Indian Antiquary Vol 32

SR No.: 032524
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Richard Carnac Temple
Publisher: Swati Publications
Publication Year: 1984
Total Pages: 550
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 20 MB

Page 297

July, 1903.)
THE RELIGION OF THE IRANIAN PEOPLES.
289
other names which he specifies, Phraotes and Kyaxares, are good Persian ones, and are familiar to us through the inscriptions of the Achæmenides. A revolutionary ander Darius claims descent from Uvakhshastar (Kyaxares). Another, a Mede, is called Fravertes, and names himself Khshathrita, while obviously he is designated Kashtaritu prince of Media in an Assyrian fragment.58 Presumably, Khshathrita was the last legitimate ruler of Media, and Astyages, whom Nabunaid, the last autocrat of Babel, dubs Ishtuvegu, a Scythian or Kimmerian usurper.
It is definitely known that Astyages was vanquished by Cyrus, and that his own army delivered him up to the Persian conqueror. With Cyrus the stock of the Persians in the first half of the sixth century B. C. assumed paramount power. The Persian dynasts, who, after Hakhamanishya, their ancestor, were known as the Achæmenides, were, it would seem, till now under the subjection of the Median rulers. But while the power of the Medes rapidly declined on account of the incursions and occasional government of the Scythians, hardy Aryan clans hailing from the North, the Persian might constantly increased. Since the time of Cishpis (Teispes) they possessed themselves of Elam, which had previously received from Asurbanipal its coup-de-grace, and thenceforward assumed, by preference, the style of princes of Anzan, at the same time 69 that they were the regents of Persia as well. Cyrus the Great, second of the name, the third according to some authorities, eo was the first king of kings of Persian lineage, who, not content with the homage of all Iranian nations, annexed Lydia to the Asiatic possessions of his empire, and reduced by his victorious arms the whole of West Asia. The sovereignty remained from this time in the hands of the Achæmenides. But after the death of Kambyses II., the son of the Great Cyras, and of the pseudo-Smerdes, Bardia, and of Gaumats, the Magian, the dynasty was transferred with Darius, Daravush, son of Hystaspes or Vishtaspa, to the younger branch. More than once the successor to the throne was not a "lineal descendant but a distant kinsman of the preceding sovereign, and one who waded through blood to the sceptor. This formidable empire, however, despite its bad government, would not so soon have fallen to pieces, had the genius of the general Alexander to cope with a Cyrus or a Darius, son of Vishtaspa, and “the lances of Persian manhood," of which Darius boasted that they had reached far and wide, not been committed to the charge of an incompetent and vainglorious despot, whó, too pusillanimous to die on the battlefield, was assassinated by one of his own satraps. With his fall commenced a new era, not only for the people at large, but likewise for the religion he had professed. The alien hegemony was not propitious to the native faith. Its renaissance was inaugurated with the rise of the Parthian house, which was Iranian. And this religious revival was consummated under the Sassanides. But that lies outside the province of our present research. The historical outline we have presented, and which was our objective, must suffice for a background to the evolution of Zarathushtrian religion down to Alexander. But before we embark on the latter exposition, we have to examine the soil into which the religion struck roots - to inquire (to put it differently) on what anterior worship it was superposed.
2. The East Iranian Religion. Of the religion out of which Zarathushtrianism was evolved, or at least which it superseded, we are left neither original records nor direct accounts. And yet it is possible to picture to ourselves its features, collocating for comparison the religious conceptions and usages of the cognate tribes and establishing their cominon traits. The Iranian's next-of-kin in religion is the
In another Assyrian text he is onllod town-bailiff of Karkarši, and with him is mentioned Mamitiansu, the town-bailiff of the Modes. Comp. my Babylon.- Assyr. Geschichte, p. 984 seq., and especially p. 335, note 1.
In my paper on "Het land anxan-Ausan" (Leyden, 1894) I have endeavoured to establish that Ansan or Ansan here signifies the part of Elam in which lay the capital of Sus. It is well known that this city was the favourite residence of Persian monarobs.
Nöldeke who infors this from Herod. 7. 11. I think that Herodotus presents as one the genealogies of Xerxes and of Oyrus, and places them both by mistake one after the other. See his Aufsätze mur Pernischen Geschichte, P. 15, (These valuable OSBAYI have been contributed in an English version to the Encyclopaedia Britannica.-TE.