POINTS OF INTEREST IN KERMANSHAH

233

a fair business in goods which are transported through the city, a traffic which includes also numerous imports from abroad, so that I was able to stock up again with several articles of foreign manufacture which I found I needed on the journey.

I had expected to remain an extra day at Kermanshah, especially as I had met with kind hospitality at the Imperial Bank, but I changed my plans when I learned that the two other scholars whom I thought I might meet and have join in the work upon the Behistan rock had been prevented from coming. I felt, therefore, that I must return to the rock at once and accomplish as much more as I could in the limited time at my disposal before leaving for the south of Persia. Accordingly I started shortly after sunrise the next morning and galloped my horse, Rakhsh, most of the twenty-one miles back again to Bisitun. After taking a hasty meal I proceeded immediately to the height, and within an hour after noon I had again ascended the cliff and was busy at the work, which I continued that day and the next with all the intensity of application of which I was capable, and with the results that I have already described.

CHAPTER XVI

THE GREAT RUINED TEMPLE OF THE PERSIAN DIANA AT KANGAVAR

'I shall offer unto the holy Ardvi Sura Anahita, goddess of the heavenly streams, pure and undefiled, a goodly sacrifice accompanied by an oblation.' - AVESTA, Yasht 5. 9.

KANGAVAR is a small town of great antiquity, lying directly on the route between Bisitun and Hamadan, and it is the site of some important ruins which I shall describe, as they are those of a temple of the Ancient Persian Diana. On my journey

outward to Bisitun I knew that there were some ancient remains to be seen at the place, but in my anxiety to reach the inscription of Darius I had no time to visit them, and I waited till I should be able to inspect them on my return journey to Hamadan. Accordingly, I mounted my horse and started with Safar, Shahbas, and the rest of my caravan on the road to Hamadan by way of Kangavar, the same route I had traversed eight days before.

As I rode along, my attention was attracted by a large landtortoise, the first I had seen in Persia; it had been tempted out of its winter quarters by the warm spring sun and was slowly crawling along by the side of the trail. The Persians call the tortoise stony-back' (sangi-pusht), but the ancient Zoroastrians named it zairimyanura or nicknamed it zairimyāka (a word of uncertain meaning) and looked upon the tortoise as one of Ahriman's creatures and therefore to be destroyed.1 Happily in this respect the harmless creature is

1 Avesta, Vd. 13. 6; see also (kasyapa) Vd. 14. 5. Darmesteter, Le ZA. 2. 195, n. 8, gives the meaning of zairimyamura as 'qui dévore la ver

dure'; Bartholomae, Air. Wb. p. 1682, as 'des Glieder (oder Zehen) in einem festen Gehäus stecken.'

ON THE ROAD TO SAHNAH

235

no longer under a ban, and my Mohammedan attendants allowed it to pass unmolested. Sunset found me entering the hamlet of Sahnah, riding through lanes lined with rows of plum and apple trees in full blossom. I directed my caravan to proceed to the same manzil at which we had stayed on the outward journey, and hardly an hour had passed before I was asleep in the bālā-khānah, or upper room above the entrance. If I had known at the time that a tomb, fabled to be that of the legendary king of Iran, Kei Kaus, is located in a gorge back of Sahnah, I should have engaged some of the natives to take me, with torches, to visit the chamber and draw me up to inspect it, or should have waited an extra day to examine it.1 But Sahnah meant for me, on my two visits, only a halting-place, as it does for the Kerbela pilgrims whose passing to and fro is a source of revenue to its thousand or more inhabitants, so I arranged to continue my march early next morning.2

The hands of my watch indicated precisely 6.00 A.M. when I gave the signal to start, and our slow-moving procession filed out beneath the mud portal of the caravansarai and headed eastward again toward Hamadan.

In an hour and a half we reached a pretty village which I remembered noticing particularly, on the outward journey, because of its green groves and orchards, its rich grass, and abundant water. The frogs in the pools were croaking lustily, no longer in fear of the old Zoroastrian law (long since passed into oblivion) which accounted them noxious animals and regarded it as a meritorious act to kill thousands of this brood of Ahriman. The merry chorus of their voices reminded me of the Frog Hymn in the Rig Veda, as each tried to outcroak the other, but the inharmonious music was soon lost

1 Sahnah is mentioned by Ibn see Flandin and Coste, Voyage en Haukal, p. 167, Yakut, p. 305, and Perse, Moderne, pl. 75 b, and Texte, Pietro della Valle, Viaggi, 1. 440;

Travels, ed. Pinkerton, 9. 17; but none of them allude to the tomb of Kaus.

2 For a sketch of the 'Tomb of Kaus,'

p. 11.

8 Vd. 14. 5; 18. 65, 73.

4 See Rig Veda, 7. 103. 1-10.