382 NATi i:\l BJBT0B1 01 



were altimately driven forward to tlio present Kurdistan, prob- 

 ably by the Persians, who in their turn had been tenants of 

 Bactria ; for all the traditionary events of the first dynasty an 

 refern d to the time when they were expelled by the Ou-sun, 

 fair-haired tribes from Thibet, or by Massagetae from the north.* 

 They, too, had traversed the Parop&raisus, and, following the 

 Helmund, had crossed the Arian Desert to the hills of Susiana, 

 where they absorbed the Klamite bowmen; located their sacred 

 centre at P< rsagarda, and, further west, built Fersepolis.f where 

 the great empire of Persia properly commenced. The city 

 and palace were constructed according to a system of architec- 

 ture already long established at Zariaspa or Bactra, or in con- 

 formity with one common to the whole vast region of Nineveh, 

 Babylon, and High Asia. The ancient Parsi language shows, 

 however, a certain affinity with the Assyrian through the Pel- 

 hevi, introduced by the Medes, and an adopted civilization, in 

 the use of a cuneiform alphabet. This character continued to 

 be used for inscriptions after the overthrow of Darius, and was 

 revived during the Parthian sway, although another dialect, 

 namely the Zend, was spoken — a fact which attests the pres- 

 ence of a further Sanscrit element, approaching still nearer 

 to the early Gothic of the west, and a tongue even now in 

 part mixed up with the Poushtoo, used by the Affghans. 

 The Belooches and Poushtoo Affghans, the Kurds of Kurdis- 

 tan, the Loures, the modern Persians, and the Ossetes of Cir- 

 cassia, are all branches of this great stem, which, in ancient 

 and in more recent ages, has held dominion over Egypt, and 

 produced some men of great military celebrity (such as Saladin 



* The Ou-Sun, and Kian-Kncn, or Kakas of Chinese writers, were, 

 according to Klaproth, fair-haired races within the western borders of the 

 high land chains. The Massagetae, first known on the outside of the same 

 table land, gradually moved down to the north-west, and were for a period 

 stationary on the south and cast of Lake Aral. They were all Geta tribes, 

 or clans, with Finnic intermixture. 



1 If indeed Persepolis, Pasargada, and Persagarda, are not the same. 



