of Europe. Originally the possessors of a common language, the elements of their speech are to be found in the Sanskrit, once colloquial throughout the valley of the Ganges, and in the Erse of the Irish peasant, who inhabits the wilds of Connemara. Although the face of the country has been scarred by the march of numerous invaders, and even by religious revolution, the sociological condition of these Eastern lands has scarcely changed at all during the millenniums of recorded history; and the Persian citizen or rustic of to-day is almost a counterpart of those who looked out on the progresses of Darius and Xerxes.[1] The primitive Iranians were an agricultural people, and as such showed an attachment to the cattle which composed their farm stock almost amounting to veneration. But the tiller of the soil in Iran was often exposed to harsh conditions in the effort to draw his livelihood from the ground. The land was not uniformly fertile, climatic severity not seldom hampered the labourer, and predatory bands of nomads, who raided the country from the north, were a frequent cause of disaster.[2] Life was a series of vicissitudes, circumstances of time and place were in general sharply contrasted, and the normal activities of nature seemed to the peaceful native to be the outcome of perpetual strife between spirits of good and evil. In Bactria, the north-eastern tract of
- ↑ Modern Orientalists are of opinion that the pictures of Persian life given by James Morier (Hajji Baba of Ispahan, 1824, etc.) may be applied without much loss of truth even to the age of the Achaemenians. When we reflect that till 1888 Persia had no railway, and now only eight miles, the verisimilitude of the statement will be apparent.
- ↑ See the first Fargard of the Vendidâd where the "Kine's soul," representing mankind, bewails her hard lot before the supreme being. Generally the primitive conditions of life in Iran are well set forth by Max Duncker, Hist. of Antiquity, Lond. 1881, vol. v.
