendavesta, with the researches of Anquetil du Perron, and the commentary at the Yaçna by M. Burnouf, wherein the language of the Zendavesta is critically analyzed, and its grammatical structure developed, furnished the necessary materials. To the latter work, and the luminous critique of M. Burnouf, Major Rawlinson owes the success of his translations; as he acknowledges that by it he "obtained a general knowledge of the grammatical structure of the language of the inscriptions."