Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/23

 8 History of Art in ANTKiunv. On the other hand, the advantages enjoyed by clans in possession of this mountain region, whence, as from a fastness, they ruled the country around, and dashed down in headlong foray upon the helpless lowlanders, cannot well be overestimated. Difference of civilization turned to the profit of the ruder but more masculine and robust of the two nations. Where military science is not sufficiently advanced, or weapons of a nature to ensure a crushing superiority, such as were fire-arms in the hands of the Spaniards in their conquest of America, victory, in conflicts between the civilized and uncivilized, will in ihv. long run remain with the side whose men are frugal and inured to fatigues and privations, who, knowing little of the sweets of life, feel no great desire to retain it. History and Religion. From about the eighth century b.c, we find frequent allusions in Assyrian documents to tribes occupying the western zone of the Iran plateau, but at what date they arrived there and spread in the region still occupied by their descendants, it is impossible to say.* They belonged to the Aryan family, and were closely related to tribes that have peopled part of India, and have left the highest expression of their belief in the hymns known as Veda. The kinship existing between the two branches was unsuspected by anticpiity, but is as clear as daylight to modern science, which bases its conclusion on the striking resemblance observable in the languages, the primeval religious ideas and even the original rites, and physical characteristics of the Indie and Persian tribes. Whence came, and in what region did the final separation take place between the various clans of the Aryan stock which, under different names, carried from the shores of the Indian Ocean to those of the Atlantic the complicated grammatical forms of their idioms, and the manifold and superior aptitudes which have placed them at the head of the human race ? chiefly written from Oriental sources, are the following : Fr, Spiegel, Erdniscfu Alterthumskunde, 2 vols., 8vo, Engelmann, 1871-1878; F. Jusri, Geschichte der alttn FersienSf 8vo, Berlin, Grote, 1879 ; DtLAriKE, Le peuple et Cempire des Mkdes jusqu"^ la fin in ripte it Cytutare, 4to, Bruxelles, Hayez, 1883 ; and Opper i-, Le fai^ a la Uu^pu des Atides, 8vo, Paris, Matsonneuve^ 18S0. Digitized by Google
 * The pffindpd works to be consulted in respect to the ancient history of Iran,