At the foot of the mountain barrier, towards the northern steppes, and on the edge of the steppes of the Oxus, to the north of the Hyrcanians, Parthians, and Margiani, in a land which only partially admits of agriculture, lay the Chorasmians, a people partly stationary and partly migratory – the Uvarazmiya of the Achæmenids, the Hvairizem of the Avesta. Further to the east, where the edge rises to the lofty Hindu Kush, there lies on its northern slope a favoured district in the region of the Upper Oxus. That river flows from the table-land of Pamire, which lies more than 15,000 feet above the sea, exactly at the point where the Hindu Kush abuts on the Belurdagh, the western edge of the central table-land. On the banks of the river, which flows in a north-westerly direction, extend broad mountain pastures, where support is found in the fresh mountain air for numerous herds of horses and sheep, and beneath the wooded hills are blooming valleys. On these slopes of the Hindu Kush, the middle stage between the table-land and the deep plain of the Caspian Sea, lay the Bactrians – the Bakhtri of the Achæmenids, the Bakhdhi of the Avesta. Curtius, following the accounts of the companions of Alexander, tells us of the land of the Bactrians that it was much diversified in character; in one part were pastures, another was rich in beautiful fruit-trees and vines, and frequent springs watered the rich soil, on which corn was cultivated. These districts supported a large number of oxen and horses. Under the range of Paropanisos (i. e. on the slope of the Hindu Kush) lay the city of Bactra, on the river of the same name, which washed its walls. But a great part of the country was covered with waste tracts of sand. If the winds blew from the Caspian Sea, they swept the sand into high hills, under which not only did every trace of the road disappear, but travellers were at times overwhelmed; and, as if voyaging by sea, it was necessary to guide the course by the stars.¹³ Strabo remarks, after Apollodorus of Artemita, that Bactria was the best part of East Iran (Ariana). In ancient times the Bactrians were hardly distinguished from nomads; but their land was extensive, and produced fruits of all kinds, with the exception of the vine. The fertility of the land enabled the Hellenic princes to make great conquests. Their cities were Bactra, traversed by the river of the same name, Darapsa, Aornus (avarana, i. e. protection), Kariata, and many others, and besides these cities, the Bactrians had citadels on lofty rocks.¹⁴ According to Strabo, Bactra was also called Zariaspa, and Pliny asserts that at any rate in earlier times it was called by that name. In Arrian Zariaspa is the largest city of Bactria, while Ptolemy places Zariaspa to the north of Bactra, on the bank of the Oxus. Zariaspa means golden horse. A river might possibly be known by such a name, but hardly a city, unless it belonged to a tribe of the name of Zariaspians, and was inhabited by them. In fact Ptolemy places the tribe of the Zariaspians in his Zariaspa.¹⁵

The air on these north-western terraces of the Hindu Kush is warm, and the soil sufficiently vigorous, under irrigation, to produce rice and southern fruits. Eight leagues below the snow-fields of the mountains, which resist even the hottest months of the year, two good leagues to the north of the place where the Dehas, after forcing a passage through the last heights, reaches the plains, lies the city of Balkh, on the banks of that river. At this day it is a town only partially inhabited; but the ruins of the ancient city are said to cover a circuit of several leagues. The adjacent soil is now well cultivated; the fields are thickly planted with trees, and beside old water-courses, now dried up, and extensive ruins of yet older aqueducts, eighteen channels still convey their rills to fields under active cultivation.¹⁶

North of the Bactrians, beyond the Oxus, on the western slope of Belurdagh, in the valley of the Polytimetus (Zarefshan, i. e. strewing gold), which flows towards the Oxus from the east, but, instead of joining it, ends in Lake Dengiz, lay the Sogdiani of the Greeks, the Suguda of the Old Persian inscriptions, and Çughdha of the Avesta, in the region of the modern Sogd. As the Oxus in its upper course separates the Bactrians from the Sogdiani, the Jaxartes, further to the north, separates the latter from the Scyths. According to Strabo, the manners of the Bactrians and Sogdiani were similar, but the Bactrians were less rude.¹⁷ Maracanda (Samarcand), the chief city of the Sogdiani, on the Polytimetus, is said to have had a circuit of 70 stades in the fourth century B.C. The soil is not without fertility, but the climate varies between great heat and severe cold.

Herodotus observes that the Bactrians, who carried bows of reed and short lances, closely resembled the northern Indians in armour, clothing, and mode of life, and then informs us that the Areians, Parthians, Sogdiani, and Chorasmians resembled the Bactrians. All these tribes of the east, according to the account of Herodotus, carried the Indian bow of reed; the Areians alone used the Median bow, which Herodotus states to have been in vogue not only among the Medes, but also among all the nations of Western Iran. He adds that in ancient times the Medes were called Areians by all men. Strabo uses the name Ariana for the land of all the nations of Iran, except that of the Medes and Persians, i. e. for the whole eastern half of Iran.¹⁸ In Diodorus also the nations of Eastern Iran are Arians.¹⁹ The Avesta, which, as we shall show, belongs to the east of Iran, calls its native land Airyao Dahvyu, i. e. abode of the Airyas; or Airyao Danhavo, i. e. land of the Airyas, in contrast to the Anairyao Danhavo, i. e. the non-Arian lands.²⁰ In his inscriptions king Darius styles himself "a Persian, son of a Persian, an Arian (ariya) of an Arian tribe,"²¹ and therefore the name must have held good of the west of Iran also, and have included all the nations of Iran, though afterwards it continued in use more especially for the tribes of the east. The inhabitants of the modern Persian kingdom call their kingdom by the general name of Iran. Iran is only the regular new Persian form of the old name, which in the west was pronounced Ariyana, and in the east Airyana.

We remember that the ruling nation of India called themselves Arya, and this name compared with Airya and Ariya shows us that the nations of Iran assumed the same title with very little difference. Among the Greeks Ariya and Airya became Areioi and Arioi, and the name of the land, Ariyana and Airyana, became Ariana. We have learnt the meaning of the names Aryas, Ariyas, Airyas; they signify "the noble or ruling people" (IV. 8). Much the same is the sense of the name Artæans,²² which, according to the assertion of Herodotus, was the title by which the Persians called themselves; it signifies "the exalted," or "mighty." The Persians may have assumed it after they became the ruling people in Iran and Hither Asia.

These distinctions show us that the Aryas whom we found on the Indus and in the Panjab, and who forced their way from thence to the conquest and colonisation of the valley of the Ganges, and then extended their dominion over the Deccan, and imported their religion and their civilisation into those wide regions, were closely connected with the group of nations which occupied the table-land of Iran. It is obvious that this relationship was most strictly maintained and most strongly marked where the intercourse between the neighbouring nations was most lively, i. e. among the nations of Eastern Iran. The conclusion drawn from the common title of the two nations on the west and east of the Indus, and from the statements of Herodotus about the manners of the eastern and the name of the western nations of Iran, is confirmed by the examination of the existing remnants of the ancient languages of Iran, whether spoken in the east or the west. This evidence derived from the names and the language is confirmed yet further by the coincidence in certain traits of religion and worship.

We are not in a position to fix the place from which and the time when the Arian tribes entered the table-land of Iran and peopled it. That Iran was not their native country is clear from the divergence of the Arian stock from the common stem of the Indo-Europeans (IV. 4). Still less can we decide whether the Arians found an older population already settled in Iran. So far as the ancient monuments of east and west allow us to form an opinion, there exist no elements of an alien language from which we could deduce the existence of an earlier population, which the Arians conquered. Yet we cannot deny that tribes of an alien origin and character were settled on the western spurs of the mountain wall of Iran, in the north no less than in the south.²³ The foreign elements which the later forms of the language of Iran have adopted are due to the influence which the Semitic neighbours of the Arians on the west, and the dominion of the Arabs, exercised on Iran. As to the direction in which the Arians entered Iran, we can only conclude, from their close relationship to the Arians of India, that they peopled the east of Iran before the west. If the Arians of India came into the Panjab, as we assumed, soon after 2000 B.C., the Arians of Iran entered the eastern part of that country at a date certainly not later. According to the list of dynasties furnished by Berosus, the Arians about 2500 B.C. were not only settled in Iran, but already possessed the western part of the country. He represents the Medes as conquering Babylonia in 2458 B.C., and from this date down to 2224 B.C. mentions eight Median kings as ruling over Babylon (I. 241, 247).

In spite of their cruel treatment, the nucleus of the ancient Arian population of Iran has not succumbed to the alien dynasties, the Seleucids, Arabs, and Mongols who have invaded the land since the fall of the Achæmenids; and the ancient territory has been maintained, with some losses, even against the incursions and immigrations of the Sacæ, Yuëchis, and Turkish hordes. As in the vast regions of the Indus and the Ganges, so in Iran the ancient language still lives on the lips of the modern population. Yet the changes have been great. Under the Arsacids the Old Persian passed into Middle Persian, which at a later time was known by the name of the Parthians, the tribe at that time supreme in Persia. Pahlav and Pehlevi mean Parthian, and, as applied to language, the language of the Parthians, i. e. of the Parthian era.²⁴ In the west this older Middle Persian grew up out of the Old Persian, in the east out of the Old Bactrian. In the latest period of the dominion of the Sassanids, the recent Middle Persian or Parsee took the place of Pehlevi. When the kingdom of the Sassanids succumbed to the Arabs, and Arabic became the language of the ruling people in Iran, the reaction which took place in the eastern districts of the country against the dominion of the Abbasids brought about the formation of the new Persian, which was finally completed when the national reaction broke out in the beginning of the eleventh century of our era. Beginning from Merv, Balkh, and Sejestan (the ancient Haetumat), that rising found its strongest point in Ghasna and Cabul. It did not preserve the religion, but it saved the language, nationality, and independence of Iran. The change from the Middle Persian to the modern began with the north-eastern dialects; in the south-east the Afghans and Beluchees still speak in ancient forms, closely akin to the dialects of the peasants of the Panjab. To this day the greater part of the entire population of Iran consists of the descendants of the Arians, in spite of all the distress and ruin which the land has suffered,²⁵ though the residuum of foreign elements is larger here than beyond the Indus, especially in the north-west, in Aderbeijan, and above all in Bactria and Sogdiana, in the north-east. The descendants of the Arians are still recognised by the formation of their bodies, which appeared so striking to Western nations in antiquity – the slender growth, the semicircular, united eyebrows, and the yellow skin, which becomes browner towards the east. The Persians and Afghans still possess a sound judgment, a keen intelligence, and lively sense of poetry – characteristics which, as we saw, belonged in a pre-eminent degree to the Arians of India.