Achaioi and Ionians. The belief of the Lydians, Mysians, and Karians as to their national kinship is well expressed in the genealogy in Herodotus, which traces their descent from the three brothers Lydos, Mysos, and Kar.[1] The Persian legend of Feridun (Thraetaona) and his three sons, Irej, Tur, and Selm, distinguishes the two nationalities of Iranian and Turanian, i.e. Persian and Tatar.[2] The national genealogy of the Afghans is worthy of remark. It runs thus: Melik Talut (King Saul) had two sons, Berkia and Irmia (Berekiah and Jeremiah), who served David; the son of Berkia was Afghan, and the son of Irmia was Usbek. Thanks to the aquiline noses of the Afghans, and to their use of Biblical personal names derived from Biblical sources, the idea of their being descendants of the lost tribes of Israel found great credence among European scholars up to the present century.[3] Yet the pedigree is ethnologically absurd, for the whole source of the imagined cousinship of the Aryan Afghan and the Turanian Usbek, so distinct both in feature and in language, appears to be in their union by common Mohammedanism, while the reckless jumble of sham history, which derives both from a Semitic source, is only too characteristic of Moslem chronicle. Among the Tatars is found a much more reasonable national pedigree; in the 13th century, William of Ruysbroek relates, as sober circumstantial history, that they were originally called Turks from Turk the eldest son of Japhet, but one of their princes left his dominions to his twin sons, Tatar and Mongol which gave rise to the distinction that has ever since prevailed between these two nations.[4] Historically absurd, this legend states what appears the unimpeachable ethnological
- ↑ Grote, 'Hist. of Greece;' Pausan. iii. 20; Diod. Sic. v.; Apollodor. Bibl. i. 7, 3, vi. 1, 4; Herodot, i. 171.
- ↑ Max Müller in Bunsen, vol. i. p. 338; Tabari, part i. ch. xlv., lxix.
- ↑ Sir W. Jones in 'As. Res.' vol. ii. p. 24; Vansittart, ibid. p. 67; see Campbell, in 'Journ. As. Soc. Bengal,' 1866, part ii. p. 7.
- ↑ Will. de Rubruquis in Pinkerton, vol. vii. p. 23; Gabelentz in 'Zeitschr. für die Kunde des Morgenlandes,' vol. ii. p. 73; Schmidt, 'Völker Mittel-Asien,' p. 6.
