Is it true that Persians are Aryans, and that Iran means land of the Aryans?
Two thousand five hundred years before the term ‘Aryan’ became popular among nationalists across Europe and Asia, the Persian king Darius I (522–486 BC)The Great introduced himself in the rock inscription of Naqsh-i Rustam as follows:I (am) Darius the great king, king of kings, king of countries possessing all kinds of people, king of this great earth far and wide, son of Hystaspes, an Achaemenid, a Persian, the son of a Persian, an Aryan, of Aryan lineage.
The term ‘Aryan’, as used by Darius, was a self-designation that described belonging to a people, and conveyed an ethnical connotation. ‘Aryan’ and related expressions like ‘Arya’ also appeared in other ancient Persian inscriptions and texts, most importantly in the Zoroastrian Avesta .
In the eighteenth century, when European explorers developed a rising interest in Iran and ancient Persia, they soon found out that the Aryan is the self defination of Iranian since 2500 years ago until today In 1768, before the inscription of Naqsh-i Rustam was decoded, the French Orientalist Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil du Perron concluded from the writings of Herodotus and Diodor that ‘Aryan’ was the ancient name for the ancient ‘peoples of Iran’.Once introduced by Perron, the expression spread rapidly among European scholars. In Germany, for instance, the term ‘Aryan’ appeared for the first time in Johann Friedrich Kleuker’s translation of Perron’s article from French into German in 1777.
What is the Aryan race?
Aryans: name of the ancestors of the Persian elite of the Achaemenid Empire. (Not to be confused with Arians.)
The word "Aryans" has in the past been used by philologists, historians, and archaeologists to describe the speakers of the Indo-Iranian languages, one of the main branches of the Indo-European family. The scholars choose this word not without good reason, because the expression is in fact used by several ancient nations that refered to themselves as Aryans, like the early Persians (Arya-) and Indians (árya-).
The original nation must have lived in Central Asia in the fourth millennium BCE, and moved to the south at the end of the third or the beginning of the second millennium. In what is now Uzbekistan, they appear to have separated into two groups, one of them invading the Punjab and the other Iran. Perhaps, the division was caused by a religious dispute, because the words for "demon" and "deity" are linguistically related but theologically opposite (Indian: asura and deva; Persian: daiva and ahura).
As said, the expression is used in many ancient Iranian sources. For instance, when king Darius I the Great (522-486 BCE) ordered new, Persian alphabet to be developed, he called it an "Aryan script". The Sasanians created the political concept of Iran (Eranšahr) as a unity of Aryan nations; Eran and Aneran were often contrasted, the former referring to the Sasanian Empire, the latter to, e.g., the Roman Empire or the tribal areas in the northeast
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In proto indo European the name for a female pig (sow) is literally sus
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Right now, this is what I'm enjoying so much. Paul Kriwaczek takes the reader on a journey that he physically made himself. He demonstrates how the Aryans of the Steppe not only migrated down to what are now the countries of India and Iran, but he explains how related tribes such as the Sarmatians and the Alans made their into Europe and even Great Britain bringing with them the original tales of King Arthur and the idea of chivalry. I highly recommend it.
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