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Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

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Garshewâz became jealous of the rising power of Syâwush, and persuading his brother, Afrâsyâb, that he aimed at independence so excited his suspicions that he

summoned him to his capital and there killed him. Popular tradition points to the   N.
Darwâza Ghoryân of Bukhârâ as the spot on which he was slain ; and the site was long held sacred by the Mughân or " fire-worshipers," the followers of Zarathustra or Zoroaster, who used to assemble there every New Yèar's day at sunrise, each man bringing a cock which he sacrificed on the spot in commemoration of the murder.

The murder of Syâwush created intense excitement in Persia, and Kaikâos bend- M.P. ing to the popular demand sent his general, the celebrated Rustam, with a great

army to avenge his death. He besieged Râmetan for two years, built Râmish   N.
opposite to it, and finally driving Afrâsyâb from the country occupied it for seven years with his Persians.

Syâwush left a posthumous son by Farangis, named Kaikhusro, or Cyrus, who after M.P.

a romantic career of infancy became King of Persia, and warred with his grandfather to avenge the death of his father. His general, Rustam, after many prodigies of valour against the troops of Chin and Khutan, drove Afrâsyâb from his capital, and dividing his country amongst the Persian commanders returned to the Court of Kaikhusro. Afrâsyâb, however, again recovered his capital, and waged an indecisive warfare against the Persian Sovereign till Kaikhusro finally conquered Bukhârâ and Samarcand, and capturing Afrâsyâb slew him. His grave is said to be at the N. Ma'bad gate of the city were these events are commemorated amongst the people of Bukhârâ in the popular ditties known as "'The songs of Syâwush."

Kaikhusro now resigned his crown and government to his adopted son, Lohrasp, M.P. the son-in-law of Kaikâos, and he soon exacted homage from the rulers of Tartary and China, and thus established his authority over the country of the Afrâsyâb Kings. The Persian sovereignty thus established in Tnrân was destroyed in the person of Daarâb II., the fifth in succession from Lohrasp, by the conquest of Alexander the Great about 330 B.C. And the Greek Bactrian kingdom founded by Shim in Saghd was in its turn overthrown by the invasion from the north of the Great Yuchi.

During the period from the overthrow of the Afrâsyâb dynasty to the subsequent establishment of the Greek Bactrian empire the region to the east, known P. as Chinese Tartary, or locally as Kichik Bukhara or " Little Bukhârâ," was the theatre of contest between conflicting races—the early Caucasian possessors, and invading Moghol or Mongol hordes from the extreme north. These numerous tribes of hardy mountaineers, pressed by the barbarian hosts from the north—who in later times have become prominent on the pages of history under the names of Moghol, .Mânjhti or Mânchilr, Kalmâk or Kalmuck, Kirghiz or Kirguise, Noghay, Bashkir, Uzbak, &c.—during the long period of the Chow dynasty from 1122 to 250 B.C., when the B.F.H. Chinese Empire was divided into a fluctuating number of petty principalities—from 125 at one time to 41 at another—made repeated incursions into the more tempting territories of their eastern and southern neighbours, until in 253 B.C., Che Hwangti, the first universal monarch of the empire, built the Great Wall against their destructive inroads.

Of these northern tribes the Yuchi or Tokhar, a branch of the Tungnu or Eastern Tartar people, were the most warlike and formidable. They had been driven from their lands westward to the banks of the Ila River just anterior to 200 B.C. by the Hiungnu, or Huns, under their Chief Mothe who, in his victorious career, finally conquered all the country from the borders of China on the east to the banks of the Volga on the west. The rapid rise to power of the Hiungnu alarmed the Chinese, and in the reign of Kaou-tsu, the first Emperor of the Han dynasty, from 202 to 194 B.C., they sent an army against Mothe. But it hastily retired before the vast superiority of his numbers, and the Hiungnu for 50 years maintained their supremacy.

At this time the Yuchi, pressed by the Hiungnu, separated. The lesser division or Little Yuchi passed into Tibet, whilst the greater division or Great Yuchi—the Tây Yuchi—descended upon Kâshghar, Yârkand, and Khutan where, about 163 B.C., they displaced the original occupants called Sâkâ or S.I by the Chinese.