Elies

**Elies**, or the **Elies Characters** (Japanese: エリエス文字, Eriesu Moji), is a fictional language in the *Madlax* series. It is said to be an ancient language predating the common era, but it is uncertain if it's a proto-human language or a divine language. The three holy books (Firstary, Secondary, and Thirstary) are written in Elies characters. Nobody can understand and read the writing; however, mystical discerners like Quanzitta Marison can.

Elies is also known as the **Holy Words of Saruon** (Japanese: サルオンの真言, Saruon no Shingon).

## History

Soldophine University's colloquium became aware of Elies after cave paintings were discovered by a professor and his team. The colloquium believed this may have been the discovery of a new civilization unlike any of the Four Great Ancient Civilizations (Babylon, Egypt, China, and India) as the Elies characters did not resemble any of the writing styles. Interest in Elies stopped when Gazth-Sonika's civil war broke out shortly after the discovery.

Elies is considered to be jinxed. Many researchers who tried to investigate the script died in bizarre incidents. Lucille explains to Eric Gillan in Episode 7 that the investigative team was attacked and killed on site. Only the professor survived, but he killed himself and his family a few months later.

## Holy Words of Saruon

It is possible that all characters in the Elies language have supernatural properties, which anyone with the Gift can use to their liking, but the following phrases used throughout the series certainly do.

* *Elda Taluta* (Japanese: エルダ・タルタ, Eruda・Taruta) - The words of Awakening and Firstary.
* *Sarks Sark* (Japanese: サークス・サーク, Sākusu・Sāku) - The words of the Essence and Secondary.
* *Ark Arks* (Japanese: アーク・アルクス, Āku・Arukusu) - The words of Truth and Thirstary.

What they literally translate to is unknown.

## Background

As shown in the art book, MADLAX the Bible, Elies is based on Katakana (片仮名、カタカナ, Japanese pronunciation: [katakaꜜna]), a Japanese syllabary. Katakana is one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word *katakana* means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived from components or fragments of more complex kanji. Katakana and hiragana are both kana systems. With one or two minor exceptions, each syllable (strictly mora) in the Japanese language is represented by one character or *kana*, in each system. Each kana represents either a vowel such as "*a*" (katakana ア); a consonant followed by a vowel such as "*ka*" (katakana カ); or "*n*" (katakana ン), a nasal sonorant which, depending on the context, sounds either like English *m*, *n* or *ng* ([ŋ]) or like the nasal vowels of Portuguese or Galician.

In contrast to the hiragana syllabary, which is used for Japanese words not covered by kanji and for grammatical inflections, the katakana syllabary usage is quite similar to italics in English; specifically, it is used for transcription of foreign-language words into Japanese and the writing of loan words (collectively *gairaigo*); for emphasis; to represent onomatopoeia; for technical and scientific terms; and for names of plants, animals, minerals and often Japanese companies. Katakana are characterized by short, straight strokes and sharp corners. There are two main systems of ordering katakana: the old-fashioned iroha ordering and the more prevalent gojūon ordering.

### Gojūon

In the Japanese language, the ***gojūon*** (五十音, Japanese pronunciation: [ɡo(d)ʑɯꜜːoɴ], lit. "fifty sounds") is a traditional system ordering kana by their component phonemes, roughly analogous to alphabetical order. The "fifty" (*gojū*) in its name refers to the 5×10 grid in which the characters are displayed. Each kana, which may be a hiragana or katakana character, corresponds to one sound in Japanese. As depicted at the right using hiragana characters, the sequence begins with あ (*a*), い (*i*), う (*u*), え (*e*), お (*o*), then continues with か (*ka*), き (*ki*), く (*ku*), け (*ke*), こ (*ko*), and so on and so forth for a total of ten rows of five columns.

Although nominally containing 50 characters, the grid is not completely filled, and, further, there is an extra character added outside the grid at the end: with 5 gaps and 1 extra character, the current number of distinct kana in a syllabic chart in modern Japanese is therefore 46. Some of these gaps have always existed as gaps in sound: there was no *yi* or *wu* in Old Japanese, and *ye* disappeared in Early Middle Japanese, predating the kana; the kana for *i*, *u* and *e* double up for those phantom values. Also, with the spelling reforms after World War II, the kana for *wi* and *we* were replaced with *i* and *e*, the sounds they had developed into. The kana for syllabic *n* (hiragana ん) is not part of the grid, as it was introduced long after *gojūon* ordering was devised. (Previously *mu* (hiragana む) was used for this sound.)

The *gojūon* contains all the basic kana, but it does not include:

* versions of kana with a *dakuten* such as が (*ga*) or だ (*da*), or kana with *handakuten* such as ぱ (*pa*) or ぷ (*pu*),
* smaller kana (sutegana), such as the *sokuon* (っ) or in the *yōon* (ゃ,ゅ,ょ).

The *gojūon* order is the prevalent system for collating Japanese in Japan. For example, dictionaries are ordered using this method. Other systems used are the *iroha* ordering, and, for kanji, the radical ordering.

## Trivia

* The Four Great Ancient Civilizations (Babylon, Egypt, China, and India) is a real theory developed by Chinese historians.

### Possible Name Origin

#### Elies (エリエス)

The translated name Elies may be a variant of the English word *Alias*, or the katakana can also translate to *Erinyes*, female chthonic deities of vengeance in ancient Greek religion and mythology (otherwise known as the *Furies*). The latter seems more possible considering the thematic similarities between Aeschylus' *Oresteia* and *Madlax*, and how similar the effects both the three sisters and the three incantations have on people such as driving them mad to the point of suicide.

#### Holy Words of Saruon (サルオンの真言)

Looking at the components of the katakana,

* サルオン can translate to *Saron*, a percussion idiophone with bronze bars, of Indonesian origin, used in gamelan music.
* 真言 (Shingon) is the Japanese reading of the Chinese word 眞言 (*zhēnyán*), which is the Chinese transcription of the Sanskrit word "mantra". A mantra is a sacred utterance, a numinous sound, a syllable, word or phonemes, or group of words in Sanskrit, Pali and other languages, believed by practitioners to have religious, magical or spiritual powers.

## External links

* Katakana
* Gojūon