the Medesgoes back but a few reigns in the account given
by Herodotus, the most- authentic that could be obtained
by him from the people themselves... Herodotus professes
to trace the Median kingdom from its origin, when the
people first assembled under a political government, and
chose Deioces for a king, where a king had never reigned'
before._
Far different is the account given ofsthe ancient state
of Media and Persia in the works of the oriental historians;1
which some modern writers, following Sir William Jones*
have preferred to those transmitted from the Greeks.
According to these writers, the Achæmenidæ, or . the
Kaianian dynasty, as they are termed, were the restored
descendants of an ancient royal house, which, had reigned
over Iran for centuries in great splendour and magnificences
and whose martial achievements form a celebrated eyclus
of oriental poetry. In order to form some ddea^f:, the
credit due to these, accounts, w.e-must cojosid^for a moment
the circumstances.:under which they.<àppéar to have*
i had their origin.
During the first century of the Hejira, the, ruin and
devastation which followed thé victories, of.-.Omar somn
to have swept away nearly all the fruits of intellectual
culture in Persia, and to have exterminated the priesthoods,
who had been the depositories of ancient literature. /«Sfem.e
centuries appear to have elapsed before the conquerors and
the subdued -coalesced into one people; and the natives
of Persia, metamorphosed into Moslims, began with a
new mind to cultivate their mixed language, and to embellish
it with the flowers of poetry. In the eastern court
of the Ghaznevide Sultans, where the fortune of arms
in a later period fixed the centre of power and of royal
magnificence, on the borders of Afghanistan, the genius
of Persian poetry, almost the only poetry that has existed
among Mohammedan nations since the commencement
of their era, first displayed itself. As the history of the
Arabs and of the Khalifat, from whose■ ruins the new
dynasty had just emerged, presented no inspiring themes,
the great poet of Mahmoud’s court chose for- his subject
the wars of the primeval Persians. A very slender thread
of - ancient" story, • ^decorated by the gaudy ornaments of
oriental poetry, in which no rules of artificial construction
or unities of t}me- or place, no regard to probability or
the nature of things, prevented the fancy from soaring
into the wildest .regions Of > romance, was woven by Fer-
dusi into the splendid fictions of |he Shahnameh, celebrating
the ? exploits >,@f heroes and magicians, the glories of the
golden age of Iran, when Jemsbid sat upon the royal throne
of.; Istakhar, and Rustam fought against the warriors of
Turan. A whol#o^Glif$^®f* .(pqetical fictions .came suddenly
into Iq^istence in the,' east of Persia, more' brilliant than*
the romance of Western Europe and nearly coeval with,
or not jl©ng‘-posterior to,|ttb?e ^stories of king Arthur and
his court, or of the chivalry of;Charlemagne. Certainly,
' the internal evidence of reality is as remote from the tales
of the Shahnameh,. as from those of Boyardo and Ariosto;
and it is a-Singular insfapce of perversity of judgement or
the lov^'of^paradox, thati#m£"'writ&r&-0f the present age
should gravely pronounce the oriental history of Persia,
:'fw|iich is. only fth§i-Shahnameh reduced into a still more
hhsijrd form, to be more worthy of credit than the almost
contemporary accounts.deft by the. ancient. Greeks. Only
a view zealous admirers of oriental literature have- indeed
been carried thus far, by • their, enthusiasm ; but it i« to
Hfeo observed, th a t> haostitmodern writers on the ancient
literature of Persia are contented to.1 receive, on the credit
E f Ferdusi and Mirkhond, facts which are utterly at
variance with all, the accounts left, by the classical writers
• of upper Asia; and these are facts of great importance in
the history of the East. ,
One of the facts admitted on such authority, is the
existence of a great and powerful monarchy in Iran before
the age of the Acheemenidse. According to the Mohammedan
history of PeTsia; the Kaianians, who correspond
with the Achsemeriidse of the Greeks, were, as I have said,
hut a second dynasty, who,, after a period, pf national
misfortunes ancLdecline, re-established in its pristine splendour
the throne of Iran. They were successors and remote