Kustaspi (＝Hystaspis). Their subjects, on the contrary, speak absolutely different tongues: for the attempts to explain the languages of the Cossaeans, Mitannians, and Arzapians as Indo-European (Iranian) have ended in failure (cf. Blomheld in the American Journal of Philology, xxv. p. 1 sqq.).
It appears, then, that towards the middle of the second millennium before Christ, the Iranians made a great forward movement to the West, and that certain of their princes—at first, probably in the rôle of mercenary leaders—reached Mesopotamia and Syria and there founded principalities of their own, much as did the Germans under the Roman Empire, the Normans, Turks, &c. With this we may probably connect the well-known fact that it was about this very period (1700 B.C. approximately) that the horse made its appearance in Babylonia, Egypt and Greece, where for centuries subsequently its use was confined to war and the war-chariot. Before this it was as foreign to the Babylonians, even in the time of Khammurabi, as to the Egyptians under the XIIth Dynasty. On the other hand, it had been familiar to the Aryans from time immemorial: indeed they have always been peculiarly a people of riders. Thus it is quite conceivable that they brought it with them into Western Asia and the quarter from which it came is sufficiently indicated by the fact that the Babylonians write the word “horse” with a group of signs denoting “ass of the East.”
Of the Assyrian kings, Shalmaneser (Salmanassar) II. was the first to take the field against the Medes in 836 B.C., and from that period onwards they are frequently mentioned in the Assyrian annals. Sargon penetrated farthest, receiving in 715 B.C. the tribute of numerous Median town-princes. He gives a list of their names, twenty-three of which are preserved either wholly or in part, and almost all are unmistakably Iranian, as is also the case with those preserved by Esar-haddon (Assarhaddon) and elsewhere.
The Medes, then, were an Iranian nation, already occupying in the 9th century B.C. their later home in the centre of the Median highland. On the other hand, among their neighbours in Zagros and the north—corresponding to the Anariacae (Non-Aryans) of the Greeks—Iranian names are at best isolated phenomena. With other Iranian tribes the Assyrians never came in contact: for the oft-repeated assertion, that the Parsua, so prominent in their annals, were the Persians or the Parthians, is quite untenable. The Parsua of the Assyrians are located south of Lake Urmia, and can hardly have been Iranians.
None the less, the Assyrian statements with regard to the Medes demonstrate that the Iranians must have reached the west of Iran before 900 B.C. It is probable that at this period the Persians also were domiciled in their later home, even though we have no direct evidence to adduce. If this reasoning is correct, the Iranian immigration must be assigned to the first half of the second pre-Christian millennium.
The Aryans of Iran are divided into numerous tribes; these, again, being subdivided into minor tribes and clans. The principal, according to the inscriptions of Darius—which closely agree with Herodotus—are the following, several of them being also enumerated in the Avesta:—Tribes of the Iranians.
1. The Medes (Mada) in the north-west (see Media).
2. The Persians (Parsa) in the south (see Persis). To these belong the Carmanians and the Utians (Yutiya), who are mentioned expressly by Darius as inhabiting a district in Persis (Beh. III. 40).
3. The Hyrcanians (Varkāna in Darius, Zend Vehrkāna) on the eastern corner of the Caspian, in the fertile district of Astarabad.
4. The Parthians (Parthyaei; Pers. Parthava) in Khorasan (see Parthia).
5. The Arians (Ἀρεῖοι, Pers. Haraiva), in the vicinity of the river Arius (Heri-rud), which derived its name from them. This name, which survives in the modern Herat, has of course no connexion with that of the Aryans.
6. The Drangians (Zaranka in Darius, Sarangians in Herod. iii. 93, 117, vii. 67), situated south of the Arians, in the north-west of Afghanistan (Arachosia) by the western affluents of Lake Hamun, and extending to the present Seistan.
7. Arachotians (Pers. Harauvati), in the district of the Helmand and its tributaries, round Kandahar. They are mentioned in the lists of Darius, also by the Greeks after Alexander. In Herodotus their place is taken by the Pactyans, whose name survives to the present day in the word Pushtu, with which the Afghans denote their language (Herod. iii. 102, iv. 44, vii. 67, 85). Probably it was the old tribal name; Arachosia being the local designation. The Thamanaeans, who appear in Herodotus (iii. 93, 117), must be classed with them.
8. The Bactrians (Pers. Bākhtri), on the northern declivity of the Hindu Kush, as far as the Oxus. Their capital was Bactra, the modern Balkh (see Bactria).
9. The Sogdians (Pers. Sugudu), in the mountainous district between the Oxus and Jaxartes.
10. The Chorasmians (Khwarizmians, Pers. Uvarazmiya), in the great oasis of Khiva, which still bears the name Khwarizm. They stretched far into the midst of the nomadic tribes.
11. The Margians (Pers. Margu), on the river Margus (Murghab); chiefly inhabiting the oasis of Merv, which has preserved their name. Darius mentions the district of Margu but, like Herodotus, omits them from his list of peoples; so that ethnographically they are perhaps to be assigned to the Arians.
12. The Sagartians (Pers. Asagarta); according to Herodotus (vii. 85), a nomadic tribe of horsemen; speaking, as he expressly declares, the Persian language. Hence he describes them (i. 125) as a subordinate nomad clan of the Persians. They, with the Drangians, Utians and Myci, formed a single satrapy (Herod. iii. 93). Ptolemy (vi. 2, 6) speaks of Sagartians in the Eastern Zagros in Media.
13. We have already touched on the nomadic peoples (Dāha, Dahans) of Iranian nationality, who occupied the steppes of Turkestan as far as the Sarmatians and Scythians of South Russia. That these were conscious of their Aryan origin is proved by the names Ariantas and Ariapeithes borne by Scythian (Scolot) kings (Herod, iv. 76, 87). Still they were never counted as a portion of Iran or the Iranians. To the settled peasantry, these nomads of the steppe were always “the enemy” (dana, daha, Δάαι, Dahae). Side by side with this name we find “Tūrān” and “Turanian”; a designation applied both by the later Persians and by modern writers to this region. The origin of the word is obscure, derived perhaps from an obsolete tribal name. It has no connexion whatever with the much later “Turks,” who penetrated thither in the 6th century after Christ. Though found neither in the inscriptions of Darius nor in the Greek authors, the name Turan must nevertheless be of great antiquity; for not merely is it repeatedly found in the Avesta, under the form Tura, but it occurs already in a hymn, which, without doubt, originates from Zoroaster himself, and in which “the Turanian Fryāna” and his descendants are commemorated as faithful adherents of the prophet (Yasna, 46, 62).
The dividing line between Iranian and Indian is drawn by the Hindu Kush and the Soliman mountains of the Indus district. The valley of the Kabul (Cophen) is already occupied by Indian tribes, especially the Gandarians; and the Satagydae (Pers. Thatagu) there resident were presumably also of Indian stock. The non-Aryan population of Iran itself has been discussed above. Of its other neighbours, we must here mention the Sacae, a warlike equestrian people in the mountains of the pamir plateau and northward; who are probably of Mongol origin. Herodotus relates that the Persians distinguished “all the Scythians ”—i.e. all the northern nomads—as Sacae; and this statement is confirmed by the inscriptions of Darius. The Babylonians employ the name Gimiri (i.e. Cimmerians) in the same sense.
III. Civilization and Religion of the Iranians.—In the period when the ancestors of Indian and Iranian alike still formed a single nation—that of the Aryans—they developed a very marked character, which can still be distinctly traced, not only in their language, but also in their religion and in many views common to both peoples. A great Aryan Religion. number of gods—Asura, Mithras, the Dragon-slayer Verethraghna (the Indra of the Indians), the Water-shoot Apam napat (the lightning), &c.—date from this era. So, too, fire-worship, especially of the sacrificial flame; the preparation of the intoxicating soma, which fills man with divine strength and uplifts him to the gods; the injunction to “good thoughts and good works,” imposed on the pious by Veda and Avesta alike: the belief in an unwavering order (rta)—a law controlling gods and men and dominating them all; yet with this, a belief in the power of magical formulae (mantra), exclamations and prayers, to whose compulsion not merely demons (the evil spirits of deception—druh) but even the gods (daeva) must submit; and, lastly, the institution of a priesthood of fire-kindlers (athravan), who are at once the repositories of all sacral traditions and the mediators in all intercourse between earth and heaven. The transition, moreover, to settled life and agriculture belongs to the Aryan
