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The 17th satrapy seems to correspond to Beloochistan. H. does not use the later name Gedrosia, for which cf. Arr. Anab. vi. 22 seq. On the coast of this country still lives a primitive race which is dark brown (the Brahvî, but v. i.); so too, on the south-east corner of Arabia, Curzon speaks of the scanty survivors of a ‘dark aboriginal race living in the rocks by C. Mussandum’ (ii. 447). This race had of course no connexion but that of colour with the Ethiopians of Africa (for whom cf. iii. 17. 1 n. and vii. 70. 1). Lassen (I. A. i. 390) thinks the dark race was perhaps once widely spread in Asia; he quotes the Mahâbhârata for ‘black dwellers in the Himalaya’. But he denies that it survives in Beloochistan. The Paricanii are otherwise unknown, but may well be the inhabitants of the interior. Their name is explained by some as = ‘worshippers of demons’, by others (e. g. Holdich, p. 34) as the Sansk. ‘Parvaka’ (= mountaineers). H. couples them in vii. 68 with the Utians and Mycans, and the Ethiopians with the Indians (vii. 70. 1).

The 18th satrapy seems to have consisted of the southern and eastern parts of the mountainous region which, beginning with the basin of the upper Aras, stretches west to the upper Euphrates and south to the upper Tigris. For the Matieni cf. i. 72. 2 n.

The Saspeires lay north of Matiene; they occupy a ‘small’ district between Media and Colchis (i. 104; cf. iv. 37). Rawlinson, iv. 223, identifies their name with the ‘Iberians’, but this is very doubtful.

The Alarodii are only mentioned here and in vii. 79, where they are again joined with the Saspeires and armed like the Colchians. Sir H. Rawlinson (ib. iv. 245 seq.) sees in their name a survival of the ‘Urarda’ (cf. Ararat) of the Inscriptions; this is generally accepted (Maspero, iii. 55); they were a Semitic race who preceded the Aryan Armenians in the mountain region north-west of the Assyrian plain (round Lake Van), and who fought the Assyrians at first for supremacy, then for independence. After H. they disappear, being absorbed by the Armenians.

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