Media, Babylon and Persia : including a study of the Zend-Avesta or religion of Zoroaster, from the fall of Nineveh to the Persian war . Raman-Nirari III.,* andwere probably mentioned already under that kingsgrandfather, the great Shalmaneser II. We arefurther led to suppose that portions at least of theadvancing Medes must have passed through or nearthe territories of various savage and semi-barbarouspeople in the vicinity of the Caspian Sea, the regionknown to later, classical antiquity as this knowledge enables us to do more than guessat the origin of certain observances presc
Media, Babylon and Persia : including a study of the Zend-Avesta or religion of Zoroaster, from the fall of Nineveh to the Persian war . Raman-Nirari III.,* andwere probably mentioned already under that kingsgrandfather, the great Shalmaneser II. We arefurther led to suppose that portions at least of theadvancing Medes must have passed through or nearthe territories of various savage and semi-barbarouspeople in the vicinity of the Caspian Sea, the regionknown to later, classical antiquity as this knowledge enables us to do more than guessat the origin of certain observances prescribed andcertain conceptions inculcated in the Vendidad, andflowing from no-Aryan sources assuredly : the use ofthe Baresma, the treatment of the dead, the treat-ment of diseases by conjuring-spells, the exaggeratedreverence paid to the elements, the belief in num-berless hosts of fiends always on the watch topounce on men and draw them to perdition. Nowall these customs and conceptions, foreign to theAryan spiritual bent, are in perfect accordance withwhat we know of the Turanian religious system ; * See Story of Assyria, \k o KCO W a;w Q I4C> MEDIA, BABYLON, AM) JKKSIA. some of thcni indeed are extreme]} familiar to usfrom the texts and spells of Shumir and Accatl,--•ancient Chaldea,* and the presumption is very strony;that the populations of the Zagros and Caspian re-t:;ions which the Medes, in the course of some threehundred }ears, dislodged or reduced under theirrule, belonged in great part to the division of man-kind Avhich the Eranians sweepingly designated as Turan (the Yellow Race),f 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 bymora
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