Chapter XIV

The universal ignorance which prevails throughout the East as to the origin of those antiquities which excite the wonder of every traveller makes it necessary that we should again direct our course towards that hemisphere, to redeem, if possible, its venerable remains from that moral night which successive ages have accumulated around them.

Persia[206] was the source which poured its vivifying light into the mental obnubilation of our European ancestors. By a reverse of those casualties from which no condition can be exempt, Persia has, in her turn, been made the theatre of darkness; and though, under the fostering auspices of British institutions, the mist has, to a large amount, been dispelled, yet is the proudest era of her splendour left still unexplored, and that is the epoch which called forth into life those monuments of literature and philosophical eminence, which, resisting the corrosion of time and the assaults of war, still proudly elevate their heads towards those orbs, with whose pompous ceremonial they were essentially connected, and whose generative properties they typically symbolised--I mean the Round Towers.

This was the moment of Persia’s halcyon pride: this the period of her earthly coruscation: to this have all the faculties of my ardent mind with vigour been addressed; and while, in the humble consciousness of successful investigation, I announce its issue to have far exceeded my hopes, I shall avail myself of the industry of preceding inquirers to throw light upon the intervals of value which intervene; but, lest I should intrude upon the province of their well-earned honours, I shall, in every such case of borrowed assistance, allow the writers themselves to speak; by which it will additionally appear that, with much good taste, and with historical honesty, they have left a vacuum in their researches, for which the public mind has been long athirst, and which my exclusive resources could alone supply.

“The Persian empire,”[207] says Heeren, “owed its origin to one of those great political revolutions which are of such frequent occurrence in Asia, and the rise and progress of which we have already considered in general. A rude mountain tribe of nomad habits rushed with impetuous rapidity from its fastnesses, and overwhelmed all the nations of Southern Asia, (the Arabians excepted), from the Mediterranean to the Indus and Iaxartes. The mighty empires which arose in Asia were not founded in the same manner with the kingdoms of Europe. They were generally erected by mighty conquering nations, and these, for the most part, nomad nations. This important consideration we must never lose sight of, when engaged in the study of their history and institutions.”

“Not only is Persia[208] Proper memorable on account of its historical associations, but also for the architectural remains which it continues to present. The ruins of Persepolis are the noblest monuments of the most flourishing era of this empire, which have survived the lapse of ages. As solitary in their situation as peculiar in their character, they rise above the deluge of years, which for centuries has overwhelmed all the records of human grandeur, around them, or near them, and buried all traces of Susa and of Babylon. Their venerable antiquity and majestic proportions do not more command our reverence, than the mystery which involves their construction awakens the curiosity of the most unobservant spectator. Pillars which belong to no known order of architecture; inscriptions in an alphabet which continues an enigma; fabulous animals which stand as guards at the entrance; the multiplicity of allegorical figures which decorate the walls,--all conspire to carry us back to ages of the most remote antiquity, over which the traditions of the East shed a doubtful and wandering light.”

“The Persians have taken more pains than almost any other nation to preserve their records in writing; yet it has been their fate, in common with most other nations of antiquity, to be indebted for the stability of their fame to foreign historians. Notwithstanding the pains they took to register the acts of their government, the _original documents of their history_, with a few accidental exceptions, have altogether perished. And the inscriptions of Persepolis, like the hieroglyphics of the Egyptians, will, in a manner, have outlived themselves, unless a complete key be discovered to the alphabet in which they are composed.”

Now, as a set off to these extracts, it will be necessary to remark that, though true in substance, they are only so as descriptive of a particular epoch. Empire after empire rolled over, in succession, before that which the historian here delineates, and which was but the motley combination of a rugged swarm of mountaineers, who stalked with ferocious insensibility over the consecrated relics of monumental glory.

Herodotus and Arrian were the authorities that seduced him into this mistake, the former of whom states that “the Persians originally occupied a small and craggy country, and that it was proposed in the time of Cyrus that they should exchange this for one more fertile; a plan which Cyrus discouraged as likely to extinguish their hardy and warlike pursuits”; and the latter, that “the Persians, when, under Cyrus, they conquered all Asia, were a poor people, inhabiting a hilly region”;[209] but those writers were as misinformed, as to all events and particulars relating to this locality, anterior to the time specified above, as any of their contemporaries; and when we reflect how very recent an era in the history of the world was that in which Cyrus appeared, it will be seen how fragile a substratum was that which the professor had adopted for the erection of his materials. We read accordingly, in Terceira’s Spanish history of that country, that “there was not at that time (A.D. 1590) one man in Persia (these were the direct descendants of Cyrus’s men) that understood their _ancient_ letters, for having often seen some plates of metal with _ancient_ inscriptions on them, I made inquiry after the meaning of them; and men _well versed_ in their _antiquities_, and _studious_, told me that was _Fars kadeem, ancient Persian_, after the old fashion, and _therefore_ I should find _no man_ that understood it.”

Indeed the reasonings of Heeren himself,--and learned I cheerfully acknowledge them,--would seem to make him rise above the narrowness of his Grecian supporters.

“Even previous,” says he, “to the time when the Arabs, with the sword in one hand and the Koran in the other, overran and subdued Persia, they were the more open to settlers from the North and East, from the circumstance that Persia was situated on the great highway of nations, by which the human race spread itself from East to West. All that is meant to be asserted is, that the various races who successively had dominion in these parts, all belonged to the same original stock.

“This fact, which the observations of the best modern travellers tend to confirm, may explain how it has come to pass that many districts, anciently celebrated for their fertility, are at present barren and unproductive. A single invasion, by destroying the water-courses, is sufficient to reduce, in a short time, a fertile and flourishing country to an arid desert; and to how many such disastrous contingencies has not Persia at all times been exposed!”

“Another fact, suggested by the languages of Asia and the ancient dialects of Persia, is too important to be passed over in silence. Not only in the Persian territory but in other parts of Eastern Asia, particularly the two Indian peninsulas, we find languages which still subsist, mixed up with others which are preserved to us only in a few written names. To this class belong, in Persia, the Zend and Pahlivi, already mentioned; in Hindustan, the celebrated Sanscrit, as well as the Pali in the Burman peninsula.

“Accordingly, we shall venture to consider as the same parent stock the race which bore rule in Iran, comprehending all the inferior races, and which may be termed in general the Persian or Medo-Persian, inasmuch as the countries in its occupation were termed, in a wider sense, the land of Persia.

“They have been denominated by Rhode (Heilige sagen, etc.) the people of Zend, not improperly, if we consider the Zend as the original language of all the race ... not confined to Persis, properly so called, but extending over the steppes of Carmania and to the shores of the Caspian. Even at the present day they are comprised under the general name of Persia, though Farsistan, the original country of the Persians, forms a very small part of this territory.

“The Semitic and the Persian were, therefore, the principal languages of Asia; the latter being spoken as far as the Indus. Our knowledge of the languages prevalent on the other side of that river is as yet too defective to enable us to speak with anything like certainty. Possibly it may be reserved for our own age to arrive at important conclusions on this subject, if the affinity between the Zend and the Sanscrit, the sacred languages of Persia and Hindustan, should be established,--if the spirit of discovery which characterises the British nation should succeed in rescuing from oblivion some more remains of ancient Indian literature, and a second Anquetil Duperron present the public with the sacred books of the Brahmans, with the same success that his predecessor has illustrated those of the Parsees.”

Though I cannot avoid concurring in the laudable hope that “our own age” may witness important conclusions on this subject, still it strikes me,--_and I earnestly urge it as worthy of the notice of a Reform Ministry_, that until the _Irish Language_ be raked from its ashes, no accuracy can ever be obtained either in the Zend, Pahlavi, or Sanscrit _dialects_, which are but emanations from it, or in the _subject matter_, historical or religious, which they profess to pourtray.

“In the interior of these districts is situated a considerable lake, called the Lake Zevora, unquestionably the _Aria Palus_ of antiquity. A large river, anciently bearing the same name, at present called the Ilmend, empties itself into this inland sea from the deserts to the south-east, and Christie fell in with another stream farther to the north, called the Herat, near a town of the same name.

“I consider (with Kinneir) the city of Herat to be same with the ancient Aria, or, as it was also called, Artacoana. We are told that Alexander on his march to Bactriana inclined to the south to visit Aria. We must carefully distinguish between the terms Aria and Ariana, as used by the Greeks. The former was applied to a province which we shall have occasion to describe in the sequel. The latter is equivalent to Iran, and appears to have been formed from the ancient term in the Zend language, Eriene. The whole of Iran composes a sort of oblong, the Tigris and Indus forming its sides to the east and west; the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean bounding it to the south; and the Caspian, with Mount Taurus and the river Oxus, shutting it in to the north. These were also the limits of the ancient Ariana (see Strabo, p. 1048), except that, towards the west, its boundary was an imaginary line separating it from Persia Proper. Of this more extensive district, Aria (according to Strabo) formed only a part, distinguished by its superior fertility. Herodotus appears to have been unacquainted with the term Aria; he merely mentions the Arii as a nation allied to the Medes.

“Aria, lying to the east of Media, derived its name from the river Arius, the modern Heri: and the Arians and Medes were originally the same race; the Medes, according to Herodotus, having originally borne the name Arians. It is apparent, from the same place (Herod. vii. 62) that what were called the _Median habits_ were not confined to Media Proper, but extended to the countries lying eastward, and as these touch on Bactria, we cannot be surprised at the conformity which prevailed.”

These latter quotations I have thought fit to introduce to show the ignorance of the modern Greeks,--those of Cyrus and Herodotus’s days--compared with their Pelasgic predecessors--_Iran_, the real name for all those countries of higher Asia as far as the Indus,[210] being called, in the Zend, _Eriene_, the Greeks, whose intercourse with the East now for the first time began, without troubling their brains to ascertain what the word in either form meant, transmuted this latter into _Ariana_, whereas their forefathers, the Pelasgi, a literary and a religious tribe, changed its namesake in the West, our own _Iran_--which in the Pahlavi dialect was called _Erin_, and in the Zend would also be called _Eriene_--into _Ierne_, thereby evincing their knowledge of the import of the term, and registering their subscription in its _sacred_ attributes.[211]

The following, however, is more to the point, and in itself sufficient to redeem the professor’s entire work from any occasional inclination to Grecian subserviency.

“It cannot be doubted that at some remote period antecedent to the commencement of historical records, one mighty race possessed these vast plains.

“The traditions of this race preserve some very important particulars respecting their descent, their ancient abodes, and their gradual dissemination through the land of Iran. These traditions are preserved in the beginning of the Vendidat, the most important, and it is probable, the most ancient of all their sacred books, the collection of which is styled the Zendavasta, to which we shall have occasion to refer hereafter. The first two chapters of this work, entitled _Fargards_, contain the above traditions, not wrapt up in allegory, but so evidently historical as to demand nothing more than the application of geographical knowledge to explain them. With the exception of the Mosaical Scriptures, we are acquainted with nothing which so plainly wears the stamp of remote antiquity, ascending beyond the times within which the known empires of the East flourished; in which we catch, as it were, the last faint echo of the history of a former world, anterior to that great catastrophe of our planet, which is attested in the vicinity of the parent country of these legends, by the remains of the elephant, the rhinoceros, and the mammoth, and other countries properly belonging to the countries of the South. It would be a fruitless labour to attempt to assign dates to these remains, but if the compiler of the _Vendidat_ himself, who was long anterior to the Persian, and as we shall have occasion to show, probably also to the Median dynasty, as known to us, received them as the primeval traditions of his race, our opinion of their importance may be fully justified.

“These legends describe as the _original_ seat of the race, a delicious country, named Eriene-_Veedjo_, which enjoyed a climate singularly mild, having seven months summer and five of winter. Such was the state at first, as created by the power of Ormuzd; but the author of evil, the death-dealing Ahriman, smote it with the plague of cold, so that it came to have ten months of winter and only two of summer. Thus the nation began to desert the paradise they at first occupied, and Ormuzd successively created for their reception sixteen other places of benediction and abundance, which are faithfully recorded in the legend.

“What then was the site of the Eriene referred to? The editors and commentators on the Zendavesta are inclined to discover it in Georgia, or the Caucasian district; but the opinion must necessarily appear unsatisfactory to anyone who will take into account the whole of the record, and the succession of places there mentioned as the abodes of the race. On the contrary, we there trace a gradual migration of the nation from east to west, not as this hypothesis would tend to prove, from west to east. The first abode which Ormuzd created for the exiled people was Soghdi, whose identity with Sogdiana is sufficiently apparent; next Môore, or Maroo, in Khorasan; then Bakhdi, or Balkh (Bactriana), and so on to Fars itself, and the boundaries of Media or India. The original country of Eriene must therefore lie to the east of Leed, and thus we are led, by the course of tradition, to those regions which we have already referred to as the scene of the traditions and fables of the nation, viz. the mountainous tracts on the borders of Bucharia, the chain of Mustag and Beloorland, as far as the Paropamisan range on the confines of Hindustan, and extending northwards to the neighbourhood of the Altain chain. This savage and ungenial region enjoys at present only a short summer, at the same time that it contains the relics of an ancient world, which confirm, by positive proof, the legend of the Vendidat, that anciently the _climate_ was of a _totally different character_. When the altered nature of their original seats compelled the race to quit them, Ormuzd prepared for them other places of repose and abundance, within the precincts of that territory which has _preserved to the present day the appellation of Iran; the nation carrying with them the name of Eriene, which is obviously the same with Iran_.

“Jemshid, the father of his people, the most glorious of mortals whom the sun ever beheld. In his day animals perished not: there was no want either of water or of fruit-bearing trees, or of animals fit for the food of mankind. During the light of his reign there was neither frost nor burning heat, nor death, nor unbridled passions, nor the work of the Deevs. Man appeared to retain the age of fifteen; the children grew up in safety as long as Jemshid reigned the father of his people.[212]

“The restoration of such a golden age was the end of the legislation of Zoroaster, who, however, built his code on a religious foundation agreeably to the practice of the East; and the multifarious ceremonies he prescribed had all reference to certain doctrines intimately associated with his political dogmata; and it is absolutely necessary to bear in mind their alliance, if we would not do injustice to one part or other of his system.

“On these principles Zoroaster built his laws for the improvement of the soil by means of agriculture, by tending of cattle and gardening, which he perpetually inculcates, as if he could not sufficiently impress his disciples with a sense of their importance.

“According to his own professions he was only the restorer of the doctrine which Ormuzd himself had promulgated in the days of Jemshid: this doctrine, however, had been misrepresented, a false and delusive magia, the work of Deevs, had crept in, which was first to be extinguished, in order to restore the pure laws of Ormuzd.

“Even Plato, the first Grecian writer who mentions Zoroaster, speaks of him as _a sage of remote antiquity_; and the same is established by the evidence of Hermippus and Eudoxus, which Pliny has preserved. The second Zoroaster, supposed by Toucher to have flourished under Darius Hystaspes, is the mere figment of some later Grecian authors of little credit.

“On the whole, we _are compelled_ to carry back Zoroaster to the period when Bactriana was an independent monarchy, _a period anterior to the very commencement of the Median empire_, as related by Herodotus, ascending _beyond the eighth century_ before the Christian era. Whether we must refer him to a _still more ancient epoch_, prior to the Assyrian monarchy, the chronological notices we have already given are all that can be afforded, except we be prepared to transport the sage beyond the _utmost limits of recorded_ history.”

As I have no longer occasion, however, for the _sage_ than to show that he was a _reformer_; and though at least “eight (more likely _eighteen_) hundred years before the Christian era,”--yet was he even then, comparatively, a _modern_,--I shall now turn to other sources to ascend to the dynasties that had preceded him.

“The rare and interesting tract on twelve religions,” says Sir W. Jones, “entitled the Dabistan, and composed by a Mohammedan traveller, a native of Cashmere, named Moshan, but distinguished by the assumed surname of Fani, or Perishable, begins with a wonderfully curious chapter on the religion of Hushang, which was _long anterior to Zeradust_ (_Zoroaster_), but had continued to be _secretly professed_ by many learned Persians, even to the author’s time; and several of the most eminent of these dissenting, in many points, from the Ghabres, and persecuted by the ruling powers of their country, had retired to India, where they compiled a number of books, now extremely scarce, which Moshan had perused, and with the writers of which, or with many of them, he had contracted an intimate friendship. From them he learned that a _powerful monarchy had been established for ages in Iran for the accession of Cayemurs_; that it was called the Mahabadean dynasty, for a reason which will soon be mentioned; and that many princes, of whom seven or eight only are named in the Dabistan, and among them Mahbul, or Maha Beli, had raised the empire to the zenith of human glory. If we can rely on this evidence,--_which to me appears unexceptionable_,--the Iranian monarchy must have been the oldest in the world.”

Sir John Malcolm had some scruples as to the authenticity of this production, and entered upon a very severe analysis of its contents; merely because the _idols_ which the ancient Persians are therein stated to have adored, and the _mode_ of their adoration, were dissimilar to those of India! Was it necessary that they should be alike? It is true, that from Persia everything Indian flowed; but there, on its importation, it partook of the peculiarities of the soil and climate; while, even in Persia itself, a great degeneracy occurred; and the deterioration and moral laxity, thus superinduced, was what the virtuous Zeradust so deplored, and what _kindled_ his _fervour_ to new model the system.

But “the introduction of the angel _Gabriel_,” he says, “appears of itself enough to discredit the whole work.” Was Sir John sure that this rendering was literal? He himself admits that he was “following a Mohammedan author, who has certainly made a _free_ translation of the Pahlavi text.” And, if so in one case, why not in another? But even admitting that there was no _freedom_ at all used in the matter; and that _Gabriel_ is the rigid version of the name of the messenger employed, this should not, _in the least_, affect our reliance upon the Dabistan, as I shall adduce a greater _coincidence_ than this, nay, a downright _identity_, not only of _name_ but of _essence_, between the divine dispensation in all previous ages, and the spiritual form of it with which we are at present blessed.

But you will say, perhaps, that Moshan Fani’s authorities were, in a great measure, _floating_, and dependent upon _histories_ of a merely oral stamp, which--wanting as they do, the impress of lettered perpetuity, and subject, as they are, to variation, both of curtailment and of addition, besides the colour of depreciation or enhancement, which they must furthermore undergo, according to the nature of the successive _media_ through which they pass,--cannot, after repeated transfusions, retain much similarity with the original truth, nor afford to a rational and thinking mind, however they may gratify selfish or national love, much stability for conviction or satisfactory acquiescence?

To the first I shall reply that it seems not correct, as the manuscripts by which he was guided appear still in existence; and this was not without its influence on Sir John’s own scepticism, when he declares, that “the doubtful authority of this work has received some support from the recent discovery of a volume in the ancient Pahlivi, called the Dussadeer, or Zemarawatseer, to which its authors refer.”

Then, as to the _vanity_ alluded to, the compiler may well be acquitted of any, as being of a different creed, and proverbially intolerant, he could not, _did not truth oversway_, have felt much communion of pleasure in celebrating the glories of a defunct religion. And though I concede that _that_ species of information, which arises from the traditions of successive races of men, cannot be so satisfactory as that which is _stereotyped_ in alphabetic characters; nay, that, according as it diverges from its first outlet, it is likely to diverge also from exactness; still I do insist, that the prevalence of those _traditions_, wherever they occur, argues some alliance with _fact_ and _reality_; just as idolatry itself, in all its ramifications, is but the corrupt transmission of original pure religion.