The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c26.s1.11

c26.s1.11

The Parthians, a race of rude and hardy horsemen, with habits similar to those of the modern Turkomans, dwelt beyond the Persian deserts in the comparatively infertile regions to the south-east of the Caspian Sea. Their country, along with the territories of the Chorasmioi, Sogdioi, and Arioi (Khwārizm, Samarkand, and Herāt), had been included in the sixteenth satrapy of Darius; and all the tribes named, armed like the Bactrians, with cane bows and short spears, supplied contingents to the host of Xerxes.¹ In the time of Alexander and the early Seleukidae, Parthia proper and Hyrkania, adjoining the Caspian, were combined to form a satrapy. The Parthians, unlike the Bactrians, had never adopted Greek culture; and, although submissive to their Persian and Macedonian masters, retained unchanged the habits of a horde of mounted shepherds, equally skilled in the management of their steeds and the use of the bow.²