Of the tribes of the Arians occupying the table-land called by their name, those which had their habitations on the northern slope of the Hindu Kush, in the valleys of the Murghab and Zarefshan, outstripped the rest in combining their forces, and uniting into a larger community. In these regions they held advanced posts over against the steppes and the migratory nations of the low plains stretching before them without limit towards the north. We had good reason to suppose that it was the repulsion of the attacks of the nomads from the steppes of the Oxus and Jaxartes, which brought these tribes, whose possessions consisted of flocks and pastures, into the habit of living in arms, and of undertaking the protection of the country. From their midst arose the monarchy intended to lead and combine the defence, the formation of which we placed about the year 1100 B.C., and having its centre at Bactria and Zariaspa. The tribes of the West, on the other hand, for four centuries after this time lived in isolation under their chieftains. The continuance of the struggles which Bactria had to undergo, even after the formation of the monarchy, is proved, not only by the proximity of the nomads of the steppes, but also by the traits of warlike feeling preserved in the Avesta; by the order of warriors which existed beside the orders of priests and husbandmen; by the chieftains and their citadels, which we found here in the fourth century B.C.; and lastly, by the circumstance, that the old shapes of the myth of the Arians, the spirits of the sky which smite the demons, are changed in the Avesta not merely into ideal patterns, but even into ancestors of the Bactrian kings, and connected with the genealogical tree of the nation. Yima, Thraetaona, Manuschithra, Airyu, Uça, and Huçrava, are changed into ancestors of the kings and the people. Like the Aryas in the Panjab, the tribes of the Airyas in Iran prayed to Mithra, to the spirits of light, the clear air, the wind, and fire, which protected them against the demons of the night and gloom, and gave increase to their pastures and flocks, and recovered the water of the sky which the demons sought to carry away. As in India, the juice of the Soma plant was the principal offering presented to the gods; as Soma was not only the king of plants, the lord of nourishment and life--so the liquor which gave strength to the gods was here also a god, Haoma. The belief in the opposition of the spirits of light and the spirits of destruction, in the power of the correct sacrifice, in the influence of the good sayings, the sacred words, was on both sides of the Indus, the starting-point of religious ideas, and in Iran it became the hinge on which they turned.