An age to which, more than to its predecessors, with their more sedate lives, "time is money," may appreciate what service they wrought who invented the few numerals, the relative places of which serve the purpose of recording the commerce of the world. But perhaps the greater admiration is due to the genius which devised the nought or cipher (Arab. _sifr_, "empty"), without which the labour of calculation and recording would have taxed energy beyond endurance. The (5) _Pehlevi_, (6) _Armenian_, and (7) _Georgian_ alphabets are derived from the Aramean group through the Persian or Iranian. The Pehlevi has abiding interest as the script of the sacred books of the Zend or Parsi religion; but the Armenian and Georgian, with the addition of three or four Greek letters, are bereft of significance except as the surviving representatives of the ancient Persian. The Indo-Bactrian alphabet should have reference here as of Iranian descent, and especially because it is the script of the famous edicts of Asoka, the first royal Buddhist convert, inscribed on a rock near Peshawar. [Illustration: Arabic Ciphers-page 212] (_b_) The Sabæan (from "Sheba") or Himyaritic (from Himyar, the eponymous hero of the Himyarites) group is classed among South Semitic alphabets. The early alphabet of Abyssinia, called Ethiopic or Amharic, is derived from it, and, wherein lies its main importance, also the alphabets of India, the number of which, comprising more than half of the alphabets now in use, would, in detailed treatment, "demand a space wholly disproportionate to any interest which they might possess save to an extremely limited band of specialists." That is Canon Taylor's excuse for passing them over with brevity, and those who care to pursue a subject yielding to few in dryness will find it summarised in the tenth chapter of his work. For the present purpose, the list of alphabets set down in the table will suffice.