CONJECTURES ON THE GREAT ARCH. 
183 
full of interest in itself. The wild mountains around ; the trees 
under which we sat; the long fragrant grass, untouched by the 
scythe of man, peering over the sides of the carpet-table-cloth 
and seats ; and the variously habited Asiatic figures who occu¬ 
pied them, with a bearded patriarch as their chief; all formed a 
living picture of primeval times, that at once transported me 
back at least two thousand years ! Besides this admirable fore¬ 
ground for the painter of such a scene, the adjacent parts were 
in perfect harmony. Groups of attendants in their Persian 
garbs, with horses and mules, appearing through the trees; and 
numbers, in waiting nearer ourselves, stood about, intermixed 
indiscriminately with the rough-visaged, and savage figures of 
the Courdish owners of the tented-village ; from whose flocks 
the most substantial part of our fare had been drawn, and whose 
sole payment lay in the honour of seeing it eaten by the Frangy 
traveller, and a great officer of their brave prince of Kermanshah! 
Our party broke up towards the afternoon ; when the minister 
and his train took their leave with the usual ceremonies, and I 
returned to my pursuits on the face of the mountain. 
I had finished sketching the bas-reliefs in the great arch ; the 
explanation of which, from no inscriptions remaining, must 
depend upon conjecture assisted by the traditions of the place. 
These, with the sculptures’ own internal evidence, certainly in¬ 
cline me to coincide with the opinion given in the writings of 
Tabari Nizami, and the accounts repeated on the spot, that they 
are commemorations of KhosroO Purviz, with his celebrated queen, 
and, not unlikely, her imperial father also. The tales told here, of 
the royal group, are extremely romantic ; and those of the poets 
do not come behind them in wild embellishments. They sing of 
44 the cloudless brilliancy of the monarch’s reign of 44 the ever 
