could cause destruction and death, through deadly deluge, or, in the language of geology, before the glacial cataclysm rendered the primeval Aryan home unfit for habitation, he led a further successful migration towards the hospitable south.
The Indo-Europeans. This virile race, white in colour and fair of complexion, called itself Aryan or noble. It was the parent of the Indo-European peoples of history. These members of the Aryan family lived long as a homogeneous people speaking the same language with dialectic differences and shared many beliefs and practices in common.
Pressure of growing population, thirst for adventure, sharp divisions caused by the fermentation going on in the minds of thinking persons over religious beliefs and practices continued to disintegrate them. During the early part of the second millennium b.c., nomad tribes left their home and turned westwards and reached the Aegean lands or turned southwards in successive waves from the steppes of the Caspian Sea. Scattered tribes passed by the chain of Caucasus, entered Armenia and spread southwards. Some of the more virile tribes succeeded in founding small Aryan kingdoms. They have left traces of their Aryan beliefs and practices. The Kassites, who rose to power in the Zagros in 1700 b.c., designated godhead by the Indo-European term bugash, Av. baga, Skt. bhaga, Slav. bogu, Phrygian, bagaios, and worshipped Suryash, Skt. surya, the sun, as their chief god. The Mitannis, who founded an Aryan empire between the Euphrates and the Tigris, have left behind them the record of their own names, such as Dushratta, Artatama, and the names of the Aryan divinities Mitra, Indra, Varuna, and Nasatya in an inscription dating 14th century b.c. at BoghazKeui. The trend of migration continued tuitil we see the Aryan Medes at a later date facing the Semitic Assyrians as their immediate neighbours.
The Indo-Iranians. The other migratory wave extended earlier towards the Elburz range and to the southern belt of the Caspian Sea and took the eastward course. The Vendidad opens with the enumeration of the sixteen good places created by Ahura Mazda, ranging between Airyana-vaejah in the north and Hapta Hindu or Sapta Sindhu, the land of seven (later five) rivers, the Panjaub.[1] The names of these lands may not be taken as mark-
- ↑ Vd. 1. 1–20.
