The poet continues and ends the story of the great feud between the descendants of Íraj and Túr. It is set out at large and ends with the triumph of the former.

He then tells of the coming of Zarduhsht (Zoroaster), of his evangel, and of the religious wars that ensued, taking occasion in this connexion to rescue from oblivion the name of the poet Dakíkí.

He next narrates the extinction of the heroic race of Írán, and the circumstances that led to the conquests of Sikandar (Alexander the Great), with whose death the Kaiánian dynasty comes to an end.

The word Kai, from which the adjective Kaiánían is derived, is found in the Vedas under the form of Kavi, where it means a ?? or priest, and is ?? applied to the priest who, by drinking the ?? juice of the ??,*

became ??. In the ?? two very different ??. In one of ??, and particularly in the ?? as the ??, it in ?? with ?? in the other it forms a part of the names of a whole dynasty of ??, who are known collectively as the Kávyans or Kaians. This two­fold ?? has been appealed to by ?? to support his theory that ?? from a ?? among the ?? theory which has been much disputed.*

In the Sháh??áma also the word is used in two senses, as a general term for a great king or ruler, and as the distinctive title of the royal house of Kubád, the founder of the Kaiánian dynasty. This consists of ten Sháhs, who fall into two groups. The first contains three Sháhs—Kubád himself, his son Káús, and his great grandson Khusrau. With the last of these the old epic cycle of the poem comes to an end, and up to this point the Kaiánian may be regarded as the complement of the Pishdádían dynasty. We are then introduced to the second group—the Sháhs of the house of Luhrásp—Luhrásp himself, Gushtásp, Bahman, Humái, Dáráb, Dárá, and Sikandar. Luhrásp, though of Kaian race, is represented as owing his accession to the throne to the nomination of Khusrau. With the accession of Luhrásp a new epic motive is introduced— a religious one—and the scene of action is shifted to Balkh. A very noticeable feature of this part of the poem is the prevalence of the termination ‘asp,’ the Persian word for ‘horse,’ in the names of the chief characters. Thus we have Luhrásp himself, his son Gushtásp, and the great minister Jámásp, while we know from other sources that the name of the father of Zarduhsht (Zoroaster) was Pauráshasp.*

It is, however, still more remarkable to find that the reigning king of Túrán of the period is named Arjásp.*

It looks as if the wars, admittedly religious, between Gushtásp and Arjásp were not waged between the Íránians and Túránians at all, though they ??ame in time to be looked back upon as such, but were wars between the Íránians themselves due to the dissensions caused by the ?? of Zarduhsht.

Professor ??, who is concerned to ?? the Zandavasta as far as possible, is inclined to regard Luhrásp and Gushtásp as kings of an ancient dynasty flourishing at Balkh about 1000 B.C.*

This of course is opposed to the old notion which sought to identify and to ?? the chief characters and events of the Kaiánian dynasty with the accounts found in Greek authors of the so-called ??, and first ??.*

So far as ?? history is concerned, however, it may be stated ?? that there is no ?? ground between the Sháhuáma and the works of ?? Greek ?? we ??each the ?? of Sikandar Alexander the Great and even then the ?? is due to the fact that ?? derived his information from the modified version of the ?? legendary history of Alexander the Great —which he found ready to his hand among ?? other authorities. With regard to ?? the ?? is different. The two main Greek versions of the youth of Cyrus the Great may be identified in the Sháhnáma, that of Herodotus in the account of the birth and bringing up of Kai Khusrau, and that of Ctesias in the account of the early days of Ardshir Pápakán, the founder of the Sásánian dynasty.*

This does not imply, as in the case of Sikandar, that Firdausí was in any way indebted to Greek sources, but that he and the Greek writers both availed themselves of the same cycle of legend at intervals many centuries apart. The same may be said of the charming story of Gushtásp in Rúm, which will appear in a later volume of this translation. A Greek version of the love-interest in this story is preserved for us in the ?? of Athenæus,*

who quotes Chares of Mytilene—an official at the court of Alexander the Great—as his authority. Similarly in Humái, the seventeenth Sháh, we may have a reminiscence of ??.

With regard to the Kaiánian dynasty in general we may say that in no other part of the poem is the epic subject-matter so abundant or of finer quality, nor in any part of this long dynasty superior to what is to be found in the reign of Kai Káús in this volume.