A Concise History of Science in India c5.s9.2

c5.s9.2

The Persian language, that is *Fārsī*, the language of Fārs, one of the provinces of Persia, is ‘the lineal offspring of the language which Cyrus and Darius spoke, and in which the proclamations engraved by their commands on the rocks of Behistun… and Naqsh-i-Rustam, and the walls and columns of Persepolis, are drawn up’.b Although this ancient language of the Indo-Iranian group has suffered many vicissitudes and its continuity was broken by invasions by the Greeks and by the Arabs, its identity was never lost, being inescapably modified by the culture of the conquerors.