Iranians of a certain number of
provinces between the Indus and the Euphrates. As a matter of fact, it
is more likely that the Iranians came originally from Europe, and that
they migrated from the steppes of Southern Russia into the plains of the
Kur and the Araxes by way of Mount Caucasus.^^

* The name Khnenta seems to have been Hellenised into that
of Kharindas, borne by a river which formed the frontier
between Hyrcania and Media; according to the Pehlevi version
it was really a river of Hyrcania, the Djordjan. The epithet
Vehrkana, which qualifies the name Khnenta, has been
identified by Burnouf with the Hyrcania of classical
geographers.

** Ragha is identified with Azerbaijan in the Pehlevi
version of the Vendidad, but is, more probably, the Rhago of
classical geographers, the capital of Eastern Media.

*** Chakhra seems to be identical with the country of Karkh,
at the northwestern extremity of Khorassan.

**** Varena is identified by the Pehlevi commentators with
Patishkhvargar, i.e. probably the Patusharra of the Assyrian
inscriptions.

^ Haug proposed to identify this last station with the
regions situated on the shores of the Caspian, near the
south-western corner of that sea. But, as Garrez points out,
the Pehlevi commentators prove that it must be the countries
on the Upper Tigris.

^^ Spiegel has argued that Aryanem-Vaojo is probably Arran,
the modern Kazabadagh, the mountainous district between the
Kur and the Aras, and his opinion is now gaining acceptance.
The settlement of the Iranians in Russia, and their entrance
into Asia by way of the Caucasus, have been admitted by
Rost. Classical writers reversed this order of things, and
derived the Sauromato and other Scythian tribes from Media.

It is possible that some of their hordes may have endeavoured to wedge
themselves in between the Halys and the Euphrates as far as the centre
of Asia Minor. Their presence in this quarter would explain why we
encounter Iranian personal names in the Sargonide epoch on the two spurs
of Mount Taurus, such as that of the Kushtashpi, King of Kummukh, in
the time of Tiglath-pileser III., and of the Kundashpi mentioned in the
_Annals_ of Shalmaneser III. in the ninth century B.C.*

* The name Kushtashpi has been compared with that of
Vistaspa or Gushtasp by Fr. Lenormant