On the Antiquity of the Chemical Art | Page 8

consisted in great part of paid
auxiliaries. In at least the later period of Persian power the Greeks were
preferred to all others, and in the time of Cyrus the Younger they
composed the flower of the Persian army, and were employed in
garrisoning most of the chief cities of Asia Minor.
The description given by Herodotus of the vast army and fleet prepared
for the expedition of Xerxes against the Greeks gives us an idea of the
extent of the Persian power, and of the wide range of countries and
nations over which they held sway. The review held on the Plain of
Doriscus was perhaps the greatest military spectacle ever beheld either
before or since. Herodotus enumerates no less than 56 different nations,
all of them in their national dress and arms. Besides the Persians there
were "Medes and Bactrians; Libyans in war chariots with four horses;
Arabs on camels; Sagartians, wild huntsmen who employed, instead of
the usual weapons of the time, the lasso; the nomadic tribes of Bucharia
and Mongolia; Ethiopians in lions' skins, and Indians in cotton robes;
Phoenician sailors, and Greeks from Asia Minor." All these and many
others were there assembled by the despotic power of the Persian king.

The system of government employed by the Persians, and the constant
reports and tributes sent from every province to the central court of the
king, were well calculated to bring to it, as to a focus, the curious lore
of the various nations who came in contact with or were subdued by
them.
The Persians were famed for their knowledge of astronomy and
astrology, and were said "to have anciently known the most wonderful
powers of nature, and to have therefore acquired great fame as
magicians and enchanters."
The close relation between the Persian religious traditions and those of
the Hindoos is very striking. According to Mohsan, "The best informed
Persians, who professed the faith of Hu-shang as distinguished from
that of Zeratusht, believes that the first monarch of Iran, and, indeed, of
the whole world, was Mahabad (a word apparently Sanscrit), who
divided the people into four orders,--the religious, the military, the
commercial, and the servile, to which he assigned names
unquestionably the same as those now applied to the four primary
classes of the Hindoos."
They added, "that he received from the Creator and promulgated
amongst men a sacred book in a heavenly language, to which the
Musselman author gives the Arabic title of Desatir, or Regulations, but
the original name of which he has not mentioned; and that _fourteen
Mahabads_ had appeared, or would appear, in human shapes for the
government of this world."
"Now when we know that the Hindoos believe in fourteen Menus, or
celestial persons with similar functions, the first of whom left a book of
regulations, or divine ordinances, which they hold equal to the Veda,
and the language of which they believe to be that of the gods, we can
hardly doubt that the first corruption of the purest and oldest religion
was the system of Indian theology invented by the Brahmins and
prevalent in those territories where the book of Mahabad, or Menu, is at
this moment the standard of all religious and moral duties."
Having established, then, the long and intimate nature of the Persian

intercourse with India, let us see how it bears on our more immediate
subject.
The works on medicine which are known to exist, and to have been
written in Persian, are not very many in number, but they cover a
period of time of nearly 400 years. The oldest of them is of the year
1392 A.D., and in it and its successors there are long lists of Arabian
authors whose works had been consulted, and also various Indian
works.
Greek physicians were in great request at the Persian court, and when
the daughter of the Emperor Aurelian was sent in marriage to the
Persian monarch, Sapor II., she had a number of Greek physicians in
her train. This king founded a new city called Jondisabour in honour of
his Queen, and owing to the settlement here of a number of Greek
physicians, who had, on account of religious differences, retired into
Persia, this city became celebrated as a medical school. Dr. Friend
gives the names of these as "Damascius the Syrian, Simplicius of
Cilicia, Diogenes of Phænicea, Isidorus of Gaza, and others, the most
learned and greatest philosophers of the age." It is thought by some
authors that many of the Arabian writers who belonged to the college
of Baghdad were educated at Jondisabour.
The district of Jondisabour is even yet one of the most nourishing in
Persia, and contains mines which still yield turquoise, salt, lead, copper,
antimony, iron, and marble.
During the reign of the Persian king Nooshirwan,