I need not rehearse for you again the achievements of your Achaemenid period. From the Avesta of your ancient faith came not only a hundred influences upon Judaism, Christianity, and Muhammadanism, but one of the highest moral philosophies of all time-the conception of life as struggle between light and dark-ness, truth and falsehood, good and evil, and the command to men to enlist in the fight for light, and help Ahura Mazda win that great battle whose cosmic scope and vast duration gave to the individual life a meaning, a value, and a nobility that could not be crushed by death. You have been here a kind of watershed of civilization, pouring your blood and thought and art and religion eastward and westward into the world. From that new blood came the noble Sanskrit language, so nearly kin to your own melodious speech from that fusion came the Vedas, the Upanishads, and Buddha. Sixteen centuries before Christ there went from these regions or near it-from Aryana Vaieho, or Old Iran-the migration that poured new blood into northern India. Listening to the patient and erudite exposition given by Mehdi Bahrami while he guided us through the collections in Iran’s beautiful Archaeological Museum, I felt more deeply than before the antiquity of this culture, and its success in stamping its own exquisite quality upon every alien force that has entered this land.įor thousands of years Persians have been creating beauty. Asked to comment briefly on Persia in The History of Civilization, I have very reluctantly consented, for it is incredible that I should be able to reveal to so learned an audience any new aspect of Iran’s fascinating culture and career.
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