BABYLON AND PERSIA

146 MEDIA, BABYLON, AND .PERSIA,some of them indeed are extremely familiar to usfrom the texts and spells of Shumir and Aecad,-ancient Chaldea,* and the presumption is very strongthat the populations of the Zagros and Caspian recrionswhich the Medes, in^the course of some threehundred years, dislodged or reduced under thenrule,belonged in great part to the division of man¬kind which the Eranians sweepingly designated as"Turan "(the Yellow Race),t in opposition to them¬selves.25. There is nothing unnatural in the fact that theAryan conquerors should have been influenced by thepeople amongst whom they came ;indeod the con¬trary would have been rather remarkable, since theywere comparatively few in number, and it was nomore than sound policy to conciliate the new subjects,whom a military rule unsoftened and unaided bymoral influence would surely have been insufficientto keep under control.For the conquerors to imposeon them their own religion was the first and mostnecessary step towards asserting that moral influence,but it was a step which could not be achieved without* See " Story of Chaldea," Chapter HI.+ This presumption would now be considered an established factbut for the violent opposition it has met from the Assyriologist andSemitistMr. Halevy, who strenuously denies the Turanian elementin the tribes conquered by the Medes and even in ancient Shumiro-Accad itself. For a long time Mr. Halevy stood entirely alone ; hewashowever, joined by the late S. Guyard, and another Frenchscholar, Mr. Pognon, now supports his views.however eminent, will scarcely prevail in the end.Still this minority,Besides, the viewsheld by the two opposing camps are not, in some cases, as irrecon¬cilable as tliey seem at first sight-at least as respects the Medianconquests. .