The Greeks in Bactria and India c23.3

c23.3

The Chorasmii are first mentioned by Hecataeus¹ as living in a land, partly plain partly mountain, eastward of the Parthava; this land is not Kwarizm, where there are no real mountains and which was not eastward of the Parthava. In Herodotus also the land of the Chorasmii is partly plain partly mountain, their neighbours being Hyrcanians and Parthians (Parthava), but in his day they had lost the plain to the Persian kings;² they were subject to the Persians, and in Xerxes’ army list they are brigaded with the Parthava and with no other people.³ Herodotus then agrees with Hecataeus, except that the Chorasmii had lost the best of their land. He puts them in the 16th satrapy with the Parthava, Arians, and Sogdians; the passages cited above show that this is correct for the Chorasmii, even though ‘Sogdians’ here are impossible.⁴ Darius’ three lists of lands give no help, as the eastern lands are not in any geographical order and moreover the position of the Chorasmii differs in the Behistun and Naks-i-Rustam lists; but in the inscription relating to the building of the Apadāna at Susa Darius obtained some substance from Chorasmia which, if the translation ‘turquoise’ be correct,⁵ agrees with Hecataeus and Herodotus, for turquoise could not come from anywhere but the famous mines in Khorasan; but as there are other translations this cannot be stressed. Lastly Arrian, describing the ‘Taurus-Caucasus’ line of mountains from an unknown source (? Eratosthenes), makes it run from Armenia by the Parthians and Chorasmians to Bactria and the Hindu Kush.⁶ So far, then, the Chorasmii are a people in the Hyrcanian-Parthian satrapy, and as Darius’ land-lists name them separately they differed recognisably from the Parthava, but they were apparently Iranians⁷ and not a pre-Iranian people like the Tapuri. It would seem therefore probable that Darius I never ruled Kwarizm.