[81] The word is perhaps a form of the Sanscrit _Mahábodhi_, “a great deified teacher.” In the Burhani Kati we find six significations attributed to the word _Abad_; these are: 1. cultivated; 2. praise and prayer; 3. exclamation of praise; 4. the name of the Kaba; 5. the name of the first Persian prophet; 6. good and beauteous. [82] See vol. I. pp. 19-20. [83] I have (see vol. I. p. 26, note 1) derived this name from the Sanscrit _yas_, “glory, honor.” In Burhan Katii it is interpreted by “what is convenient.” [84] _Loco cit._, p. 342. [85] _Journ. des Savans, février 1821_, p. 69. [86] See _Réflexions sur l’Étude des Langues orientales_, _loc. cit._, p. 51. [87] See the development of these ideas in _Erdkunde von Carl Ritter_, _VIII^{ter} Theil_; _III^{ter} Buch_, _West-asien Seiten_ 105-109, with reference to _E. Burnouf Comment. sur le Yacna_, pp. 461, 563. [88] We may be here permitted to call to mind the eras of the Chaldeans, who, according to Berosus, Epigenes, Diodorus of Sicily, Abydenus counted 490,000, 720,000, 473,000, 463,763 years. They are said to have exhibited, before Alexander’s conquest in Asia, historical annals for 150,000 years. [89] See p. lxvii. § II.――THE PESHDADIAN, KAYANIAN, ASHKANIAN, AND SASSANIAN DYNASTIES――THEIR RELIGIOUS AND POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. After the four dynasties mentioned follows the _Gilshanian_, monarchy, founded by _Gilshah_, or _Kayomers_, “the king or form of earth.”[90] We are now upon well-known ground, and hear familiar names of four races: the _Péshdadian_, _Kayanian_, _Ashkaniun_, and _Sassanian_, to which, altogether, the Dabistán attributes a period of 6024 years, differing considerably from that of other Asiatic chronologers.[91] Sir William Jones was right when he declared,[92] that “the annals of the _Péshdadi_ (or Assyrian) race must be obscure and fabulous; those of the Kayání family, or the Medes and Persians, heroic and poetic:” annals gathered from oral traditions can be but such as the great Orientalist characterises those of the mentioned dynasties. But it was in his younger years, before he had enlarged his views upon the history of mankind, that he fixed the origin of the Persian monarchy so late as 890 years before our era;[93] afterwards, in India, he refuted his former notions, and ranged more freely in the expanded fields of antiquity. I shall add that Ferdusi places the beginning of Gilshah’s reign 3529 years before Christ, an epoch which receives synchronical confirmation from our daily-increasing knowledge of the antiquity of China, India, Assyria, Egypt, and other states.