342 Dr Prichard's Anniversary Address 



The second, termed conjecturally the Median form, has 

 not been as yet so much studied as either of the others. Pro- 

 fessor Westergaard, who has bestowed more labour upon it 

 than any other person, attempted at first to ascertain the 

 groupes of characters which corresponded to the proper names 

 occurring in the Persian inscription which had been read by 

 Major Rawlinson. Among them were the names of Darius 

 Hystaspes, Cyi'us, and Xerxes. Thisledtothe discovery of va- 

 rious groupes of cuneiform lines representing letters, and fur- 

 nished a clue which enabled the ingenious interpreter gradually 

 to make out an alphabet. The alphabet was found to consist 

 of about 100 elements, each represented by a small groupe 

 or congeries of wedge-shaped lines. Many of the gramma- 

 tical forms of the language have since been discovered ; and 

 the result is curious and unexpected, so far as the relationship 

 of this language is concerned. It is believed by Professor 

 Westergaai'd, as well as by Major Rawlinson, that the idiom 

 of the second class of cuneiform inscriptions, which they term 

 the Median, is associated by its grammatical forms, not with 

 the Persian, to which the Median language has always been 

 believed to be nearly related, but to the idioms of High Asia, 

 or that class of languages to which the Turkish and Tartar 

 dialects belong, and to which the names of Ugro-Tartarian 

 and Turanian have been affixed. If this opinion should be 

 finally established, it will bring us to a very curious and unex- 

 pected result, namely, that the races of people who divided 

 between them the territory of Iran, in the days of Astyages, 

 were nearly the same as those who now inhabit it. The old 

 Persians, whose language was an Arian dialect, nearly akin 

 to the Sanskrit, and who were a part of the same race which 

 passed the Indus, and occupied Northern India, — these Arian 

 Persians are represented by the modern Tajiks, who are the 

 native Persian people of towns and cultivated districts, while 

 the Iliyahs, or the roving and nomadic tribes, who form the 

 equestrian and military part of the population of Persia, and 

 to whom the nobles and the royal caste belong, being of a 

 Turkish descent and northern oi'igin, must be considered as 

 allied to the race of the ancient Medes, though they are de- 

 scended from hordes who have migrated from High Asia, 



