The inhabitants of the southern cities of Iran, distressed by the Turanians’ repeated raids, sought counsel from the Iran-ban, who was the wisest and most intelligent Iranian, and the Iran-ban sent her husband, Zab, to southern Iran. Zab, who had not gone south for some time and was unaware of conditions there, saw noteworthy things when he arrived. Among them, he observed that people rode oxen just as the people of the north rode horses; and he also saw in southern Iran two kinds of crops that did not exist in the north, both of which the southerners counted as “gāv” (“cow”), because the cattle ate those two crops and thus led people toward them.
One of the two was a small grain still known in southern and eastern Iran as “gāv-dāneh” (gāvars, i.e., millet). The other was a kernel resembling wheat but slimmer and longer, which people also called “gāv”; even today that grain’s name in Iran is “gāv,” though over time—since the Arabic alphabet lacks the letter “gāf”—it has become “jav” (barley).
Today we marvel at why the ancient Iranians gave the name “cow” (gāv) to two cereals—now known as gāvars/jāvars (millet) and jav (barley). But in ancient Iran, as noted, vocabulary was few and limited, and the simple-hearted Iranians could not devise a distinct name for everything; they put the name “gāv” on many persons and things—from “gāv-mard” (Kayumarth) and “gāv-zan” (gozan, i.e., deer) to “gāv-dāneh” (cow-grain).
Zab, the Iran-ban’s husband, was delighted by what he saw in southern Iran and asked whether wheat was not sown in those parts. The people said that wheat was not planted here, but by the lakeshore whence the Turs come, wheat is sown. When Zab learned there was a lake in that region, he wished to go and see it.
