Page:Next-of-kin Marriages in Old Iran.djvu/120

too, no doubt, as elsewhere, the transition from female to male gentileship was attended with a period of great confusion. A similar change took place, it seems, amongst the Hindus at a very early time; and in Greece Orostes is almost inclined to insist that he was not related to his own mother. As one set of relationships took the place of another, many apparently strange connections would be formed which yet would not really be incestuous when properly understood. Language would adapt itself, as we see in fact it did, but imperfectly, to the change of the family system. The Greeks probably knew Persian very imperfectly. In this country the young civilian is continually puzzled by finding words of relationship received in a much wider sense than their usual English equivalents, and the Greeks may well have found equal difficulty in catching the precise sense of Persian terms of relationship in the tales that were told to them. Their own system would make them take some narratives as quite rational, which to us are revolting; in other cases the strangeness of the story told of a king or prince would prevent a critical examination of the terms employed. It would be welcome just in proportion as it was outrageous.

It seems likely that such considerations as these may not have been allowed due weight by European scholars in their interpretation of the few