IRAN OR PERSIA?
SIR,—Nowadays Iran is in the news, and it is interesting to note conflicting opinions of some writers as to which is the convenient suitable name for the country. "Since the newspapers have full of Iran," says a writer in one of the periodicals, "my me has been full of Persia. Fars, from which the word 'Persia' derived, may be one province in the Shah's kingdom, but it injudicious of his Majesty to wish the English name changed." h matter of fact, it hasn't been changed. Iran was the name since ancient days and it is in use even today; and Persia is not an En name, either. The name Persia was only given by the Greek and o classical writers like Herodotus and Xenophon while writing history of their mut countries, and that is one of the reasons this name has been handed down to posterity also through the Bibk It was Iran in the illustrious days of Rustom, Cyrus, Darius down to the present day. Firdusi, Haffiz, Nizami all used the s Iran in their writings. Matthew Arnold understood well that to " Persia " in the mouth of Rustom or Guduri would be absurd
"—Rust= answered with a smile:— Go to! if Iran's chiefs are old, then I Am older; if the young are weak, the King Errs strangely;—"
A certain portion of the vast Iranian Empire in the ancient c was Pars, or, as the ancient Greeks called it, Perse. After the A, invasion, during the time of the last of our Sassanian kings, Yezdaz Shaheriar,13oo years ago, the conquering Arabs began to pronour. it Fars, as there is no P in their alphabet; and the language came be called Farsee. From the Greek " Perse " sprang the names Per and Persepolis; whereas the original name for Persepolis is Ishte-Ict which was the capital of the ancient Empire and which is nos ruins, a few miles away from Teheran, having been burnt and cs stroyed ruthlessly by Alexander the Great, about 400 B.C., in the I of Darius (Darab).
A still older name was Ajam, which is concealed in the name J4 shid and is known to the English people through Omar Khayyam . is composed of Ajam and Shid. Later on A was dropped, peril_ by usage, and now Jamshid remains. Jamshid's regime, it is was long before the Great Flood.
Iran only means the land of Aryans. Aryans were the people so
emigrated towards Ajam from Aryanum-Vajo, which in the older was perhaps the territory now occupied by modern Armenia. T Aryans called it Iran. According to Zoroastrian scriptures—Vand —" I (God) created all the good lands out of which Aryanum-1. is the best. For the past 1,300 years Iran was a "lost paradise.' Zoroastrians; but with the official revival of the lustrous name last, all the memories of the glorious past of this wonderful land cc, to life again. Whereas the word "Persia" is empty and charrnles Paddington, London, W.2.
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