Central Asia; From the Aryan to the Cossack (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. EARLY HISTORY. EARLY INHABITANTS?6CYTHIANS?UNDER DARIUS AND XERXES?MOUNT r.lAr-?MARGIANA?BACTRIA?SOGDIANA?ALEXANDER'S CAMPAIGNS? 6IKUNDER ZULKARNAIN?THE GRECO-BACTRIAN KINGDOM?THE PAR- THIANS?THE SCVTHO-CHINESE DOMINATION?THE SASSANIDES?ARDE- SHEER, HOUMUZ, FEROZE, KOBAD, NOUSHEERWAN, KHOSUOO PURVEZ, YEZDIJERD ? ARAB CONQUEST ? JUSTINIAN AND DIZABULUS ? EMBASSY OP ZEMARCHCS. In Canon Rawlinson's edition of Herodotus, excellent reasons are given for regarding Armenia as the cradle of the Aryan race. At some very remote period three kindred streams of migration are supposed to have issued, perhaps contemporaneously, from their common source, and to have flowed, one to the northward across the Caucasus, a second in a westerly direction across Asia Minor into Europe, while the third turned to the south-east and stopped only at the Indus. After a time this last-mentioned branch became straitened for space, and, in the 15th century before the Christian era, divided into two floods of emigration and conquest, the one gradually spreading over Hindostan, and driving the Turanian aborigines into the mountains, while the other crossed the Hindoo Koosh and subjected or expelled the Scythian or Turanian races known as Sogdians, Bactrians, Arians (of Herat), Hyrcanians, Arachosians, and people of Ragiana and Media Atropatene, the Modern Azerbijan: here, too, the aboriginal inhabitants fleeing into the mountains and deserts. Turanian dialects prevailed from the Caucasus to the Indian Ocean, from the Mediterranean to the Ganges, and perhapsthroughout the whole of Asia. Even now they are spoken ' by all the various races which wander over the vast steppes of Northern Asia and Eastern Europe; by the hill tribes of India, and by many nations of the Eastern Archipelago.' This...