Language.The language of the land in the Parthian empire was the native language of Iran. There is no trace pointing to any foreign language having ever been in public use under the Arsacids. On the contrary, it is the Iranian land-dialect of Babylonia and the writing peculiar to this—as both were developed before, and in, the Arsacid period under the influence of the language and writing of the Aramaean neighbours—which are covered by the appellation Pahlavi, i.e. Parthava, and thereby designated as those of the empire of the Parthians. Even Greek did not become an official language there. None of the rulers bear even as a second name a Greek one; and, had the Arsacids made this language their own, we should not have failed to find Greek inscriptions in their empire. Certainly their coins show down to the time of Claudius exclusively,[11] and predominantly even later, Greek legends, as they show also no trace of the religion of the land, and in standard attach themselves to the local coinage of the Roman east provinces, while they retain the division of the year as well as the reckoning by years just as these had been regulated under the Seleucids. But this must rather be taken as meaning that the great-kings themselves did not coin at all,[12] and these coins, which in fact served essentially for intercourse with the western neighbours, were struck by the Greek towns of the empire in the name of the sovereign. The designation of the king on these coins as “friend of Greeks” (φιλέλλην), which already meets us early,[13] and is constant from the time of Mithradates I., i.e. from the extension of the state as far as the Tigris, has a meaning only if it is the Parthian Greek city that is speaking on these coins. It may be conjectured that a secondary position was conceded in public use to the Greek language in the Parthian empire alongside of the Persian, similar to that which it possessed in the Roman state by the side of Latin. The gradual disappearance of Hellenism under the Parthian rule may be clearly followed on these urban coins, as well in the emergence of the native language alongside and instead of the Greek, as in the debasement of language which becomes more and more prominent.[14]
Extent of the Parthian empire.As to extent the kingdom of the Arsacids was far inferior, not merely to the great state of the Achaemenids, but also to that of their immediate predecessors, the state of the Seleucids. Of its original territory they possessed only the larger eastern half; after the battle with the Parthians, in which king Antiochus Sidetes, a contemporary of the Gracchi, fell, the Syrian kings did not again seriously attempt to assert their rule beyond the Euphrates; but the country on this side of the Euphrates remained with the Occidentals.
Arabia.Both coasts of the Persian Gulf, even the Arabian, were in possession of the Parthians, and the navigation was thus completely in their power; the rest of the Arabian peninsula did not obey either the Parthians or the Romans ruling over Egypt.
The region of the Indus.To describe the struggle of the nations for the possession of the Indus valley, and of the regions bordering on it, to the west and east, so far as the wholly fragmentary tradition allows of a description at all, is not the task of our survey; but the main lines of this struggle, which constantly goes by the side of that waged for the Euphrates valley, may the less be omitted in this connection, as our tradition does not allow us to follow out in detail the circumstances of Iran to the east in their influence on western relations, and it hence appears necessary at least to realise for ourselves its outlines. Soon after the death of Alexander the Great, the boundary between Iran and India was drawn by the agreement of his marshal and coheir Seleucus with Chandragupta, or in Greek Sandracottos, the founder of the empire of the Indians. According to this the latter ruled not merely over the Ganges-valley in all its extent and the whole north-west of India, but in the region of the Indus, at least over a part of the upland valley of what is now Cabul, further over Arachosia or Afghanistan, presumably also over the waste and arid Gedrosia, the modern Beloochistan, as well as over the delta and mouths of the Indus; the documents hewn in stone, by which Chandragupta’s grandson, the orthodox Buddha-worshipper Asoka, inculcated the general moral law on his subjects, have been found, as in all this widely extended domain, so particularly in the region of Peshawur.[15] The Hindoo Koosh, the Parapanisus of the ancients, and its continuation to the east and west, thus separated with their mighty chain—pierced only by few passes—Iran and India. But this agreement did not long subsist.
Bactro-Indian empire.In the earlier period of the Diadochi the Greek rulers of the kingdom of Bactra, which took a mighty impulse on its breaking off from the Seleucid state, crossed the frontier-mountains, brought a considerable part of the Indus valley into their power, and perhaps established themselves still farther inland in Hindostan, so that the centre of gravity of this empire was shifted from western Iran to eastern India, and Hellenism gave way to an Indian type. The kings of this empire were called Indian, and bore subsequently non-Greek names; on the coins the native Indian language and writing appear by the side, and instead, of the Greek, just as in the Partho-Persian coinage the Pahlavi comes up alongside of the Greek.
Indo-Scythians.Then one nation more entered into the arena; the Scythians, or, as they were called in Iran and India, the Sacae, broke off from their ancestral settlements on the Jaxartes and crossed the mountains southward. The Bactrian province came at least in great part into their power, and at some time in the last century of the Roman republic they must have established themselves in the modern Afghanistan and Beloochistan. On that account in the early imperial period the coast on both sides of the mouth of the Indus about Minnagara is called Scythian, and in the interior the district of the Drangae lying to the west of Candahar bears subsequently the name “land of the Sacae,” Sacastane, the modern Seistân. This immigration of the Scythians into the provinces of the Bactro-Indian empire doubtless restricted and injured it, somewhat as the Roman empire was affected by the first migrations of the Germans, but did not destroy it; under Vespasian there still subsisted a probably independent Bactrian state.[16]
Partho-Indian empire.Under the Julian and Claudian emperors the Parthians seem to have been the leading power at the mouth of the Indus. A trustworthy reporter from the Augustan age specifies that same Sacastane among the Parthian provinces, and calls the king of the Saco-Scythians an under-king of the Arsacids; as the last Parthian province towards the east he designates Arachosia with the capital Alexandropolis, probably Candahar. Soon afterwards, indeed, in Vespasian’s time, Parthian princes rule in Minnagara. This, however, was for the empire on the river Indus more a change of dynasty than an annexation proper to the state of Ctesiphon. The Parthian prince Gondopharus, whom the Christian legend connects with St. Thomas, the apostle of the Parthians and Indians,[17] certainly ruled from Minnagara as far up as Peshawur and Cabul; but these rulers use, like their superiors in the Indian empire, the Indian language alongside of the Greek, and name themselves great-kings like those of Ctesiphon; they appear to have been not the less rivals to the Arsacids, on account of their belonging to the same princely house.[18]
Empire of the Sacae on the Indus.This Parthian dynasty was then followed in the Indian empire after a short interval by what is designated in Indian tradition as that of the Sacae or that of king Kanerku or Kanishka, which begins with 78 A.D. and subsisted at least down to the third century.[19] They belong to the Scythians, whose immigration was formerly mentioned, and on their coins the Scythian language takes the place of the Indian.[20] Thus in the region of the Indus, after the Indians and the Hellenes, Parthians and Scythians bore sway in the first three centuries of our era. But even under the foreign dynasties a national Indian type of state was established and held its ground, and opposed a not less permanent barrier to the development of the Partho-Persian power in the East than did the Roman state in the West.
Asiatic Scythians.Towards the north and north-east Iran bordered with Turan. As the western and southern shores of the Caspian Sea and the upper valleys of the Oxus and Jaxartes offered an appropriate seat for civilisation, so the steppe round the Sea of Aral and the extensive plain stretching behind it belonged by right to the roving peoples. There were among those nomads probably individual tribes kindred to the Iranians; but these have no part in the Iranian civilisation, and it is this element which determines the historical position of Iran, that it forms the bulwark of the peoples of culture against those hordes, who, as Scythians, Sacae, Huns, Mongols, Turks, appear to have no other destiny in the world’s history than that of annihilating culture. Bactria, the great bulwark of Iran against Turan, sufficed for this defence during a considerable time under its Greek rulers in the epoch after Alexander; but we have already mentioned that subsequently, although it did not perish, it no longer availed to prevent the Scythians from pressing onward towards the south. With the decay of the Bactrian power the same task was transferred to the Arsacids. How far they responded to it it is difficult to say. In the first period of the empire the great-kings of Ctesiphon seem to have driven back the Scythians or to have brought them into subjection in the northern provinces as well as to the south of the Hindoo Koosh; they wrested from them again a portion of the Bactrian territory. But it is doubtful what limits were here fixed, and whether they were at all lasting. There is frequent mention of wars between the Parthians and Scythians. The latter, here in the first instance dwellers around the Sea of Aral, the forefathers of the modern Turkomans, are regularly the aggressors, inasmuch as they partly by crossing over the Caspian Sea invade the valleys of the Cyrus and the Araxes, partly issuing from their steppes pillage the rich plains of Hyrcania and the fertile oasis of Margiana (Merv). The border-regions agreed to buy off the levy of arbitrary contributions by tributes, which were regularly called up at fixed terms, just as at present the Bedouins of Syria levy the kubba from the farmers there. The Parthian government thus, at least in the earlier imperial period, was as little able as the Turkish government of the present day to secure here to the peaceful subject the fruits of his toil, and to establish a durable state of peace on the frontier. Even for the imperial power itself these border-troubles remained an open sore; often they exercised an influence on the wars of succession of the Arsacids as well as on their disputes with Rome.