And when, after years of foreign invasion and occupation, Persia rose again under the sceptre of the Sassanians to be a national kingdom, we find the new national kings the worshippers of Masdanes, calling [pg 242] themselves, in the inscriptions deciphered by De Sacy,[235] “Kings of the Aryan and un-Aryan races;” in Pehlevi, Irân va Anirân; in Greek, Ἀριάνων καὶ Ἀναριάνων.
The modern name of Irán for Persia still keeps up the memory of this ancient title.
In the name of Armenia the same element of Arya has been supposed to exist.[236] The name of Armenia, however, does not occur in Zend, and the name Armina, which is used for Armenia in the cuneiform inscriptions, is of doubtful etymology.[237] In the language of Armenia, ari is used in the widest sense for Aryan or Iranian; it means also brave, and is applied more especially to the Medians.[238] The word arya, therefore, though not contained in the name of Armenia, can be proved to have existed in the Armenian language as a national and honorable name.
West of Armenia, on the borders of the Caspian Sea, we find the ancient name of Albania. The Armenians call the Albanians Aghovan, and as gh in Armenian stands for r or l, it has been conjectured by Boré, that in Aghovan also the name of Aria is contained. This seems doubtful. But in the valleys of the Caucasus we meet with an Aryan race speaking an [pg 243] Aryan language, the Os of Ossethi, and they call themselves Iron.[239]
Along the Caspian, and in the country washed by the Oxus and Yaxartes, Aryan and non-Aryan tribes were mingled together for centuries. Though the relation between Aryans and Turanians is hostile, and though there were continual wars between them, as we learn from the great Persian epic, the Shahnámeh, it does not follow that all the nomad races who infested the settlements of the Aryans, were of Tatar blood and speech. Turvaśa and his descendants, who represent the Turanians, are described in the later epic poems of India as cursed and deprived of their inheritance in India. But in the Vedas Turvaśa is represented as worshipping Aryan gods. Even in the Shahnámeh, Persian heroes go over to the Turanians and lead them against Iran, very much as Coriolanus led the Samnites against Rome. We may thus understand why so many Turanian or Scythian names, mentioned by Greek writers, should show evident traces of Aryan origin. Aspa was the Persian name for horse, and in the Scythian names Aspabota, Aspakara, and Asparatha,[240] we can hardly fail to recognize the same element. Even the name of the Aspasian mountains, placed by Ptolemy in Scythia, indicates a similar origin. Nor is the word Arya unknown beyond the Oxus. There is a people called Ariacœ,[241] another called Antariani.[242] A [pg 244] king of the Scythians, at the time of Darius, was called Ariantes. A cotemporary of Xerxes is known by the name of Aripithes (i.e. Sanskrit, aryapati; Zend, airyapaiti); and Spargapithes seems to have some connection with the Sanskrit svargapati, lord of heaven.
We have thus traced the name of Ârya from India to the west, from Âryâvarta to Ariana, Persia, Media, more doubtfully to Armenia and Albania, to the Iron in the Caucasus, and to some of the nomad tribes in Transoxiana. As we approach Europe the traces of this name grow fainter, yet they are not altogether lost.
Two roads were open to the Aryans of Asia in their westward migrations. One through Chorasan[243] to the north, through what is now called Russia, and thence to the shores of the Black Sea and Thrace. Another from Armenia, across the Caucasus or across the Black Sea to Northern Greece, and along the Danube to Germany. Now on the former road the Aryans left a trace of their migration in the old name of Thrace which was Aria;[244] on the latter we meet in the eastern part of Germany, near the Vistula, with a German tribe called Arii. And as in Persia we found many proper names in which Arya formed an important ingredient, so we find again in German history names such as Ariovistus.[245]
Though we look in vain for any traces of this old national name among the Greeks and Romans, late researches have rendered it at least plausible that it has [pg 245] been preserved in the extreme west of the Aryan migrations, in the very name of Ireland. The common etymology of Erin is that it means “island of the west,” iar-innis, or land of the west, iar-in. But this is clearly wrong.[246] The old name is Ériu in the nominative, more recently Éire. It is only in the oblique cases that the final n appears, as in regio, regionis. Erin therefore has been explained as a derivative of Er or Eri, said to be the ancient name of the Irish Celts as preserved in the Anglo-Saxon name of their country, Íraland.[247] It is maintained by O'Reilly, though denied by others, that er is used in Irish in the sense of noble, like the Sanskrit ârya.[248]
Some of the evidence here collected in tracing the ancient name of the Aryan family, may seem doubtful, and I have pointed out myself some links of the chain uniting the earliest name of India with the modern name of Ireland, as weaker than the rest. But the principal links are safe. Names of countries, peoples, rivers, and mountains, have an extraordinary vitality, and they will remain while cities, kingdoms, and nations pass away. Rome has the same name to-day, and will probably have it forever, which was given to it by the earliest Latin and Sabine settlers, and wherever we find the name of Rome, whether in Wallachia, which by the inhabitants is called Rumania, or in the dialects of the Grisons, the Romansch, or in the title of the Romance languages, we know that some threads would lead us back to the Rome of Romulus and Remus, the stronghold of the earliest warriors of Latium. The ruined city near the mouth of the Upper Zab, now [pg 247] usually known by the name of Nimrud, is called Athur by the Arabic geographers, and in Athur we recognize the old name of Assyria, which Dio Cassius writes Atyria, remarking that the barbarians changed the Sigma into Tau. Assyria is called Athurâ, in the inscriptions of Darius.[249] We hear of battles fought on the Sutledge, and we hardly think that the battle field of the Sikhs was nearly the same where Alexander fought the kings of the Penjáb. But the name of the Sutledge is the name of the same river as the Hesudrus of Alexander, the Śatadru of the Indians, and among the oldest hymns of the Veda, about 1500 b. c., we find a war-song referring to a battle fought on the two banks of the same river.
No doubt there is danger in trusting to mere similarity of names. Grimm may be right that the Arii of Tacitus were originally Harii, and that their name is not connected with Ârya. But the evidence on either side being merely conjectural, this must remain an open question. In most cases, however, a strict observation of the phonetic laws peculiar to each language will remove all uncertainty. Grimm, in his “History of the German Language” (p. 228), imagined that Hariva, the name of Herat in the cuneiform inscriptions, is connected with Arii, the name which, as we saw, Herodotus gives to the Medes. This cannot be, for the initial aspiration in Hariva points to a word which in Sanskrit begins with s, and not with a vowel, like ârya. The following remarks will make this clearer.