This is all that I can say in respect to the Tchihar Aymaks. I can, notwithstanding all inquiries, learn nothing of their name before their last appellation. According to all probability they were reckoned among the Tadjiks, yet now they are distinct from these latter, and form the second gradation of the Iranian race in its extension to the North-East.
As the remnants of the Persian population of Central Asia are called, whom we meet in their largest numbers in the Khanat of Bokhara and in Bedakhshan. But there are, besides, many settled in the cities of Khokand, Khiva, Chinese Tartary, and Afghanistan; although here and there little deviation in their physiognomical outward developments are observable, in consequence of the different climacteric and social relations under which the Tadjiks live. And thus, for example, the Tadjiks of Bokhara and the Afghanistan towns have much more resemblance one with another than the former with the Bedakhshanis, or the confederate races of Chinese Tartary; notwithstanding, the leading features of one common type are generally observable among them. They are usually of a good middle height, broad, powerful frame of bones, and especially wide shoulder bones. Their countenance, the Iranian type of which immediately strikes the eye at first sight, is more oblong than that of the Turks; but by the wide forehead, thick cheeks, thick nose, and large mouth, we soon perceive that this most eastern branch of the Iranian family has much that is heterogeneous, that is to say, Turanian, in its stamp of countenance as well as in the formation of body, and is in nowise to be regarded as the primitive type of the Iranian race, as M. de Khanikoff imagines.
According to the statements of the Vendidad and Greek historians, it is no longer matter of doubt that the native country of the modern Tadjik was in those celebrated regions of ancient times, Bactria and Sogdiana,--the most ancient seat of Iranian civilisation, the cradle of the religion of Zoroaster, and the source of the heroic legends of Persia. We must own, that even in the most ancient times they were inhabitants of this region, for the ancient Khorassan, which stretched far into Chinese Tartary, was, as is proved by topographical nomenclature, founded and occupied by Iranian colonies. And who is there that does not perceive the continuous stream of Scythian-Turkish elements which has overflowed Central Asia, from the valleys of the Altaic Mountains, that _officina gentium_, from 700 B.C. to 400 A.D.?