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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[JULY, 1903.
Ethnography. The people, after whom the land is called Iran in contradistinction to the Turanian countries, and who rose to be the ruling nation, had not been always dwelling there. They gradually supplanted more primitive tribes, whom they to all appearance did not hunt down, but in a great measure absorbed in themselves. They designated themselves Aryans, just as the Indians discriminated their own people by the same appellation from the rest of the masters of the Indian peninsula. In the Avesta occasionally we come across Aryans and Aryan territories. The Achæmenides prided themselves on their being not Persians merely, sons of Persians, but also Aryans, sons of Aryans, and, as already remarked, the Medes, according to Herodotus, were previously called Apol. It does not follow from this that the Medes were the only ones to bear the name, because the historian was unaware that other septs, too, laid claim to it. Even the sparse Ossites 57 of the Caucasus, who speak an Iranian tongte, assume the denomination of Ison. Aryan signifies noble - those born of pure blood, the ingenui. Whatever the diversity of the idioms they employ, in actuality and at least originally they composed but one language. Its dialects fall probably into two large groups, of which one had spread from Afghanistan in the South over the whole East Iran and the North. To it, inter alia, belonged the idiom of the Avesta or the Baktrian, while the other swayed the West, that is, to speak with greater precision, Media and Persia. Sufficient data are ' by no means forthcoming to regard the Avestaic speech as that of Media. To judge by the names of the Medes familiar to us, this dialect need not bave radically differed from the Persian. This conjecture is confirmed by the fact that the huge inscriptions which Darias Hystaspes had incised on the rock of Bebistan, like those in Persia Proper, have been composed in old Persian, new Susian, and Assyrian or Babylonian tongues. Had the current language of Media been totally other than the Persian, he would have substituted the latter by the former. For the assumption that the second of the languages in question was Median is grounded on misapprehension. It is assuredly the language of Susisna, most intimately akin to the Elamite, in which likewise inscriptions are preserved in two dialects, one more archaic than the other. Now it is quite possible that the aborigines of Media, subjugated by the Aryans, employed a language of the same family with the Elamite; bat in the time of the Achæmenides and the Aryan supremacy it was unquestionably not the recognized speech of the country. The domination of Media was Aryan. The names of the vast majority of kings of whom Herodotus makes mention, and some of which recur in the old Persian cuneiform inscriptions, go to prove this. Oppert's attempts to explain the names presented by Ktesias (in lieu of those of Herodotus) by means of the Susian, i.e., the so-called Median, must, despite all the ingenuity expended over them, be reckoned abortive.
In reference to religion all Iranians constituted a real unity - we leave ont of account presumably local peculiarities, - although there is little about them which we know with absolute certitude. And in antiquity, unity of faith usually goes hand in hand with uniformity of language. They all adopted, if not without nodifications, the Magdayasna creed. Auramazda is to Darius and his successors, as in the Avesta, the Supreme Deity, the Creator of all, notwithstanding their, perpetual veneration aloug with Him of local divinities in pursuance of local tradition. And howsoever Cyrus and Kambyses, as conquerors of alien dominions, may have shaped their Church policy, there are no grounds to warrant the supposition that they were not adorers of Mazda. The Mogians, a Median sept according to Herodotus, were for both the nationalities the sole and legitimate leaders of the cultns and the guardians of religious usage. Without them no sacrificial rite could be validly performed. This clearly indicates that in this respect the Medians were not distinguished from the Persians. In this regard they were differentiated from the other Iranians - at least from those among whom the Aresta originated. Among the latter the sacerdotal class are styled Atharvane, or firo-priests, a designation which Strabo still met with in Capadocia. The name of the
01 (Dr. Hubohmann contributes a dissertation on their language to the Grundriss der Iranischen Philologio.
Ts.]
