Mahratta confederacy arose in central India; Nadir Shah of Persia sacked Delhi; and Ahmed Shah made repeated invasions. A still more formidable danger, the power of the French and English, continued to increase. Amidst such confusion the authority of the Mogul empire rapidly disappeared, but it lasted as a name till the Mutiny (1857).
Indian history until Mahommedan times is marked by the unusual prominence of religious ideas, and is a record of intellectual development rather than of political events. Whatever national unity the Hindu peoples possessed came from the persistent and penetrating influence of the Brahman caste. Kings held a secondary position, and were generally regarded as adventitious tyrants, rather than as the heads and representatives of the nation. Even the great dynasties have left few traces, and it is with difficulty that the patient historian disinters the minor kingdoms from obscurity, but Indian religion, literature and art have influenced all Asia from Persia to Japan.
10. Persia.—The Persians, with whom are often coupled the Medes, appear to be pure Aryans in origin, and the earliest form of their language and religion offers remarkable analogies to the Vedas. It is reasonable to suppose that their ancestors and those of the Hindus at one time formed a single tribe somewhere in central Asia. The religion was remodelled by Zoroaster, who seems to be a historical character and to have lived about the 7th century B.C. About the same time they shook off the domination of Assyria. From the 6th century onwards their empire, then known as Median, began to expand at the expense of the surrounding states. They destroyed Nineveh in alliance with the Babylonians, and half a century later Cyrus took Babylon and founded the great dynasty of the Achaemenidae. The substitution of the Persian for the Median power, which took place with the advent of Cyrus, seems to indicate merely the pre-eminence of a particular tribe and not conquest by another race. The power of the Achaemenidae, when at its maximum, extended from the Oxus and Indus in the east to Thrace in the west and Egypt in the south, but fell before Greece, after lasting for rather more than 200 years. Darius and Xerxes were repulsed in their efforts to subjugate the Greek Peninsula, and Alexander the Great conquered their successor Darius III. in 329. But the greater part of the empire continued to exist under new masters, the Seleucids, as a Hellenistic power which was of great importance for the dissemination of Greek culture in the East. Bactria soon became independent under an Indo-Greek dynasty, and the blending of Greek, Persian, central Asiatic and Hindu influences had an important effect on the art and religion of India, and through India on all eastern Asia. About the same period (250 B.C.–A.D. 227) the Parthian empire arose under the Arsacids in Khorasan and the adjacent districts. The Parthians appear to have been a Turanian tribe who had adopted many Persian customs. They successfully withstood the Romans, and at one time their power extended from India to Syria. They succumbed to the Persian dynasty of the Sassanids, who ruled successfully for about four centuries, established the Zoroastrian faith as their state religion, and maintained a creditable conflict with the East Roman empire. But in the 7th century they were defeated by Heraclius, and shortly afterwards were annihilated before the first impetus of the Mahommedan conquest, which established Islam in Persia and the neighbouring lands, sweeping away old civilizations and boundaries. During the greater part of the Mahommedan period Persia has been ruled by troubled and short-lived dynasties. It attained a certain dignity and unity under Abbas Shah (1585–1628), but in later times was distracted and disorganized by Afghan invasions. The present dynasty, which is of Turkoman origin, dates from 1789.
The achievements of the Persians in art, literature and religion are by no means contemptible, but somewhat mixed and cosmopolitan. Owing to its position, the Persian state, when it from time to time became a conquering empire, overlapped Asia Minor, Babylon and India, and hence acted as an intermediary for transmitting art and ideas, sending for instance Greek sculpture to India and the cult of Mithra to western Europe. It is perhaps on account of this intermediate flavour that the literature of Persia—for instance the adaptations of Omar Khayyam—is more appreciated in Europe than that of other Oriental nations. On the other hand, the wars between Persia and Greece were recognized both at the time and afterwards as a struggle between Europe and Asia; the fact that both combatants were Aryans was not felt, and has no importance compared to the difference of continent.
11. Jews.—The Israelites appear to have been originally a nomadic tribe akin to the Arabs, whom they resemble in their want of political instinct and in their extraordinary religious genius. Among many remarkable qualities they have been distinguished from the earliest times by a species of commensalism, or power of living among other nations without becoming either socially merged or politically distinct. Their traditional history represents them as migrating to the borders of Egypt and living there for some centuries. After the exodus, which perhaps took place about 1300 B.C., they moved northwards again and founded a state of modest dimensions, which attained a short-lived unity under Solomon, but succumbed to internal dissensions and to the attacks of Assyria and Babylon. Shalmanezer destroyed the northern kingdom or Israel in 720, and following the practice of the times deported the majority of the population, whose traces became lost to history. There is no reason why their descendants should not be found to-day in various tribes, but the physical type commonly called Jewish is characteristic not so much of Israel as of western Asia generally. In 588 Nebuchadnezzar carried off the Jews in captivity, but after the Persian conquest of Babylonia they were allowed to return to Palestine in 538. Their institutions and ideas were probably considerably modified during this period. Babylon long continued to be a Jewish centre whence the Jews radiated to other countries. The restored state of Jerusalem lived for about six centuries in partial independence under Persian, Egyptian, Syrian and Roman rule, often showing an aggressively heroic attachment to its national customs, which brought it into collision with its suzerains, until the temple was destroyed by Titus in A.D. 70, and the country laid waste in the succeeding years. But long before this period the Jews of the Dispersion had become as important as the inhabitants of Palestine. From choice or compulsion large numbers settled in Egypt in the time of the Ptolemies, and added an appreciable element to Alexandrine culture, while gradual voluntary emigration established Jewish communities in Syria, Asia Minor, Greece and Italy, who facilitated the first spread of Christianity. In spite of chronic unpopularity and recurring persecutions they have spread over nearly all Europe. At the end of the 15th century they were expelled from Spain and many of the exiles moved eastwards. At present the largest numbers are to be found in the eastern parts of Europe. It is remarkable that though the Jews live in relative peace with Asiatics, the great majority of them prefer Europe as a residence.
12. Arabs.—The Arabs have hardly any history before the rise of Islam, although their name is mentioned by surrounding nations from the 9th century B.C. onwards. They appear to have had few states or kings, but rather tribes and chiefs. Their relationship to the Babylonians and Jews is indicated by linguistic and ethnological data. The language and writing of the Semites who, at an unknown period, settled in what is now Abyssinia, show affinities with those of South Arabia, and these Semites may have been immigrants into Africa from that region. It is plain from early Moslem literature that Persian, Christian and especially Jewish ideas had penetrated into Arabia.
With the rise of Mahommedanism occurred a sudden effervescence of the Arabs, who during some centuries threatened to impose not only their political authority but their civilization and new religion on the whole known world. They successfully invaded India and central Asia in the east, Spain and Morocco in the west. The Caliphate under the Omayyads of Damascus, and then the Abbasids of Bagdad, became the principal power in the nearer East. It had not, however, a sufficiently coherent organization for permanence; parts of it became independent,
