Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/20

The Country. 5 periods of peace and amicable intercourse, the cult of Mithra, a religion of Iranian origin, spread to the farthest provinces of the- Roman empire^ and for a time balanced the influence of Chris- tianity. Somewhat later, the Nestorians, seeing themselves perse- cuted in the west, took refuge in Persia, where, too, the last representatives of Greek philosophy to escape the like narrow, intolerant bigotism, found a peaceful shelter at the court of Chosroes. From the hour, then, when the Assyrians forcibly drew the tribes of Iran out of their isolated situation, the latter were mixed up^ one way or another, with the movement of what we may term Western humanity, and played a part in the political and spiritual domain ; they partook of that culture which began on the banks of the Nile and those of the Euphrates, and ended by having its chief centres on the border of the Mediterranean, On the other hand, in that long interval, they do not seem to have borrowed from or given anything of their own to the peoples in possession of the eastern zone of the Iranic plateau. Under the •dominion of the Sassanids, their intercourse with China was confined to a few diplomatic transactions exchanged between the sovereigns of the two countries, a few bales of costly goods con- veyed by caravans from one country to the other. If, nominally at least, the empire of Darius extended to the frontiers of India, it was only at a comparatively recent epoch that conquerors borne by the force of expansion of Islam, starting from Ispahan, invaded India, whither they carried their language and religion, and founded a colony that has flourished ever since. But these events, chronologically at least, do not fall within the scope of this history. There are no data to lead us to suppose that Persia, even in her palmiest days, exercised any marked influence over India ; certain arrangements in the architecture of the latter might at most be adduced as having been borrowed from the decoration of the royal palaces of Iran. As to India, even if we accept the judgment of scholars prone to give her the lion's shares all she seems to have sent to the west, in the course of many centuriesi through the channel of Persia, are tales diffused among all the nations of Europe, and which, be their form popular or literary, have still the power to amuse the young. Contact with the cradles of antique civilizations would not by Digitized by Copgle