From the ante-historical dynasties descending to later times, let us consider that, according to respectable traditions,[151] there existed friendly and hostile relations between Iran and Persia in the time of the Iranian king _Feridun_, 1729 years before our era: he reconducted with an army a fugitive Indian prince, and rendered India tributary. Two other invasions took place under the Persian monarch _Manucheher_,[152] after which the Indians recovered their liberty. Under Kai Kobad[153] flourished Rustum, who ruled, beside other countries, Sejistan and Kabul, conquered the Panj-áb, and carried war into the bosom of Arya varta. This country was also attacked by Afrasiab, a Turan prince,[154] then possessor of Persia. Ferdusi’s Shah-namah indicates expeditions of Feramurs, a son of Rustum, to India, under the reign of Kai Khosrú. We arrive at the epoch of Gushtasp, who ordered the Indus to be explored, and although he had not, as Herodotus asserts,[155] conquered the Indians, he entertained religious relations with that nation. After Alexander’s conquest of Persia, Sassan, the son of Dara, retired to Hind, where, devoted to the service of God, he died.[156] After a very obscure period of Persian history, Ardeshir, directed by a dream, brought an offspring of Sassan from Kabulistan to Istakhar. We cannot doubt that at all times a communication was open between Iran and India, where Bahram Gor married an Indian princess, and whence Nushirvan received a celebrated book and the game of chess. In our seventh century, the Muhammedan Arabians, driven by the spirit of conquest, turned their arms towards India, but stopped on the borders of the Indus. It was reserved to Muhammedan Moghuls, mixed with Persians, to establish in the midst of India an empire which, after eight hundred years, disjoined by various disorders, fell into the hands of the English. This rapid sketch is perhaps sufficient to explain any mixture, fusion, and resemblance of Persian and Indian doctrines and institutions, if even we were not disposed to seek their fountain-head in the sacred gloom of the remotest antiquity. Whatever it be, in any case, it will no more be said, that the Dabistán was written “with the intention to claim for Persia the pre-eminence over India, concerning the antiquity of religious revelations.”[157] In fact, Mohsan Fani never explicitly alludes to a comparative antiquity between the Persians and Indians, and implicitly acknowledges the anteriority of the Indian religion over the Zoroastrian, in a part of Persia at least, by relating that Gushtasp was converted from the former to the latter by Zardusht, by whom also the Indian sage, _Sankhara atcharya_, was vanquished.