t 157 ] 



before been remarked, that Cabul is the capital of the latter province, 

 and it is an old Indian adage, that nobody can be called the master 

 of India who has not taken possession of Cabul. The extensive 

 conquests of Cyrus, in Asia the Greater and the Less, have been 

 already glanced at, to which Mirkhond and other Eastern historians 

 bear full testimony, with only the difference of ascribing the 

 honour of the greater portion of them to Ros tarn. In the disputed 

 circumstance of the death of Khosru, they agree rather with Xeno- 

 phon than Herodotus, recording that death to have happened in 

 philosophic composure, in the plenitude of years and glory, and not 

 in a disgraceful war with the Massagetes, as stated by the latter*, 

 whose relation is much more applicable to the destruction of Afra- 

 siab, the sanguinary tyrant of Turan, put to death for those enormi- 

 ties by Khosru. It is most probable, therefore, that the Greek his- 

 torian, who undoubtedly had heard some resembling story, during 

 his abode in Asia, concerning the destruction of an army and chief- 

 tain engaged, as the Persians incessantly were, with the Turanian 

 barbarians, has, by a mistake easily enough to be accounted for in 

 a foreigner, applied to Cyrus a catastrophe which might have ac- 

 tually befallen one of his generals, or possibly, Afrasiab himself, 

 the tyrannical and powerful antagonist of the Persian monarch. 



The fury of his frantic successor, Cambyses, happily for the re- 

 pose of India, took a southern direction, and, after laying waste 

 Egypt, exhausted itself in destructive expeditions to the country of 

 the Hammonians, in the Lybian deserts, and in wild projects to 

 subdue the ^Ethiopians. Chronology marks Cambyses for the 

 Ahasuerus of Scripture, in whose correct page, doubtless with refer- 

 ence to this last insane attempt, it is said his kingdom extended 

 from INDIA even unto ^ETHIOPIA. The preceding history, how- 



* Herodotus, lib. i. p. 213. 



