Page:Next-of-kin Marriages in Old Iran.djvu/52
Although Ctesias' books were generally acknowledged by his own countrymen to be teeming with incredible and extravagant fables and fictions,—according to Plutarch, with great absurdities and palpable falsity,—still we must admit that for the Greek writers who flourished after him no other historian would have been
Artaxerxes Mnemon—was married to Hûmâî, his daughter. This is a statement which is unique in the Shâh-nâmeh, nevertheless it is based, however erroneously, on a reference contained in the Bundehesh, Chap. XXXIV. 8, which admits of two different ideas on account of the occurrence therein of a word (
Avestan characters), which is employed in Pahlavi in two different meanings. The passage upon which Firdousi must have relied runs:—(Avestan characters). Here the word (Avestan characters) may mean (1) a daughter, (2) one who is coupled or joined in wedlock with another Thus the passage may be rendered (1) Hûmâî, the daughter of Vôhûman, (reigned) thirty years; (2) Hûmâî, who was coupled with (married to) Vôhûman, (reigned) thirty years. The latter rendering is the more correct interpretation, and also in harmony with the elaborate biography of Behman, written in the reign of سلطان محمود ملکشاه سلجوق (Hijra 537–551), and known as the Behman-nâmeh, which relates that the Humâî whom Vôhûman married, was not his own daughter, but the daughter of an Egyptian king named نصر جارت Nasrjârs. Here it is, likewise, said that Behman: