Though I cannot avoid concurring in the laudable hope that “our own age” may witness important conclusions on this subject, still it strikes me,—and I earnestly urge it as worthy of the notice of a Reform Ministry, that until the Irish Language be raked from its ashes, no accuracy can ever be obtained either in the Zend, Pahlavi, or Sanscrit dialects, which are but emanations from it, or in the subject matter, historical or religious, which they profess to pourtray.
“In the interior of these districts is situated a considerable lake, called the Lake Zevora, unquestionably the Aria Palus of antiquity. A large river, anciently bearing the same name, at present called the Ilmend, empties itself into this inland sea from the deserts to the south-east, and Christie fell in with another stream farther to the north, called the Herat, near a town of the same name.
“I consider (with Kinneir) the city of Herat to be same with the ancient Aria, or, as it was also called, Artacoana. We are told that Alexander on his march to Bactriana inclined to the south to visit Aria. We must carefully distinguish between the terms Aria and Ariana, as used by the Greeks. The former was applied to a province which we shall have occasion to describe in the sequel. The latter is equivalent to Iran, and appears to have been formed from the ancient term in the Zend language, Eriene. The whole of Iran composes a sort of oblong, the Tigris and Indus forming its sides to the east and west; the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean bounding it to the south; and the Caspian, with Mount Taurus and the river Oxus, shutting it in to the north. These were also the limits of the ancient Ariana (see Strabo, p. 1048), except that, towards the west, its boundary was an imaginary line separating it from Persia Proper. Of this more extensive district, Aria (according to Strabo) formed only a part, distinguished by its superior fertility. Herodotus appears to have been unacquainted with the term Aria; he merely mentions the Arii as a nation allied to the Medes.
“Aria, lying to the east of Media, derived its name from the river Arius, the modern Heri: and the Arians and Medes were originally the same race; the Medes, according to Herodotus, having originally borne the name Arians. It is apparent, from the same place (Herod. vii. 62) that what were called the Median habits were not confined to Media Proper, but extended to the countries lying eastward, and as these touch on Bactria, we cannot be surprised at the conformity which prevailed.”
These latter quotations I have thought fit to introduce to show the ignorance of the modern Greeks,—those of Cyrus and Herodotus’s days—compared with their Pelasgic predecessors—Iran, the real name for all those countries of higher Asia as far as the Indus,[210] being called, in the Zend, Eriene, the Greeks, whose intercourse with the East now for the first time began, without troubling their brains to ascertain what the word in either form meant, transmuted this latter into Ariana, whereas their forefathers, the Pelasgi, a literary and a religious tribe, changed its namesake in the West, our own Iran—which in the Pahlavi dialect was called Erin, and in the Zend would also be called Eriene—into Ierne, thereby evincing their knowledge of the import of the term, and registering their subscription in its sacred attributes.[211]
The following, however, is more to the point, and in itself sufficient to redeem the professor’s entire work from any occasional inclination to Grecian subserviency.
“It cannot be doubted that at some remote period antecedent to the commencement of historical records, one mighty race possessed these vast plains.
“The traditions of this race preserve some very important particulars respecting their descent, their ancient abodes, and their gradual dissemination through the land of Iran. These traditions are preserved in the beginning of the Vendidat, the most important, and it is probable, the most ancient of all their sacred books, the collection of which is styled the Zendavasta, to which we shall have occasion to refer hereafter. The first two chapters of this work, entitled Fargards, contain the above traditions, not wrapt up in allegory, but so evidently historical as to demand nothing more than the application of geographical knowledge to explain them. With the exception of the Mosaical Scriptures, we are acquainted with nothing which so plainly wears the stamp of remote antiquity, ascending beyond the times within which the known empires of the East flourished; in which we catch, as it were, the last faint echo of the history of a former world, anterior to that great catastrophe of our planet, which is attested in the vicinity of the parent country of these legends, by the remains of the elephant, the rhinoceros, and the mammoth, and other countries properly belonging to the countries of the South. It would be a fruitless labour to attempt to assign dates to these remains, but if the compiler of the Vendidat himself, who was long anterior to the Persian, and as we shall have occasion to show, probably also to the Median dynasty, as known to us, received them as the primeval traditions of his race, our opinion of their importance may be fully justified.
“These legends describe as the original seat of the race, a delicious country, named Eriene-Veedjo, which enjoyed a climate singularly mild, having seven months summer and five of winter. Such was the state at first, as created by the power of Ormuzd; but the author of evil, the death-dealing Ahriman, smote it with the plague of cold, so that it came to have ten months of winter and only two of summer. Thus the nation began to desert the paradise they at first occupied, and Ormuzd successively created for their reception sixteen other places of benediction and abundance, which are faithfully recorded in the legend.
“What then was the site of the Eriene referred to? The editors and commentators on the Zendavesta are inclined to discover it in Georgia, or the Caucasian district; but the opinion must necessarily appear unsatisfactory to anyone who will take into account the whole of the record, and the succession of places there mentioned as the abodes of the race. On the contrary, we there trace a gradual migration of the nation from east to west, not as this hypothesis would tend to prove, from west to east. The first abode which Ormuzd created for the exiled people was Soghdi, whose identity with Sogdiana is sufficiently apparent; next Môore, or Maroo, in Khorasan; then Bakhdi, or Balkh (Bactriana), and so on to Fars itself, and the boundaries of Media or India. The original country of Eriene must therefore lie to the east of Leed, and thus we are led, by the course of tradition, to those regions which we have already referred to as the scene of the traditions and fables of the nation, viz. the mountainous tracts on the borders of Bucharia, the chain of Mustag and Beloorland, as far as the Paropamisan range on the confines of Hindustan, and extending northwards to the neighbourhood of the Altain chain. This savage and ungenial region enjoys at present only a short summer, at the same time that it contains the relics of an ancient world, which confirm, by positive proof, the legend of the Vendidat, that anciently the climate was of a totally different character. When the altered nature of their original seats compelled the race to quit them, Ormuzd prepared for them other places of repose and abundance, within the precincts of that territory which has preserved to the present day the appellation of Iran; the nation carrying with them the name of Eriene, which is obviously the same with Iran.