[605] And it has remained so ever since, the present Lur and Bakhtiari inhabitants of Susiana speaking, not the standard Neo-Persian, but dialects of the ruder Kurdish branch of the Iranian family, as if they had been Aryanised from Media, the capital of which was Ekbatana. We have here, perhaps, a clue to the origin of the Medes themselves, who were certainly the above-mentioned Mandas of Nabonidus, their capital being also the same Ekbatana. Now Sayce (_Academy_, Sept. 7, 1895, p. 189) identified the Kimmerians with these Manda nomads, whose king Tukdamme (Tugdamme) was the Lygdanis of Strabo (I. 3, 16), who led a horde of Kimmerians into Lydia and captured Sardis. We know from Esarhaddon's inscriptions that by the Assyrians these Kimmerians were called Manda, their prince Teupsa (Teispe) being described as "of the people of the Manda." An oracle given to Esar-haddon begins: "The Kimmerian in the mountains has set fire in the land of Ellip," _i.e._ the land where Ekbatana was afterwards founded, which is now shown to have already been occupied by the Kimmerian or Manda hordes. It follows that Kimmerians, Mandas, Medes with their modern Kurd and Bakhtiari representatives, were all one people, who were almost certainly of Aryan speech, if not actually of proto-Aryan stock. "The Kurds are the descendants of Aryan invaders and have maintained their type and their language for more than 3300 years," F. v. Luschan, "The Early Inhabitants of Western Asia," _Journ. Roy. Anthr. Inst._ XLI. 1911, p. 230. For a classification of Kurds see Mark Sykes, "The Kurdish Tribes of the Ottoman Empire," _Journ. Roy. Anthr. Inst._ XXXVIII. 1908, p. 451. Cf. also D. G. Hogarth, _The Nearer East_, 1902. [606] C. H. W. Johns, _Ancient Babylonia_, 1913, p. 27. [607] Cf. H. Zimmern, article "Babylonians and Assyrians," _Ency. Religion and Ethics_, 1909. [608] G. Maspero, _Dawn of Civilisation_, p. 733. [609] _Ibid._ p. 71. [610] _Ibid._ p. 752. [611] _Vorgeschichte_, etc., Book II. _passim_. [612] _Geschichte Babyloniens u. Assyriens._ [613] G. Maspero, _The Struggle of the Nations, Egypt, Syria and Assyria_, 1910. [614] It is noteworthy that _Dalai_, "Ocean," is itself a Mongol word, though _Lama_, "Priest," is Tibetan. The explanation is that in the thirteenth century a local incarnation of Buddha was raised by the then dominant Mongols to the first rank, and this title of _Dalai Lama_, the "Ocean Priest," _i.e._ the Priest of fathomless wisdom, was bestowed on one of his successors in the sixteenth century, and still retained by the High Pontiff at Lhasa. [615] _Aboriginal Siberia_, 1914, p. 13. [616] _Loc. cit._ pp. 18-21.