Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1941, Side 140

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LE NORD
Iran has always been a gateway for cultural currents both
from the East and from the West. These currents have met,
and often fused with each other, on Iranian soil. Here elements
of Chinese and Indian civilization have met with those of the
near East, of the Classical cultures of the Mediterranean, and of
Christianity. Here arose the first organized Empire of history,
under Cyrus and Darius. Here Zarathustra preached his remark-
able doctrines; here flourished the syncretistic gnosticism of the
Manichaeans, and here Islam received a distinctive imprint of
the Iranian national character. The original meaning of “Iran”
is “the land of the Aryans” and the Iranians are indeed cousins
of the Indians, but the mental development of the two branches
has often diverged from each other, and there are few things
in the history of civilization which are more instructive than to
compare the paths they have chosen. — It was the old Persian
inscriptions which provided the key to the ancient cultures of
the Near East, and in the mountains of Iran archaic dialects are
still spoken which throw a backward light on the development
of the Indo-European languages. There is thus no lack of subjects
for Iranology to tackle.
To European scholars of earlier times, “Iranian” was
synonymous with “Persian,” and the study of Modern Persian
language and literature was only an appendix to the study of
Semitic. Already in the 16th century, however, it had been noticed
that there were many Persian words which bore a remarkable
likeness to Teutonic words with the same meaning. Biradar and
dukhtar looked very like Bruder and Tochter, and Persian
Khuda was long believed — erroneously, as we now know — to
be related to German Gott, etc. In the iyth and i8th centuries
this relationship between Persian and the Teutonic languages
was made the subject of several studies, among others by Swedish
scholars.
An entirely different approach to Iranian studies was that
of the famous Dano-Norwegian writer Holberg in the i8th
century. Holberg was especially interested in the more recent
history of Iran, and his “Heroic Histories” contain accounts of
a number of Persian and Afghan rulers. He had no pretensions
to original research, his object being to present to his fellow-
countrymen a series of portraits of remarkable men, for informa-
tion about whom he drew on the available foreign sources. To