Note 450 — Chapter I

In the most recent times it has been maintained that the Medes were of Turkish-Tatar (Altaic) family, but this view rests simply on the assumption that the inscriptions of the second class in the inscriptions of the Achæmenids must have been written in the language of the Medes. This hypothesis contradicts everything that has come down to us of Median names and works, and the close relationship between the Medes and Persians. Whether the Arians, on immigrating into Media, found there Turkish-Tatar tribes, overpowered, expelled or subjugated them, is another question. If this were the case, the fragments of the population could hardly have exercised any influence worth mentioning on the Arian Medes.