218 Chinese Clay Figures 



First of all, attention should be called to the fact (and this cannot be 

 an accident) that the new parts of the armor added in China during the 

 Han period are exactly those which we find in ancient Persia. The 

 nape-guard (ya-hia) 1 meets its counterpart in the kuiris named in the 

 Avesta, rendered in the Pahlavl version grlvpdn ("neck-guard") and 

 explained by the gloss, "attached behind from the helmet to the corse- 

 let." 2 The Avesta mentions also leg-guards, ranapano ("thigh-protec- 

 tor") which are interpreted as greaves; and according to Jackson, the 

 helmet is described in the Avesta as made of iron, brass, or gold. 8 

 Likewise the new mode of fighting prevailing in the Han period — 

 the use of the sword in connection with shield and armor — is paralleled 

 in Persia when we read in Xenophon's Cyropadia (II, i, 21) that 

 Cyrus, in training his men, relieved them from practice with the bow 

 and the javelin, and exercised them in but one direction, to fight with 

 sword, shield, and armor. 4 



Further, it is essential to grasp the fundamental fact of the difference 

 between mounted archers and true cavalry, and the development of 

 these two different arms and means of tactics among the Iranians. 

 Herodotus (VII, 84) states that the Persian horsemen were equipped 

 in the same manner as the infantry, except that some of them wore upon 

 their heads devices wrought of brass and steel. Accordingly, the 

 Persian cavalrymen of that time must be credited with the wearing of 

 sleeved tunics of diverse colors, bedecked with breastplates of iron 

 scales like fish-scales, as attributed by Herodotus (VII, 61) to the 

 infantry. The description of Herodotus (IX, 49) leaves no doubt that 

 the Persian horsemen fighting the Greeks were only a body of infantry 

 mounted on horses and chiefly depending upon their bows, at which 

 Herodotus expresses astonishment by remarking that, though horsemen, 

 they used the bow; they were, accordingly, mounted archers. 



This mode of fighting was spread over the entire Scythian and 

 Iranian world. The Scythians shot with bow and arrow from horse- 

 back (Herodotus, IV, 131), and singly skirmished in open order 

 against their opponents, attacking them here and there where chance or 

 advantage offered ; they were at the same time nowhere and ubiquitous, 

 effectually screening their operations. The Massagetae (Herodotus, I, 



1 A Chinese word suspicious of foreign origin. 



2 A. V. W. Jackson, Ancient Persian Armor (in Classical Studies in Honor of 

 Henry Drisler, p. 118, New York, 1894). 



3 Ibid., p. 119. The greaves are mentioned also by Xenophon (Anabasis, vin, 

 6); Herodotus (vii, 84) ascribes brass and steel helmets to the Persian cavalry men; 

 Xenophon (Cyropcedia, vi, 1, 2) speaks of brazen helmets, and in one case (vi, 4, 2) 

 of a golden helmet. 



4 Compare also Cyropcedia, 1, 2, 12. 



