We have already said that in 1859 Oppert had abandoned the hypothesis that the language of the second column was introduced by the Scythic hordes who were expelled by Cyaxares. He recognised that it was connected with the ancient Akkadian, and could not, therefore, be a new importation, but an original native dialect. He considered that the Median name itself is Turanian and related to ‘Mada,’ the Akkadian for ‘land.’ He thought it is clear from Herodotus that the six tribes who composed the Median nation were not all of the same origin. The dominant caste were, he still held, of the same Indo-European race as the Persians, but a large part of the population were Turanians, and the language of the second column was that of the agricultural and nomadic tribes of Media, especially those of the north. He accordingly gave it the name of Medo-Scythic to distinguish it from the Aryan Median of the classical writers. This very tenable hypothesis he, however, abandoned in its turn, and advanced one much more hazardous. He relies upon a fable of Herodotus to show that the Aryans occupied the country from a much earlier period than has been commonly supposed, and did not, therefore, make their first appearance with Dejoces. Both Aryans and Turanians, he now thinks, were long settled together in the same country, and it is impossible to say which of the two were the first comers, though he inclines to give precedence to the Aryans. The various tribes were upon an equality, sometimes the Turanian and sometimes the Aryan gaining the ascendency. He considers the former were known as the Medes, a word essentially Turanian in its origin, while the others retained their proper designation of Aryans. He holds that the Median dynasty of Dejoces was Turanian. He carefully analyses the names of their kings, and he has succeeded in affording a fresh illustration of the peculiar power of philology to prove any thesis whatever, when employed by a skilful manipulator. Not many years before, he laid it down as self-evident that these same names were pure Aryan.[694] Now it becomes no less apparent that they are pure Turanian. The dynasty of Dejoces marks the ascendency of the Turanian Medes, and the language of the second column is that which was spoken by them. He accordingly drops his previous qualification of Scythic, and gives it simply the name of Median. The rise of the Persian power enabled the Aryan Medes to recover the position they had temporarily lost, and hence all the names that occur from the time of Darius clearly belong to that race. Mada became a geographical name which embraced the whole population of the country now under an Aryan aristocracy, and Herodotus was therefore fully justified in speaking of the Medes and Persians as one in speech and descent. The theory of the Turanian origin of the Median dynasty has been almost universally abandoned.[695] The attack upon it was led by the Jesuit scholar Delattre,[696] and