FIG. 133.—Tutti, Veddah woman of the village of Kolonggala, Ceylon;
twenty-eight years old, height 1 m. 39.
(Phot. Brothers Sarasin.)
VI. PEOPLES OF ANTERIOR ASIA.—The multitude of peoples, tribes, castes, colonies, and religious brotherhoods of Iran, Arabia, Syria, and Asia Minor, this crossing-place of ethnic migrations, are chiefly composed in various degrees of the three races—Indo-Afghan, Assyroid, and Arab, with the addition of some other foreign races, Turkish, Negro, Adriatic, Mongolic, etc.
From the linguistic point of view, this multitude may perhaps be reduced to two great groups: the Eranians or Iranians and the Semites, if we exclude some peoples whose linguistic affinities have not yet been established.
1. The Iranians or Eranians occupy the Iranian plateau and the adjoining regions, especially to the east. They speak different languages of the Eranian branch of the Aryan linguistic family. In physical composition the main characters are supplied by the Assyroid race (Fig. [22]) with admixture of Turkish elements in Persia and Turkey, Indo-Afghan elements in Afghanistan, and Arab and Negroid elements in the south of Persia and Baluchistan.
Among Iranian peoples the first place, as regards number and the part played in history, belongs to the Persians. They may be divided into three geographical groups. If within the approximate limits of Persia of the present day a line be drawn running from Astrabad to Yezd and thence towards Kerman, we shall have on the east the habitat of the Tajiks, on the west that of the Hajemis (between Teheran and Ispahan[467]), and that of the Parsis or Pharsis (between Ispahan and the Persian Gulf). The Tajiks, moreover, spread beyond the frontiers of Persia into Western Afghanistan, the north-west of Baluchistan, Afghan Turkestan and Russian Turkestan, as far as the Pamirs (Galcha), and perhaps even beyond. In fact, the Polu and other “Turanians” of the northern slope of the Kuen Lun, while speaking a Turkish language, bear a physical resemblance to the Tajiks (Prjevalsky). Like the Sartes, settled inhabitants of Russian Turkestan, and the Tats of the south-west shore of the Caspian, and the Aderbaijani of the Caucasus, they are Persians more or less crossed with Turks, whose language they speak.
The Tajiks are brachycephalic (ceph. ind. 84.9), above the average height (1 m. 69), and show traces of intermixture with the Turkish race,[468] while the Hajemis (Fig. [22]), and in some measure the Parsis, who are dolichocephalic (77.9), and of average height (1 m. 65), are of the Assyroid or Indo-Afghan type.
The Parsis are not very numerous in Persia. Most of them emigrated into India after the destruction of the empire of the Sassanides (in 634); they form there an important and very rich community (89,900 individuals in 1891), having still preserved their ancient Zoroastrian religion. This community, if chiefly composed of bankers, has also many men of letters. The education of women in it is specially looked after, the first woman to obtain the diploma of Doctor in Medicine in India being a Parsi.[469] Physically they are of the mixed Indo-Assyroid type, the head sub-brachycephalic (ceph. ind. 82, according to Ujfalvy).
After the Persians come the Pathan Afghans[470] or Pashtu. They form the agricultural population of Afghanistan, and are divided into Duranis (in the west and south of the country), Ghilzis (in the east), and into several other less important tribes: the Swatis, the Khostis, the Waziris, the Kakars, etc. The Afghans of India and the Indo-Afghan frontier are divided into several tribes, of which the principal ones are the Afridis near the Khyber pass and the Yusafzais near Peshawar.[471]