PERSIAN COUSINS

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 110, 3 February 1931, Page 3

PERSIAN COUSINS

\ Explanation of Expert INTERESTING LECTURE Sir E. Deiiison Ross. Director of the School of Oriental Studies, gave recently a lecture on Persia and the Persians. It was, as he exjilained, introductory to the great exhibition of Persian art which is to lie held in London in January and February. After touching upon- the' physical features of the country, he remarked that in order to enter Persia from the west or the north, one had to cross the mountains by passes which rise as high as 10,000 feet. Having crossed these passes, one descended on to a vast plateau, or table-land, several thousand feet, above the sea level, for Persia is really a huge upland plateau, which, except where men have settled, is as bare and barren as any desert. “I think,” he said, “this is sufficient indication of the inaccessibility of Hus ancient country, and this, among °tbei circumsti'inces, accounts for the fact that Persia has remained practically intact within her borders since the days of the Medes and Persians.” The inhabitants of Persia, he pointed out, are really our cousins—tlie Iranians, as the Persians call themselves, being a branch of the Indo-European peoples, who not so very long ago fiom the point of view of recorded history took to wandering into India, dle Asia, and Europe. He .pointed to the remarkable similarity, botn in vocabulary aiid grammar, between English and Persian, and said great bond of linguistic sympathy between these two countries is the fact that, each has reduced nominal and verbal inflections to a minimum. The Persians have carried out this process of simplicity even more thoroughly than the English, for not only, like ourselves, have they abolished genders —they have gone so far as to make no distinction between “lie” ano “she.” Link XV'ith Bible.

“Another point, of contact with ourselves is the curly history of Persia; for, thanks to our Protestant study of the Old Testament in our childhood, we are familiar with the names of the great men who founded and built, up the Persian Empire. I am sure there must be many Englishmen who have learnt the stories of Cyrus, Darius and Ahasuerus and the rest without realising that they were learning Persian history, any more than Alonsienr Jourdain realised he had been talking prose all his life. “Every Englishman is familiar with the expression, ‘the laws of the Aledes and Persians alter not? but. how few realise what the juxtaposition of these names means historically! Herodotus has a charming story regarding these Jaws which he tells with all seriousness. King Cambyses, while in Egypt, wished to contract, an alliance which, though in conformity with Egyptian practice, was contrary to that of the Persians. So he called together the Royal judges and asked them to decide according to the law whether an exception could be made. The judges reported that, they did not find any law allowing of such an alliance, but they found a law to the effect that the King of the Persians might do whatever be pleased.” Examples of Art. The Aledes, as far as we know (he continued), were the earliest Iranians to settle in what we now. call Persia.

Their splendid capital. Ekbatana, on the site occupied by Hamadan to-day, was described with much detail by Polybius and is referred to in the cuneiform inscriptions. No dated monument of the Aledian period bad, however, yet been found, though We possess examples of Aledian art, and who could guess what scientific excavators in Hamadan alone might not bring to light? In the south the Persians hud arrived more recently. The Aledes, owing to their long intercourse will) their neighbours, the Assyrians, were naturally superior to the Persians, from whom they were able to demand tribute. This position of inferiority had long been distasteful to the Persians, who, under their ruling chiefs, the Aeliaomenids, had been rapidly gaining in power. Even before the accession of Cyrus TI. they had begun to meditate rebellion, and when in B.C. 550 Cyrus attacked and defeated the Aledian king, Astyages, lie united into a single Stale these two Iranian kingdoms', and thus laid the foundation of the Persian nation.