THE ROMANCE OF RACE. 513 



ence has been called in question bj the skepticism of our century. 

 But whether or not there was ever a Zoroaster, it is certain, at 

 least, that Zoroastrianism flourished in Irania, from Tibet to the 

 Tigris, at the time of Alexander; and that it declined before the 

 fashionable Hellenism of the Seleucidse, or, later, of the Parthian 

 and Grseco-Bactrian kings. Gradually, however, the Hellenic in- 

 fluence in inner Asia " petered out," as an American miner would 

 say, for lack of fresh Greek blood, till at last hardly anything 

 tangible was left of it save Greek names in Greek letters on coins 

 of barbaric kings. Then a native dynasty, that of the Sassanians, 

 upset the last of the half-Hellenized Arsacidse, and the Zoroastrian 

 faith, which had lingered on among the people, became, at the be- 

 ginning of the third century after Christ, the established religion. 

 The Magi had things all their own way, and persecuted Greek 

 thought with the zeal of inquisitors. For four hundred years the 

 creed of the Zend-Avesta held sway in Iran, till the Caliph Omar 

 bore down upon the land with his victorious Mohammedans. The 

 mass of the population were " converted " en hloc by the usual argu- 

 ment of Islam, at the battle of ISTahavand ; and the faithful remnant, 

 who declined to accept the creed of the Prophet at the point of the 

 sword, fled as best they might to the desert of Khorassan. A few 

 thousand persecuted and despised Zoroastrians, known as Guebres, 

 still linger on in the dominions of the Shah; but the greater part 

 of the incorruptible took ship to India, where they settled for the 

 most part in the neighborhood of Bombay and the other trading 

 towns of the western coast. As they never intermarry with Hindus 

 or Mohammedans, they still remain pure, both in race and religion, 

 and can not be regarded as in any sense representative of the people 

 of India. Their sacred language is still the Zend of the Avesta, 

 and their fire worship is as pronounced as when they fled from 

 Persia. 



These historic examples are familiar to most of us. Far more 

 interesting, however, are the prehistoric facts of similar implica- 

 tion, which are known to few save the students of ethnology. It 

 is not everybody, for instance, who is aware that the language of 

 Madagascar is not African at all, but a pure Malayan dialect. The 

 ruling race of the island (till France displaced them) were the 

 very unnegrolike Malayan Hovas. Now, the Malays in their day 

 Avere the Greeks or the English of the Indian Ocean. Just as the 

 Hellenic race annexed the Mediterranean, turning the inland sea 

 with their colonies into a " Greek lake " (as Curtius calls it), and 

 just as the " Anglo-Saxon " race annexed the Atlantic and the Pa- 

 cific, colonizing the United States, Canada, South Africa, and Aus- 

 tralasia, so did the Malays annex the Indian Ocean, penetrating 



VOL. LIII. — 36 



