Sykes' History of Persia - Heritage Institute

THE ARYANS OF PERSIA 103
The Dates of the Migration. —De Morgan^ holds that
the migration occupied thousands of years ;
that the
Aryan invasion of Bactria took place before 2500 B.C.,
and that the Medes entered North-western Persia about
2000 B.C. The first waves occupied Gilan and Mazanderan
; but did not penetrate as far as the plateau, in-
habited at that period by primitive races, possibly Turanian,
akin to the primitive race of Babylonia. The fact that,
as mentioned in Chapter VI., the Kassites were an Aryan
tribe which founded a dynasty about 1700 B.C., and were
heard of during the First Dynasty of Babylon, helps to
date this migration more definitely than could be done
until the identity of the Kassites had been established.
The Medes and the Ancient Inhabitants.—^\i^ ancient
inhabitants were, in all
probability, partly dispossessed,
partly driven into the hills, and partly permitted to live side
by side with the conquerors. If we consider the heavy
losses which the defending tribes must have sustained, the
wide area affected, and its mountainous character, this
shows it
appears to be a reasonable hypothesis, and history
to be in accordance with the procedure of most conquering
nations. It is also corroborated by Herodotus, who gives
the names of the tribes that were welded into a nation as
the Busae, the Paretaceni, the Struchates, the Arizanti, the
Budii, and the Magi.^ It is generally believed that the first
four of these were Aryans and that the Budii and Magi
were Turanians. The last-named tribe was found by the
invaders to be possessed of a form of worship which, fused
with that of the Aryans, developed, under the influence
of Zoroaster, into the religion which still bears his name.
The Aryan invaders were a primitive pastoral folk
owning horses, cattle, sheep, goats, and the watch-dog.
They travelled in rude waggons with axles and wheels
roughly hewn from a
single stem. The bride was
captured, and the family was based on patriarchal authority
and polygamy. They knew gold, electrum,^ and
1 2
ttudes, etc.y^. 314.
Herodotus, i. 101.
^ In the Re-vue d'
Ethnographic
et de
Sociologie,
vol. ii. p, 5, de Morgan points out that
electrum (a compound of gold and silver) was obtained from the nuggets and dust
collected by washing, and that, as the process of separating the meta^^ was unknown,
the first Greek coins contained as much as fifty per cent of silver.