Representations of the Persian Acinaces abound in the sculptures of Chehel Munar (the Palace of the Forty Columns) at Persepolis. Apparently there are two kinds. Porter’s[695] illustration (Plate 37) shows a handle like the modern weapon sheathed and slung to the right side: Ammianus Marcellinus (xiv. 4) and all classics insist upon this unswordsmanlike peculiarity.[696] The other (Plate 41), worn by a robed Persian, and generally carried in the front-knots of the belt, has a crutch-handle and wavy blade, like the Malay Krís (crease). In other places (Plates 53 and 54) a human figure stabs the roaring monster in the belly with a common ‘Khanjar’-dagger. The traveller considers the stout little weapon with broad blade and ferruled sheath apparently tied to the right thigh as the Persian Sword of that age, which the classics describe as very short. The lineal descendant of this weapon, now obsolete in Persia, is the Afghan Charay, a congener of the Egyptian flesh-knife Sword. According to Quintus Curtius: ‘The Sword-belt of Darius was of gold, and from it was suspended his scymitar, the scabbard of which was composed of one entire pearl.’ The practice of inlaying blades and hilts, still popular in Persia, may explain Herodotus (ix. 80), that amongst the spoils taken at Platæa by the Greeks ‘there were acinaces with golden ornaments.’ That of Mardonius was long kept as a trophy in the temple of Athene-Parthenos in the Athenian Acropolis. On the other hand, as was elsewhere done, blades of gold were given _honoris causâ_. Hence in the ‘Iliad’ (xviii. 597) we see Hephæstus making youths with golden cutlasses upon Achilles’ shield. According to Xenophon the royal gift of Persia was a golden scymitar, a Nisæan horse with golden bridle, and other battle-gear. Herodotus (viii. 120) makes Xerxes present the Abderites with a golden scymitar and a tiara, Diana is girt with a golden falchion (Herod. viii. 77). The golden blade is not unknown to more modern days. In the ‘Chronicles of Dalboquerque’ (Hakluyt, vol. ii. p. 204) two pages stand behind the King of Cananor, one with a Sword of gold and the other with a scymitar of gold. The weapons are distinguished from the ‘Swords adorned with gold and silver’ (vol. i. 117). The King of Siam also sent to Dom Manoel of Portugal ‘a crown and Sword of gold’ (vol. iii. 154). Cuzco supplied a unique gold celt. [Illustration: FIG. 231.—ACINACES OF PERSEPOLIS.] [Illustration: FIG. 232.—ACINACES OF MITHRAS GROUP.] The influence of the great Babylonio-Assyrian centre extended Egyptian art and science to farthest Asia. From Iran we pass, with the course of civilisation, eastward to India. Here the Hindú proper did not succeed in establishing himself amongst the original Turanian possessors of Hindustan, or the upper country, before the Eighteenth Egyptian Dynasty.[697] The South was and is still essentially Turanian—witness Malabar and its ‘nepotism.’ [Heading: THE SWORD IN INDIA.]