There were in these archives, at the disposal of scribes and strangers inclined to reconstruct the history of Asia, a supply of materials of varying value—authentic documents inscribed on brick tablets, legends of fabulous exploits, epic poems and records of real victories and conquests, exaggerated in accordance with the vanity or the interest of the composer: from these elements it was easy to compile lists of Median kings which had no real connection with each other as far as their names, order of succession, or duration of reign were concerned. The Assyrian chronicles have handed down to us, in place of these dynasties which were alleged to have exercised authority over the whole territory, a considerable number of noble houses scattered over the country, each of them autonomous, and a rival of its neighbour, and only brought into agreement with one another at rare intervals by their common hatred of the invader. Some of them were representatives of ancient races akin to the Susians, and perhaps to the first inhabitants of Chaldæa; others belonged to tribes of a fresh stock, that of the Aryans, and more particularly to the Iranian branch of the Aryan family. We catch glimpses of them in the reign of Shalmaneser III., who calls them the Amadaî; then, after this first brush with Assyria, intercourse and conflict between the two nations became more and more frequent every year, until the “distant Medes” soon began to figure among the regular adversaries of the Ninevite armies, and even the haughtiest monarchs refer with pride to victories gained over them. Rammân-nirâri waged ceaseless war against them, Tiglath-pileser III. twice drove them before him from the south-west to the north-east as far as the foot of Demavend, while Sargon, Sennacherib, and Esarhaddon, during their respective reigns, kept anxious watch upon them, and endeavoured to maintain some sort of authority over the tribes which lay nearest to them. Both in the personal names and names of objects which have come down to us in the records of these campaigns, we detect Iranian characteristics, in spite of the Semitic garb with which the inscriptions have invested them: among the names of countries we find Partukka, Diristânu, Patusharra, Nishaîa, Urivzân, Abîruz, and Ariarma, while the men bear such names as Ishpabarra, Eparna, Shîtirparna, Uarzân, and Dayaukku. As we read through the lists, faint resemblances in sound awaken dormant classical memories, and the ear detects familiar echoes in the names of those Persians whose destinies were for a time linked with those of Athens and Sparta in the days of Darius and of Xerxes: it is like the first breath of Greek influence, faint and almost imperceptible as yet, wafted to us across the denser atmosphere of the East.
The Iranians had a vague remembrance of a bygone epoch, during which they had wandered, in company with other nations of the same origin as themselves, in that cradle of the Aryan peoples, Aryanem-Vaêjô. Modern historians at first placed their mythical birthplace in the wilder regions of Central Asia, near the Oxus and the Jaxartes, and not far from the so-called table-land of Pamir, which they regarded as the original point of departure of the Indo-European races. They believed that a large body of these primitive Aryans must have descended southwards into the basin of the Indus and its affluents, and that other detachments had installed themselves in the oases of Margiana and Khorasmia, while the Iranians would have made their way up to the plateau which separates the Caspian Sea from the Persian Gulf, where they sought to win for themselves a territory sufficient for their wants. The compilers of the sacred books of the Iranians claimed to be able to trace each stage of their peregrinations, and to describe the various accidents which befell them during this heroic period of their history. According to these records, it was no mere chance or love of adventure which had led them to wander for years from clime to clime, but rather a divine decree. While Ahurômazdaô, the beneficent deity whom they worshipped, had provided them with agreeable resting-places, a perverse spirit, named Angrômaînyus, had on every occasion rendered their sojourn there impossible, by the plagues which he inflicted on them. Bitter cold, for instance, had compelled them to forsake Aryanem-Vaêjô and seek shelter in Sughdhâ and Mûru.* Locusts had driven them from Sughdhâ; the incursions of the nomad tribes, coupled with their immorality, had forced them to retire from Mûru to Bâkhdhî, “the country of lofty banners,” ** and subsequently to Nisaya, which lies to the south-east, between Mûru and Bâkhdhî. From thence they made their way into the narrow valleys of the Harôyu, and overran Vaêkereta, the land of noxious shadows.***
* Sughdhâ is Sogdiana; Mûru, in ancient Persian Margush, is
the modern Merv, the Margiana of classical geographers.
** Bâkhdhî is identical with Bactriana, but, as Spiegel
points out, this Avestic form is comparatively recent, and
readily suggests the modern Balkh, in which the consonants
have become weakened.
*** The Avesta places Nisaya between Mûru and Bâkhdhî to
distinguish it from other districts of the same name to be
found in this part of Asia: Eugène Burnouf is probably
correct in identifying it with the Nêssea of Strabo and of
Ptolemy, which lay to the south of Margiana, at the junction
of the roads leading to Hyrcania in one direction and
Bactriana in the other.
From this point forwards, the countries mentioned by their chroniclers are divided into two groups, lying in opposite directions: Arahvaiti, Haêtumant, and Haptahindu* on the east; and on the west, Urvâ,** Harôyu or Haraêva is the Greek Aria, the modern province of Herat.
* Arahvaiti, the Harauvatish of the Achsemenian
inscriptions, is the Greek Arachosia, and Haêtumant the
basin of their Etymander, the modern Helmend; in other
words, the present province of Seîstan. Hapta-Hindu is the
western part of the Indian continent, i.e. the Punjaub.
** The Pehlevi commentators identify Urvâ with Mesônê,
mentioned by classical writers, at the confluence of the
Tigris and Euphrates, or perhaps the plain around Ispahan
which bore the name of Masân in the Sassanid period. Fr.
Lenormant had connected it with the name Urivzân, which is
applied in the Assyrian inscriptions to a district of Media
in the time of Tiglath-pileser III.
The Pehlevi commentators identify Vaêkereta with Kabulistan, and also volunteer the following interpretation of the title which accompanies the name: “The shadow of the trees there is injurious to the body, or as some say, the shadow of the mountains,” and it produces fever there. Arguing from passages of similar construction, Lassen was led to recognise in the epithet duzhako-shayanem a place-name, “inhabitant of Duzhakô,” which he identified with a ruined city in this neighbourhood called Dushak; Haug believed he had found a confirmation of this hypothesis in the fact that the Pairika Khnâthaiti created there by Angrô-maînyus recalls in sound, at any rate, the name of the people Parikani mentioned by classical writers, as inhabiting these regions. Khnenta-Vehrkâna,* Bhagâ,** and Chakhra,*** as far as the districts of Varena**** and the basin of the Upper Tigris.^ This legend was composed long after the event, in order to explain in the first place the relationship between the two great families into which the Oriental Aryans were divided, viz. the Indian and Iranian, and in the second to account for the peopling by the Iranians of a certain number of provinces between the Indus and the Euphrates. As a matter of fact, it is more likely that the Iranians came originally from Europe, and that they migrated from the steppes of Southern Russia into the plains of the Kur and the Araxes by way of Mount Caucasus.^^
* The name Khnenta seems to have been Hellenised into that
of Kharindas, borne by a river which formed the frontier
between Hyrcania and Media; according to the Pehlevi version
it was really a river of Hyrcania, the Djordjân. The epithet
Vehrkâna, which qualifies the name Khnenta, has been
identified by Burnouf with the Hyrcania of classical
geographers.
** Raghâ is identified with Azerbaijan in the Pehlevi
version of the Vendidâd, but is, more probably, the Rhago of
classical geographers, the capital of Eastern Media.
*** Chakhra seems to be identical with the country of Karkh,
at the northwestern extremity of Khorassan.
**** Varena is identified by the Pehlevi commentators with
Patishkhvargâr, i.e. probably the Patusharra of the Assyrian
inscriptions.
^ Haug proposed to identify this last station with the
regions situated on the shores of the Caspian, near the
south-western corner of that sea. But, as Garrez points out,
the Pehlevi commentators prove that it must be the countries
on the Upper Tigris.
^^ Spiegel has argued that Aryanem-Vaôjô is probably Arrân,
the modern Kazabadagh, the mountainous district between the
Kur and the Aras, and his opinion is now gaining acceptance.
The settlement of the Iranians in Russia, and their entrance
into Asia by way of the Caucasus, have been admitted by
Rost. Classical writers reversed this order of things, and
derived the Sauromato and other Scythian tribes from Media.
It is possible that some of their hordes may have endeavoured to wedge themselves in between the Halys and the Euphrates as far as the centre of Asia Minor. Their presence in this quarter would explain why we encounter Iranian personal names in the Sargonide epoch on the two spurs of Mount Taurus, such as that of the Kushtashpi, King of Kummukh, in the time of Tiglath-pileser III., and of the Kundashpi mentioned in the Annals of Shalmaneser III. in the ninth century B.C.*