languages in general “ into three families, which have been called
the Semitic, the Arian, and the Turanian.” 461
In order to explain the grounds of objection, one must digress
for a moment upon these three terms. With the reservations of
Renan,402 and as the synonym of Syro-Arabian in its application to
languages alone, the name “ Semitic” is probably the best discoverable
; but, when applied physiologically463 to pure Mgritian families
on the Mozambique“ no less than on the Guinea coasts, its adoption
is delusive, because it extends the area of true Shemite amalgamations
with African tribes far beyond legitimate induction ; and
suggests intermixture as the cause of really-insignificant facial
resemblances between some races of negroes and the Arabians,
without taking incompatibilities of color, form, hair, and endless
dissimilar facts, into account. The law of gradation sufficiently
explains these very questionable analogies,464 upon which mono-
genists alone lay stress,—more frequently from sentiment than from
evidence.
With the word “Arian,” as employed by Prof. Max-Miiller, it
would ill-become me to dissent when selected by so great a master
in Sanscritic lore. On the contrary, science is unanimous in its
adoption, which his learned note465 amply justifies but it is with
the wide extension given to “Turanian” that my quarrel lies, What
is its origin ? What its meaning ? What its antiquity ?
In the trilinguar inscriptions of the (a . d . 223-636) Sassanian
dynasty,466 the Persian monarchs assume in Greek the titles “ Kings
Apiavuv xai Avapiavwv” — i.e., of Iranians and non-Iranians; equivalent
Oceanic Papnas, and American Indians,—such nomenclature leads to nothing hut mystification
in the study of Man. I might likewise note the vagueness of Negro, Papuan and Indian,
in ethnography.
461 Languages of the Seat of War, 1855, p . 23, 86-95:—and in B u n s e n ’s Outlines, 1854, I,
pp. 238, 342-486. In the former work, our erudite linguist actually speaks of the “ descendants
of Tur (p. 87)” ! In the latter, the biblico-Kur’anic harmonizings of Aboo ’1-Ghàzee
about “ Tur and Japheth” are accepted as historical! Compare Types of Mankind, p. 476.
462 Langue Sémitiques, 1855, p. 2.
463 N o r r i s , in Prichard’s Nat. Hist., 1855, pp. 420-7. S e r r e s , Races nègres de VAfrique
Orientale, Comptes,, Rendus de VAcad. des Sciences, XXX, June, 1850, pp. 7-8, 13. I have
seen some of M. de Froberville’s casts, and must protest against M. Serres’s Report that
they are of a type “ métis sémitiques:” nor, in view of my twenty-years’ familiarity with
Semitic races and their hybrids in Africa and Asia, — and fifteen, years of observation of
mulattoes in America — am I disposed to accept the “ ipse dixit” of an Academician, who
never had opportunity of seeing a dozen living specimens of “ métis sémitiques” in all his
life, against my own experience amongst thousands.
464 Types of Mankind, pp. 180, 186, 191, 209-10.
460 Op. cit., pp. 27-9: — Compare B e rgm a n n , Peuples Primitifs de la Race de Jafltc,
Colmar, 8vo, 1853, pp. 10-20.
466 D e S a o y , Mémoire sur diverses Antiquités de la Perse, e t s u r l e s Médailles des Rois de la
to Persians and those who Were not Persians. Nine centuries previously,
in the cuneiform inscriptions of Persepolis,467 Darius speaks
of Hariva, Aria, — calling Persia, Parsa ; but at neither period does
the word “ Tur yet figure as the equivalent for jiow-Iranian : nor
does it occur in earlier writings than Pirdoozee’s Shah-Nameh,
“Book of Kings” composed in the 10th-llth century. Conceding
that the immortal bard was versed in traditions that survived the
wreck of Persic literature after the fall of Yezdegerd, it will hardly
be claimed that “ Tur” is an historical personage instead of a mythic
personification of Scythic, i.e., non-Persian, nations.468 Oriental
writers understand, by Arians, or “ people of Irán,” the inhabitants
of lands enclosed by the Euphrates, Persian Gulf, Indus, and Gihon;
and by Tourànians, barbarians, — “ âdjem” or foreigners, like the
Cro\m, gentiles, of the Hebrews : so that Airàn and Aniràn, or Irán
and Touràn, signify only Persia contrasted with Turkestàn. “ Moul-
lah Eiroze, a learned Parsée of Bombay, explains the name of Air an
to be derived from that of Believer ; and that of Anairan, meaning
Unbelievers.” 469 The same senses may be gathered from the Zend-
Avesta and the Boun-dehesch-Pehlvi,470 wherein praises and victories
are the appanage of Perienê Veedjo, the “ Pure Irán;” curses
and defeats that of Touràn. But these Parsee codes themselves are
not of high antiquity.
If Firdoozee’s grand 'epic be consulted, which purports to define
the history of Persia from the tauro-kephalic Kaïumurts during 3600
years down to the Saracenic invasion, a poem itself also replete with
alterations by copyists,471 one perceives at once how the mythical Fe-
ridoon divided thè empire among his three sons, —“ To Sélim he
gave Rúm and Kháwer ; to Túr, Turàn ; and to Irij, Irán or Perdynasties
des Sassanides, Paris, 4to,. 1793 ; pp. 12, 31, 64, PI. Inscrip. A. 3. ; and pp. 47, 55-60,
183. “ Irán we Turàn” does occur among Persian inscriptions at Tchehil-minar; but
their date is Hedjra 826, A. D. 1423,¿M- or long subsequently to Pirdoozee.
461 Rawlinson, Behistùn, 1846, pp. i—x x x ix .
468 “ Iran aut Ilan est Persia culturi zoroastrioo addicta, orthodoxa ; Aniran s. Anilàn
sunt provincias extráñese, Sassanidarum imperio subjectæ, quæ quoque nomine Turan, i. e.
Transoxana, a scriptoribus orientalibus appellantur, quarum incolse ab ignicoiis rei hse-
retici,,Yel irreligiosi habiti sunt:” (Tychsen, De Cuneatis Inscriptionibus Persepolitanis
lucubratio, Rostock, 1798, p. 41, note).
m Ker P oster, Travels in Georgia, Persia, &o., London, 4to, 1821 ; II, p. 189:__
compare R ichardson, Dictionary, Persian, Arabie, and English, London, 1806, I, p. 313,
voce “ Turàn.”
4.0 Anqdetil du Perron, Zend-Avesta, Paris, 4to, 1771; I. Part 1, pp. 16, 20, 26; II.
préface, p. 348 seq. : — compare, for .significations of “ Airàn,” S t. Martin, Mémoires historiques
sur VArménie, Paris, 1818; I. pp. 271-8.
4.1 Ouseley, Travels, in Persia, Lôndon, 4to, 1819; I. Preface, p. Yiii., and note 5—
“ upon an average thirty different readings in every page.”