Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/426

 404 History of Art in Antiquity. sent their oblations to the king in the choicest and rarest products of their soil. Homage and free gifts to the sovereign are tra- ditional, and to this day are offered to the shah at the NorQz or vernal equinox, a festival, say the Persians, instituted by Jemshid himself in honour of the sun, which at that time regains its full vigour and vivifies nature.* Notwithstanding the implacable war Islamism has waged against a past it abhors, it hds not succeeded in stamping out of Iran the usage in question ; so that popular tradition is probably right in referring it to high antiquity, and holding that it was already in full swing when subjects and vassals paid in their annual tributes to the royal treasurers of the Achae- menidae, and strove above all to please the master by some gift out of the common, calculated to attract his momentary gaze. On this hypothesis the place occupied by the animals in the scene is easily grasped ; some were figured because of their size and marvellous good points, others because they were quaint and rare. Rams, and particularly horses, belong to the first category ; the latter are led by the hand or they draw a chariot (Fig. 194).' Historians speak in eulogistic terms of Nisaean steeds reared for the royal stables in the northern provinces.* By the side of these are curious animals, doubtless intended for the royal preserves and menageries. Such would be the zebu, or humped Indian ox (Fig. 195), the double-humped camel of Bactria (Fig. 196), and Uie wild ass, the object of the chase, respecting whose untamable savagery and marvellous swiftness the Persians recount many a tale ; then comes a lioness, perhaps tamed, with pendant udders.* Neither costume nor head-dress are uniform. Several tiaras are very distinct in shape ; and, among the tribute-bearers, some have a kind of doth round their heads, or kuffyuh, as it is now called,* w.hilst others wear the national high-pointed cap of the Sacse, or Transoxian Scyths* — a headgear which likewise appears at BehistQn, about a man labelled Karakha the Scyth (Fig. 189), ■ W itli regard to the Noruz festivities, see Gobineau, Hist, dcs P^rses^ torn. i. pp. 108, 109. ' Strabo mentions the coiflure in question as that worn by the common people in Persia : ^omn wAwvw t» Kc^oAg (XV. iii. 19). Digitized by Google
 * Our Ulostratioii is after a photograph taken from the origbal in the British
 * Herodotus, iii. io6 ; viL 40.
 * Flandin and Coste, Perse ancitnne, Plate CIV.
 * Herodotus, vii. 64.