If we ask what the ancient writers have left on record with respect to the Parthian nationality, we shall find, in the first place a general consensus that they were Scyths...It is certain that the inhabitants of this tract have belonged , from a remote antiquity, to the ethnic family generally known as Turanian...In the south they are of the Tatar or Turkish type; in the north of the Finnish or Samoeidic....The Scythian character of the Parthians , vouched for on all hands, and their derivation from Upper Asia, or the regions beyond the Oxus, furnish a strong presumption of their belonging to the Turanian family of nations. ..This presumption is strengthened by the little that we know of their language. Their names, when not distinctly Persian, which they would often naturally be from conscious and intentional imitation, are decidedly non-Arian and have certain Turanian characteristics.
