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stock, and fought therefore with the embittered animosity of rela-r 

 tions engaged in contest. Both, however, seem to have eagerly 

 embraced every possible opportunity of oppressing the unoffending 

 race to the south of the snowy mountains. This affinity, not gene- 

 rally known or attended to, added to an incorrect idea of the limits 

 of the two countries just mentioned, has been the occasion of much 

 confusion in the historical accounts of this period and of this part of 

 Asia ; since many of the conquests of the Transoxan monarchs in 

 India have been assigned to the Persians, and the honour of some of 

 the achievements of the Persians, with equal injustice, has been 

 conferred on the sovereigns of Turan. The first recorded invasion of 

 India, either by Persian or Indian historians, took place under 

 Feredun, the sixth monarch of the first, or Pishdadian, dynasty, 

 who, according to Sir William Jones, in his Short History of Persia, 

 by which I shall principally guide myself in this survey of its 

 ancient events, flourished about the year before Christ 750*, which, 

 though many centuries later than the period generally fixed by the 

 Asiatics for the reign of that prince, who was the son of the great 

 Gemshid, the builder of Isthakar, or Persepolis, is very likely to be 

 its true date. That monarch had three sons, among whom, from a 

 determination formed, at an advanced period of life, to devote the 

 remainder of it to studious retirement, he divided his vast empire. 

 The name of the first was SALM, probably the Salmanassar of Scrip- 

 ture, to whom he allotted SYRIA ; that of the second, TUR, to whom 

 he assigned the country lying between the Gihun and Sihun, the 

 ancient Oxus and laxartes, from him called TURAN; and that of the 

 youngest, IRAGE, who received the largest and most beautiful por- 

 tion, including Khorasan and other provinces in the heart of the 

 empire, thenceforth denominated, after himself, IRAN. " This divi- 



* Short Hist, of Persia, p. 42. 



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