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in the pages of Ctesias, who knew so much of the domestic life of the nation.1

In the case of Darius, with his Aryan tendencies, an effort seems to have been made to resist the hereditary Scythic feeling of the position due to females of the royal line,hence in his inscriptions he ignores any relationship either to Cyrus or Cambyses.

Col. i. para. 2. "And says Darius the king:-My father was Hystaspes; the father of Hystaspes was Arsames; the father of Arsames was Ariyarames; the father of Ariyarames was Teispes; the father of Teispes was Achæmenes.

Para. 3. "And says Darius the king, on that account we are called Achæmenians.

Para. 4. ". . . Eight kings of my race have held the kingdom before me, I am the ninth.

Para. 10. ". . . When I became king:-My predecessor, named Cambyses, was the son of Cyrus, and his brother, by the same father and mother, was named Bardes. Cambyses killed Bardes.

Para. 14. "And says Darius the king:-The kingdom that had been taken away from our family, that I recovered. . . . And I established the kingdom. . . both Persia and Media, and the other provinces "-Edwin Norris, J.R.A.S. Vol. XV. o.s. pp. 99, 136, 431. "The following inscription has no Persian or Babylonian version. "Darius king said: by favour of Ormazd I a tablet elsewhere (or otherwise) have made Arian, which formerly not was; .. and . . . . I made, and is written, and I sending (?) then the tablet before province all in I sent, the people knew (?).'"-Edwin Norris, J.R.A.S. Vol. XV. o.s. pp. 135, 145.

"The seven associates are enumerated by Darius in his Behistun Inscription (himself and six others), 'Intaphernes, Otanes, Gobryas,

1 The leading position of the daughters and female relations of the Kings may be traced in the numerous instances of their names appearing so ostentatiously in the lists of the army of Xerxes. They may be outlined, for the moment, as follows: "Otanes, father of Amestris, wife of Xerxes.

"Hystaspes, son of Darius and Atossa, daughter of Cyrus, commanded the Bactrians and Saca.

"The Arabians and Ethiopians who dwell above Egypt were commanded by Arsames, son of Darius and Artystone, daughter of Cyrus, whom Darius loved more than all his wives, and whose image he had made of beaten gold.

"Gobryas, son of Darius and Artystone, (commanded) the Mariandyans, . . etc. "Artochmes, who had married a daughter of Darius, commanded, ... etc. "Ariomardus, son of Darius and Parmys, daughter of Smerdis, son of Cyrus, ... etc."-Herodotus, vii. 61, et seq.

Hydarnes, Megabyzus, and Ardomanes,' all Persians, with their fathers' names carefully defined."-J.R.A.S. Vol. XV. p. 145.

But with all these pretentious proclamations we find Darius anxious to strengthen his position by marrying Atossa, and Herodotus has preserved a record of how much that marriage influenced his choice of his own successor.

"Now Darius, even before he became king, had three sons born to him by his former wife, the daughter of Gobryas; and after his accession to the throne four others by Atossa, daughter of Cyrus. Of the former, Artabazanes was the eldest. Artabazanes

urged that he was the eldest of all the sons, and that it was the established usage among all men that the eldest son should succeed to the sovereignty: on the other hand, Xerxes alleged that he was son of Atossa, daughter of Cyrus, and that it was Cyrus who had acquired freedom for the Persians. Xerxes having availed himself of the suggestion of Demaratus (of the parallel Spartan custom), Darius, acknowledging that he said what was just, declared him king. But it appears to me that even without this suggestion Xerxes would have been made king; for Atossa had unbounded influence.”—Herodotus vii. 3–4.

With reference to these recovered Cuneiform and parallel traditional data, it amounts to something beyond a curious coincidence that, if we read the 1st Chapter of Esther by the light of this attempted reduction of the power of the sex to the required Aryan level, we discover alike the independent status of the crowned queen and the national effort on the part of the seven Persians to humiliate and retain in subjection the wives of their own houses. The text runs in our Authorized Version :

"1. Now it came to pass in the days of Ahasuerus, (this is Ahasuerus which reigned, from India even unto Ethiopia, over an hundred and seven and twenty provinces :)

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"3. In the third year of his reign, he made a feast.

"9. Also Vashti the queen made a feast for the women of the royal house.

"10. On the seventh day, when the heart of the king was merry with wine, he commanded.

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"11. To bring Vashti the queen before the king with the crown royal, to shew the people and the princes her beauty: for she was fair to look on.

"12. But the queen Vashti refused to come.

The punishment decreed by the seven princes of Persia and Media, "which sat first in the kingdom," "that Vashti come no more before king Ahasuerus." 1

"20. And when the king's decree

shall be published

. . all wives shall give to their husbands honour, both to great and small.

"22. He sent letters into the king's provinces, into every province according to the writing thereof, and to every people after their language, that every man should bear rule in his own house."

That the seven Persians did not succeed in permanently changing the established prestige or defeating the claims of Queens or Queen-Mothers, we may gather from Plutarch's account of the royal household of Artaxerxes Mnemon, where he says:

"None had been admitted to the king of Persia's table but his mother and his wife; the former of which sat above him, and the latter below him."-Plutarch in Artaxerxes.

SCYTHIA.

I have taken it for granted that the number of prominent examples and admitted power of Scythian Queens formed an essential feature in the camp-life of the various tribes, but so innate was the theory of their tent dominancy that we find their successors, up to comparatively modern days, equally in possession of power and influence, especially in regal families. Tabari, in speaking of Bahrám Chobin's adventures in Túrkestán, incidentally remarks:

"Ensuite Bahrám voulut aussi rendre un service à la grande Khátún; car chez les Turks toutes les affaires se font par les femmes."-Zotenberg's Tabari, vol. ii. p. 302.

D'Ohsson's account of the position occupied by the celebrated Turkhán Khátún is more individualized:

"Le sultan Tacasch avait épousé Turcan-Khatoune, fille de Djinkeschi, khan de la tribu bayaoute, l'une des branches de la nation Cancali.

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1 See also the view, from a Semitic standpoint, in Josephus, Ant. book xi. cap. vi. sec. 1, 2.

"Turcan-Khatoune, mère de sultan ('Alá ud dín Mahammad bin Takash), était à la tête du parti formé par les généraux de sa nation, et donée d'un grand caractère, elle exerçait un pouvoir égal à celui de son fils. Lorsqu'il arrivait, dans quelque lieu de l'empire, deux ordres différents sur le même objet, l'un de Mohammed, l'autre de Turcan-Khatoune, on examinait uniquement leurs dates, et l'on exécutait celui qui était le plus récent. Mohammed n'acquérait pas une province qu'il n'en assignât un district considérable à sa mère, pour augmenter son apanage. Elle avait sept secrétaires qui étaient tous des hommes d'un mérite distingué. Son monogramme (Tougra), qu'elle écrivait de sa main sur ses ordonnances; se composait de ces mots: Protectrice du monde et de la foi, Turkan reine des femmes de l'univers; et sa devise était: Dieu seul est mon refuge. Elle prenait le titre de Khoudavend-Djihan, ou de souveraine du monde." -D'Ohsson, vol. i. p. 198.2

That this Queen's power has not been overstated may be gathered from the fact that she claimed and exercised that attribute of supreme royalty—so guarded by Eastern potentates of the right to coin money. The following is my hitherto unpublished reading of her supposedly unique gold piece, now in the Guthrie Collection at Berlin.

GOLD COIN OF TURKHÁN KHÁTÚN.

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1 "Turkan-Khatoune fut conduite par Tchinguiz-Khan en Tartarie, et mourut, en 1233, dans la ville de Caracouroum."-p. 260.

See also De Guignes, book xiv. p. 275, and xv. p. 52; Price, Muhammadan History, vol. ii. pp. 393, etc.; Thomas, Pathans,' p. 104.

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2 "Several ladies of the name of Bulughán (Zibellina') have a place in Mongol-Persian history. The one here indicated, a lady of great beauty and ability, was known as the Great Khátún Bulughan, and was (according to strange Mongol custom) successively the wife of Abaka and of his son Arghún, Mongol sovereign of Persia."-Yule, Marco Polo, vol. i. p. 32.

As in the above case we recognize the exercise of the right to coin, so in the subjoined instance we find that women's names were exceptionally entitled to a place in inscriptions, but in a subdued sense, so as to accord with progressive Semitic surrenders to the supremacy of man.

On the tower of the Atabegs at Nakhitshevan, A.H. 582, conjoined with the Muslim husband's names and titles, we read the record of Múminah Katún, in the following terms:

جلال الدنيا والدين عصمة الاسلام و المسلمين مومنه خاتون رحمها

.-M. Khanikof, Journal Asiatique, 1862, p. 114.

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FAÇADE OF THE LOMAS RISHI CAVE, IN BEHÁR.

"The frontispiece is singularly interesting, as representing in the rock the form of structural chaityas of the age1 (circa B.C. 260 or 264, or the twelfth year of Asoka)." [This example, to my understanding, seems to have been a direct imitation of the wooden substructure and heavy pointed thatch of the locality.]

1 "General Cunningham (Arch. Rep. vol. i. p. 45) and others are in the habit of calling this an Egyptian form. This it certainly is not, as no Egyptian doorway had sloping jambs. Nor can it properly be called Pelasgic. The Pelasgi did use that form, but derived it from stone constructions. The Indians only obtained it from wood."-Fergusson, foot-note, p. 109.

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