tinuation of our conversation.) Before anything else, finish the
Iranian Chapter III. for me, a copy of which I gave you; that is to be
printed at once, as the Italic Chapter II. is printed, and needs only
revising. You will shake this at once out of your conjuring bag, won't
you?

[42.]

HIGHWOOD, _Friday, August 26, 1853_.

It strikes me, my dearest M., that we should be more correct in
christening your essay _Arian_, instead of _Iranian_. I have always used
_Iranian_ as synonymous with _Indo-Germanic_ (which expresses too much and
too little) or (which is really a senseless name) Indo-European: Arian for
the languages of Aria in the wider sense, for which Bactria may well have
been the starting-point. Don't you think we may use Arian, when you
confine yourself to Sanskrit, Zend, and Parsi?

I get more and more angry at L.'s perverseness in doubting that the
Persians are Aryans. One cannot trace foreign words in Persian, and just
these it must have carried off as a stigma, if there were any truth in the
thing. One sees it in Pehlevi. But then, what Semitic _forms_ has Persian?
The curious position of the words in the _status constructus_ is very
striking. Yet you have explained that. Where, then, are the _Aramoeisms_ in
the Achaemenian Inscriptions, which surely are Persian in the strictest
sense? Earlier the Persians may have been tormented by the Turanians, and
even subjugated; but the Babylonian rule of Shemites over Persia cannot be
of old date. About 2200 B. C., on the contrary, the Bactrians conquered
Babylon, and kept it for a long time. But would not totally different
corruptions have appeared in Persian, if they had allowed their language
to be so entirely ruined? A corruption, and then a later purification
through the Medes, sounds Quixotic. Will you not prove this point?

If you can give some chronological landmarks for the epoch of the Veda
dialect, pray do so. There is so much in Lassen, that one learns nothing.
I fancied the age of the Mahabharata and Ramayana epoch was tolerably
settled, and that thus a firm footing had been gained, as the language is
that of the same people and the same religion. If you can say anything in
the language-chapter about the genealogy of the mythological ideas it
would be delightful for you to take possession of it, without encroaching
on your own future explanations. And so good luck to you!

[43.]

HIGHWOOD, _Friday Morning_, _August 26, 1853_.

Your