The Old Persian and Avestan evidence is confirmed by the Greek sources.[20] Herodotus,
in his Histories, remarks about the Iranian Medes that "Medes were called anciently by
all people Arians" (7.62).[20][21] In Armenian sources, the Parthians, Medes and Persians
are collectively referred to as Iranians.[30] Eudemus of Rhodes (Dubitationes et
Solutiones de Primis Principiis, in Platonis Parmenidem) refers to "the Magi and all
those of Iranian (áreion) lineage". Diodorus Siculus (1.94.2) considers Zoroaster
(Zathraustēs) as one of the Arianoi.[20]
Strabo, in his Geographica (1st century AD), mentions of the Medes,
Persians, Bactrians and Sogdians of the Iranian Plateau and Transoxiana of antiquity:[31]
The name of Ariana is further extended to a part of Persia and of Media, as also to
the Bactrians and Sogdians on the north; for these speak approximately the same
language, with but slight variations.
— Geographica, 15.8
The Bactrian (a Middle Iranian language) inscription of Kanishka (the founder of
the Kushan Empire) at Rabatak, which was discovered in 1993 in an unexcavated site in
the Afghan province of Baghlan, clearly refers to this Eastern Iranian
language as Arya.[32]
All this evidence shows that the name Arya was a collective definition, denoting
peoples who were aware of belonging to the one ethnic stock, speaking a common
language, and having a religious tradition that centered on the cult of Ohrmazd.[20]
The academic usage of the term Iranian is distinct from the state of Iran and its various
citizens (who are all Iranian by nationality), in the same way that the term Germanic
peoples is distinct from Germans. Some inhabitants of Iran are not necessarily ethnic
Iranians by virtue of not being speakers of Iranian languages.
Iranian vs. Iranic [
Some scholars such as John Perry prefer the term Iranic as the anthropological name
for the linguistic family and ethnic groups of this category (many of which exist outside
Iran), while Iranian for anything about the country Iran. He uses the same analogue as