Note (31), page 34.

Our author has here the word Tadjik, a name by which he and the other Armenian historians of the middle ages promiscuously call the native Persians, the Gasnevides and the other Turks. The origin and the proper meaning of this word will perhaps never be ascertained; it has something of the vagueness of the ancient denomination of Scythia and Scythians. It is certain that, in the works which go under the name of Zoroaster, and in the Desatir, the Arabs are called Tazi, and it is likewise certain that the language of this people, which is now called Tadjik, is pure Persian; the Bochars are, in their own country, called Tadjiks. How and why the ancient Persian name of the Arabs should be given to the Persians themselves it is impossible to conceive. Elphinstone (Account of the Kingdom of Câbul, London 1819, vol. i. 492) thinks that the Arabs and Persians were, in the course of time, blended together into one nation, and became the ancestors of the Tadjiks; but why should Armenians, Arabs, Turks and Afghauns, call those mestizes with a name of the Pehlvi language, which means originally an Arab? It seems rather that Tazi and Tadjik are two different words; Tazi is the Persian name for Arab, and Tadjik the name of a particular race of people, of whom the Persians are only a tribe. I do not know on what authority Meninski (see Klaproth’s Asia, Polygl. 243) relies, but it is certain that the Chinese distinguish between the Ta she (Arabs) and the Ta yue (the Tadjiks), of whom, as they say, the Po she (Persians) are only a tribe. The Chinese had no communication with the Arabs before Mahomed, but they heard of them by their intercourse with the Sassanides, and call them, therefore by the Persian name Ta she (9685, 9247), but the Po se (8605, 9669) are only, as they say, a tribe like some other tribes, who formed particular kingdoms of the Ta yue (9685, 12490), or Tadjiks. They have received the name Po sse from their first king, Po sse na; but the Chinese had no direct communication with Persia before Kobad or Cabades, Kiu ho to (6063, 3984, 10260), as they spell the name, in their imperfect idiom, who became known to them by his flight and misfortunes. (See Matuanlin, l. c. Book 338, p. i, and following; Book 339, p. 6 a., p. 8 a., and the history of the Ta she or Arabs, p. 18, b. l. c.) But I am in doubt of Matuanlin, who makes the Masdeizans, followers of Buddha; he calls the Ateshgahs Fo sse (2539, 9659), Temples of Buddha, (l. c. p. 6, b. l. 5.) The popular pronunciation of Ta yue is, in many Chinese dialects, Tai yuet. I myself have often heard these characters so pronounced in Canton, and it was then as nearly as possible the ancient name of the Germans, Teut, the brethren of the Persians; the Chinese know also that the Ye ta (12001, 9700), Getae, Gothi, belong to the race of the Tayuet (Matuanlin, Book 338, p. 11), &c. But what sober historian would draw conclusions from a similarity of names? Perhaps a close inquiry may carry us to some leading facts, by which we may be able to connect the information of the east and the west. It would certainly be strange to begin the history of the Germans with the extracts taken out of the Han and Tang shoo. When I say the history of the Germans, I mean the history of those remains of the Teuts who remained in Asia, for Germany was certainly peopled long before the Chinese got any information of the Ta yue. These races became only known in China under the great dynasty of Han. A keen etymologist may, perhaps, find the modern Tadjiks in the ancient Daai or Daae; he may suppose that the Persians, like the Parthians, were only a branch of the Scythians or Tatars, and with confidence adduce a passage of Strabo, where it is said that the greater part of the Scythians are known by the name of Daai, Οἱ μὲν δὴ πλείους τῶν Σκυθῶν Δάαι προσαγορεύονται. (Strabo, Geogr. xi. 8, vol. ii. 430, ed. Tauchn.) I will only add, that the same Strabo thinks, that the Daci (Δάκοι) may in former times have been called Daï (Δάοι), but he distinguishes them from the Daae (Δάαι). (Vol. ii. 36.)