The Tajak is Iranian. He is met with in largest number in the khanate of Bokhara and in Badakh shan, but many have settled in the towns of Kilo kand, Khiva, Chinese Tartary, and Afghanistan. The Tajak is of a good middle height, has a broad, powerful frame of bones, and especially wide shoulder bones ; but they diverge from the Iranian ; they have the Turanian wider forehead, thick cheeks, thick nose, and large mouth. The Tajak originally came from the sources of the Oxus in the steppe of, Pamir. The term is from Taj, a crown, the fire-worshipper's head-dress. But the Tajak does not so style himself, and regards the term as derogatory. The Tajak is covetous, un warlike, and given to agriculture and trade ; fond of literary pursuits, and polished ; and it is owing to their preponderance in Bokhara that that city was raised to the position of the headquarters of Central Asiatic civilisation, for there, from pro - Islamic times, they had continued their previous exertions in mental culture, and, notwith standing the oppressions which they have sustained from a foreign power, have civilised their con querors. Most of the celebrities in the field of religious knowledge and belles-lettres have been Tajaks, and at the present day the most conspicuous of the Mullah and Isban are Tajaks, and the chief men of the Bokhara and Khiva court are Tajak, or, as the Turks style the race, Sart. Vambery considers the Tajak and Sart identical, but he recognises that in their physiognomic peculiarities, the Sart differs greatly from the Tajak, being more slender, with a larger face, and a higher forehead ; but these changes he attributes to frequent intermarriages between Sart men and Persian slaves.
In Central Asia, the warrior, the shepherd, the priest, and the laymen, youth and old age, equally affect poetry and reciting of tales. The literature of the Muhammadans or settled nations brought from the S. is filled with exotic metaphor and illustration. In the three khanates, the Mullahs and Ishans have written much on religious sub jects, but its mystical allusions aro beyond the reach of the people. The Uzbak, the Turkoman, and Kirghiz esteem music as their highest pleasure, and often break out in song, singing soft minor airs. The Uzbak poetry on religious subjects is exotic, derived from Persian or Arabic sources. The Tartar compositions are tales, and relate to heroic deeds, similar to the romances of Europe.
Mr. Farrar (p. 70) gives B.C. 2000 as the period of the Aryans leaving their common home, but in this he differs greatly from Chevalier Bunsen and other authorities. The E. Iranian race came down the valley of Indus and into India, and Central Hindustan or Central India became the Madhya desa of the ancient Aryans—the middle region or Aryavarta, the Arya country ; and a slokam in the Sanskrit work, the Amara Kosha, defines its ancient boundaries thus : 'Ariavartaha punia bhumi hi, Mad'hiam Vmdhya Himava yoho ; ' i.e. the Aryan country, the sacred land (lies) between the Vindhya and Himalaya ; in this way indicating both the ruling race and the boundaries of the country held by them at the time that Amara Sinha wrote the Amara Kosha.
There would seem to have been two migrations into India of the Aryans, viz. the Earlier Aryans, the ancestors of the most ancient Hindus, a people acute, literary, skilled in arts, but not very warlike, and rather aristocratic than democratic in their institutions. The Later Aryans, a war like people, probably once Scythians, democratic in their institutions, and rather energetic than refined and literary. The Aryans of India have caste and marriage laws, with strict rules of inheritance resulting from their sacred form of marriage, and subject to none of the caprices of Muhammadan and similar laws. Aryan is the . private property in land, as distinguished from the tribal ; the property first of the village, then of the family, then of the individual, and a consequence is the attachment of the Aryan to his native soil. Especially Aryan is the form of what we call constitutional, as opposed to patriarchal and arbi trary, government. The Indian village or commune is a constitutional government, common to all the Aryans ; but there are two great classes of Indian Aryans, one with aristrocatic communes, and one with democratic, and recognising as equal all free citizens, to the exclusion of helots only. Among the non-Aryans the rule of the chiefs seems to be patriarchal and arbitrary. Property in the soil is tribal rather than individual. There is little local attachment to the soil.—Vambery's Sketches of Central Asia ; Bunsen, Eyypes Place in Universal History ; Reverend .1/r. Farrar ; Dr. Pritchard, in the Report of the British Association. See Aryan ; India.