According to Ferrier, however, the whole of the princes who claim descent from Alexander are Tajak, who inhabited the country before it was overrun by Turki or Tartar tribes. The Tajak, now Mahomedans, regard Alexander as a prophet. The Badakhshan family are fair, but present nothing in form or feature resembling the Greek. They are not unlike the modern Persian, and there is a decided contrast between them and the Turk and Uzbak.
According to some writers, the fair complexion and regular features of the Siahposh Kafir, the variously coloured eye and shaded hair, indicate them to belong to the European family of nations, and disconnect them from the Tajak, the Hazara, the Uzbak, or the Kirghiz. It also merits consideration that the region now in habited by the Siahposh is suirounded by the countries in which the Greek dynasties ruled, and is encircled by the colonies, posts, and garrisons which they are known to have estab lished ; and by the fact of the establishment of military colonies of Macedonians at Alexandria ad Caucasum, Arigeeum, and Bazira, and of the garrisons of Nysa, Ora, Massaga, Peukelaotis, and Aornis. General Ferrier, on reaching Gazergab, found there a small encampment of persons in the Uzbak dress. but whose configura tion of features clearly indicated quite another origin. They stated that they Were the' descend ants of the Yunani (Greeks) whom Alexander the Great (Sikander Rumi) had left in these countries ; and from the replies he received to the numerous questions he put to these people, he 'WM convinced of the existence of the real descendants of the ancient Greeks in those countries. These Yunani, he says, are not isolated and dispersed here and there, but united in tribes, occupying a considerable tract of country ; nothing, however, either in their language or their habits betrays their origin. They are Mahomedans, and have the reputation of being somewhat fanatical, and are not held in much consideration by the Tartars, amongst whom they are settled ; but they are respected, for, like their ancestors, they are brave, and the consequences of their hatred are terrible to those who are the objects of it.
It is stated in the Dabistan that Callisthenes sent to his uncle a technical system of logic (naya), which was the basis of the Aristotelian system. 1Ve also observe a close affinity between Aristotle's theory of the soul as regards its organism, and the Vedanta-darsana ; and Plato's ideas as to the detachment of the soul from the world of sense, constituting the true subjective condition, bear an analogy to the Sankhya philosophy. The Greek kings as well as the Scythians adopted a language closely allied to the Sanskrit. The inscriptions for more than two centuries, during the Greek and Scythian connection, invariably contain the Greek with a vernacular translation. The coins of the Sah kings of Saurashtra have an imperfect Greek and Sanskrit inscription, while those of the Gliptas (2d to 4th century A.D.) have an emblem of the Greek and Pali, showing the gradual disap pearance of the Greek from the Indian coins. The Greeks adopted the Indian symbol of Swastika.
Greece and Asia Minorseem to have been parcelled out among a number of deities, each of whom was the paternal god of some city or race, having not only separate rites, but a form of worship widely different. Each deity had his favourite abode, and
local attachment to some valley or grove or town, to which the power and presence of the divinity espe cially belonged ; and hence in Bceotian Thrace we trace the orgies of Bacchus, in Northern Thessaly the worship of Apollo, on the Corinthian shores the rites of Neptune, in Argos the temples of Juno, and in Ephesus the worship of Diana. Though acknowledged to be divine out of their own peculiar domains, yet their worshippers were rather averse to proselytism, fearing lest, by an extended communication, the local influence of the deity should be weakened. The sacred object of Ephesian worship was carefully preserved from the period of its first formation, through the ages which intervened, till the demolition of pagan temples which followed upon the rise of Christi anity. The image consisted of a large block of wood of beech or elm, but, according to some, of ebony or vine, shaped into a likeness of the god dess, and evidencing its remote antiquity by the rudeness of its workmanship. The first statues were unshaped blocks and stones ; and hence the word column was generally used by the Greeks to denote a statue. Greeks identified Baal with Zeus, as they did Astarte with Venus. The heaven fallen idol of Ephesus was not a representa tion of the elegant huntress of classic fable, but an Egyptian hieroglyphic, a personification of nature. In this character she was pictured as a woman having a number of breasts, to denote, according to Jerome, that, as nature, she was the nurse, the supporter and life, of all living crea tures.' The Greek people are now Christians ; but until the time of Jesus Christ both Greece and Rome were worshippers of idols, of spirits of deified men, of gods residing in a higher sphere, and of demons in a hell below ; and the gods of ancient Greece and Rome have been reckoned at not fewer than thirty thousand. These gods were in their characters simply exaggerated men, with human virtues and vices on an enlarged scale. The common people of Greece continued to believe in these gods until Christianity displaced them ; but philosophers early appeared doubting their existence. Xenophanes, B.C. 534, denounced the accounts of the deities as godless fables ; but he frankly admitted that he knew not God. About a century later lived the philosopher Thies, followed by Socrates, Plato, the Pyrrhonists, the Academies, the Peripateties, Epicurus, and the Stoics, all of whom saw the absurdity of the popu lar creeds, and put forth philosophic views. Milton says of them (Paradise Regained, book iv.):— The first and wisest of them all professed To know this only, that he nothing knew ; The next to fabling fell and smooth conceits ; A third sort doubted all things, though plain sense ; Others in virtue placed felicity, But virtue joined with riches and long life ; In corporal pleasure he, and careless es,se ; The Stoic last, in philosophic pride, By him called wisdom.