We may consider as remains of the oldest Persian language, the proper and other names of persons, places and things mentioned by the most ancient historians; now, a number of such words, which occur in the Hebrew Bible,[57] in Herodotus, and other Greek authors, are much better explained from modern Persian than from Zand and Pehlevi. In the Armenian language exist words common to the Persian, none common to the Pehlevi;[58] therefore, in very remote times Persian and not Pehlevi was the dominant idiom of the Iranian nations with whom the Armenians were in relation. More positive information is reserved for posterity, when the cuneiform inscriptions upon the monumental rocks and ruins, to be found in all directions within the greatest part of Asia, shall be deciphered by future philologers, not perhaps possessing greater talent, but better means of information from all-revealing time than those of our days, who have already successfully begun the great work――Grotefend, Rask, St. Martin, Burnouf, Lassen, etc. Let us now take a hasty review of a few principal epochs of the Persian empire, with respect to language, beginning only from that nearest the time, in which Persia was seen and described by Herodotus, Ctesias, and Xenophon, not without reference to the then existing national historical records. Khosru (Cyrus) the Persian King, placed by the Occidentals in the seventh century before our era,[59] having wrested the sceptre from the hands of the Medes, who spoke Pehlevi, naturally produced the ascendancy of his national idiom. This did not sink under his immediate successors, Lohrasp and Gushtasp. Although under the reign of the latter, who received Zardusht at his court in the sixth century B. C.,[60] the Zand might have had great currency, yet it certainly declined after Gushtasp, as his grandson Bahman, the son of Isfendiar, favored the cultivation of the Parsi.[61] This language was perfected in Baktria (the original name of which country is _Bákhter_, “East,” an old Persian word) and in the neighboring Transoxiana; there the towns _Bamian_, the Thebes of the East, and _Balkh_, built by Lohrasp and sanctified by Gushtasp’s famous Pyræum, besides _Merv_ and _Bokhára_, were great seats of Persian arts and sciences. The Parsi, thus refined, was dominant in all the royal residences, which changed according to seasons and circumstances; it was spoken at the court of the Second _Dara_ (Darius Codomanus), and sounds in his own name and that of his daughters _Sitára_ (Statira), “star,” and _Roshana_ (Roxana), “splendor,” whom the unfortunate king resigned with his empire to Alexander.[62] This conqueror, intoxicated with power, endeavored to exterminate the Mobeds, the guardians of the national religion and science; he slew many, but dispersed only the majority. From the death of Alexander (323 B. C.) to the reign of Ardeshir Babegan (Artaxerxes), the founder of the Sassanian dynasty (200 A.