BABYLON AND PERSIA

278 MEDIA, BABYLON, AND PERSIA.how it comes about that, of the ten or twelvetribes into which Greek historians divide the Per-"sian nation, only three are namedthe Pasargad.-e,the Maraphians, and the Maspiias " the princi¬pal ones, on which all the others are dependent."(Herodotus, I., 125.) These are clearly the Era¬nian conquerors, the ruling class, the aristocracy. Of" the others," four are expressly said to be nomads,and were surely not Aryan at all, while the rest mayhave been of mixed race. Of the nomad tribes theonly one which we can identify with any degree ofcertainty, is that of the Mardians, who lived in thewestern highlands of Persis, and were probably abranch of or identical with the better known Amar-DIANS. These latter were a people probably of amixed race, akin to the Elamites and Kasshi, andoccupied the mountain region now known as BakhtiyariMountains.- Their language appears tohave been quite, or very nearly, that spoken inElam, the Susiana of the Greeks, and to havebelonged to the agglutinative type (Turanian orOuralo-Altai'c *), consequently to have been closelyrelated to the ancient language of Shumir andAccad. f It is most probably this region whichis repeatedly mentioned in the Assyrian "royalannals under the name of Anzan, Anshan, andsometimes AsSAN and Anduan. It was a part ora dependence of the kingdom of Elam, figuring at* The Turanian race is frequently called " Ouralo-Altai'c," fromthe fact that the valleys of the Oural and Altaic ranges have alwaysbeen the chief nests and strongholds of its tribes.\ Sec " Story of Chaldea," pp. 145 ff.