THE HUMAN SPECIES. 327 



in depth than the European, and does not appear to 

 be a result of the tight swathing of the turban. Os- 

 manli Turks are a handsome race, and their children, 

 in particular, are beautiful. The Tschudic Toorkees, 

 moreover, had in ancient times a Sabsean alphabet, 

 written vertically from right to left, not brought, as 

 De Sacy appears to believe, from Syria, by early 

 Christian sects, for in that case it would never have 

 been distorted to a Chinese mode of placing the lines. 

 It is more likely the real ancient Bactrian form, one 

 connected with the literature and science of remote 

 ages, not to be so peremptorily rejected, because no 

 other proofs of this kind of Runic or Ogham, aro 

 now to be found in the region where it flourished; 

 and the Sanscrit, more perfect, and more extensively 

 dominant, supplanted it, even in Thibet. At a re- 

 mote age, they came upon the Taujiks (original Per- 

 sians) ; they subdued or expelled them, and named 

 their conquest Toorkistan. It is to the Finnic tribes, 

 first propelled across the Jaxartes by these conquerors, 

 that the dynasty, or the rulers named Afrasiab, so 

 celebrated in Persian tales, are to be referred, when 

 the names of Iran and Aniran first began to be 

 distinctive of Persia and Bokhara, while the adjacent 

 states, more anciently called Bactria, retained the 

 name of the capital, Bactra, only in the writings of the 

 west; for Finnic Toorkees had called it Zarias, pro- 

 bably Serai, and at one time it bore the name of By- 

 kum. Afrasiab, whose race was fair haired, proves, 

 that the stock was not so much Turkish as Finnic; 



