The passing of the great race; or, The racial basis of European history

by Madison Grant

From 525 to 485 B. C. during the reign of Darius, whose sculptured portraits show a man of pure Nordic type, the tall, blond Persians had become almost exclusively a class of great ruling nobles and had forgotten the simplicity of their shepherd ancestors. Their language belonged to the Eastern or Iranian division of Aryan speech and was known as Old Persian, which continued to be spoken until the fourth century before the Christian era. From it were derived Pehlevi, or Parthian as well as modern Persian. The great book of the old Persians, the Avesta, which was written in Zendic, also an Iranian language, does not go back to the reign of Darius and was remodelled after the Christian era, but the Old Persian of Darius was closely related to the Zendic of Bactria and to the Sanskrit of Hindustan. From Zendic, also called Medic, are derived Ghalcha, Balochi, Kurdish and other dialects.

The rise to imperial power of the dolichocephalic Aryan-speaking Persians was largely due to the genius of their leaders but the Aryanization of western Asia by them is one of the most amazing events in history. The whole region became completely transformed so far as the acceptance by the conquered of the language and religion of the Persians was concerned, but the blood of the Nordic race quickly became diluted and a few centuries later disappears from history.

During the great wars with Greece the pure Persian blood was still unimpaired and in control. In the literature of the time there is little evidence of race antagonism between the Greek and the Persian leaders although their rival cultures were sharply contrasted. In the time of Alexander the Great the pure Persian blood was obviously confined to the nobles and it was the policy of Alexander to Hellenize the Persians and to amalgamate his Greeks with them. The amount of pure Macedonian blood was not sufficient to reinforce the Nordic strain of the Persians and the net result was the entire loss of the Greek stock.

It is a question whether the Armenians of Asia Minor derived their Aryan speech from this invasion of the Nordic Persians, or whether they received it at an earlier date from the Phrygians and from the west. These Phrygians entered Asia Minor by way of the Dardanelles and broke up the Hittite Empire. Their language was Aryan and probably was related to Thracian. In favor of the theory of the introduction of the Armenian language by the Phrygians from the west, rather than by the Persians from the east, is the highly significant fact that the basic structure of that tongue shows its relationship to be with the western or Centum rather than with the eastern or Satem group of Aryan languages and this, too, in spite of a very large Persian vocabulary.

The Armenians themselves, like all the other natives of the plateaux and highlands as far east as the Hindu Kush Mountains, while of Aryan speech, are of the Armenoid subdivision, in sharp contrast to the predominant types south of the mountains in Persia, Afghanistan and Hindustan, all of which are dolichocephalic and of Mediterranean affinity but generally betraying traces of admixture with still more ancient races of Negroid origin, especially in India.

We now come to the last and easternmost extension of Aryan languages in Asia. As mentioned above, the grasslands and steppes of Russia extend north of the Caucasus Mountains and the Caspian Sea to ancient Bactria, now Turkestan. This whole country was occupied by the Nordic Sacæ and the closely related Massagetæ. These Sacæ may be identical with the later Scythians.

Soon after the opening of the second millennium B. C. and perhaps even earlier, the first Nordics crossed over the Afghan passes, entered the plains of India and organized a state in the Punjab, “the land of the five rivers,” bringing with them Aryan speech to a population probably of Mediterranean type and represented to-day by the Dravidians. The Nordic Sacæ arrived later in India and introduced the Vedas, religious poems, which were at first transmitted orally but which were reduced to written form in Old Sanskrit by the Brahmans at the comparatively late date of 300 A. D. From this classic Sanskrit are derived all the modern Aryan languages of Hindustan, as well as the Singalese of Ceylon and the chief dialects of Assam.

There is great diversity among scholars as to the date of the first entry of these Aryan-speaking tribes into the Punjab but the consensus of opinion seems to indicate a period between 1600 and 1700 B. C. or even somewhat earlier. However, the very close affinity of Sanskrit to the Old Persian of Darius and to the Zendavesta would strongly indicate that the final introduction of Aryan languages in the form of Sanskrit occurred at a much later time. The most recent tendency is to bring these dates somewhat forward.

If close relationship between languages indicates correlation in time then the entry of the Sacæ into India would appear to have been nearly simultaneous with the crossing of the Caucasus by the Nordic Cimmerians and their Persian successors.

The relationship between the Zendavesta and the Sanskrit Vedas is as near as that between High and Low German and consequently such close affinity prevents our thrusting back the date of the separation of the Persians and the Sacæ more than a few centuries.