Setting aside current geopolitical tensions, if one were to ask which country west of India has historically had the most intimate cultural exchanges with South Asia, the answer would indisputably be Iran. Our cultural ties date back to prehistoric times, when the ‘out of Africa’ Homo sapiens moved along the Persian coast more than 60,000 years ago, and then to South Asia and further east a few thousand years later.In subsequent millennia, there was further sharing of genetic stock, though the two populations mingled with different groups and evolved separately. More than 10,000 years ago, people related to the early Holocene population of Iran were already mixing with the earliest Indians. Their descendants saw the origins of agriculture in the northwestern part of the subcontinent and the subsequent urbanisation in the Indus Valley.The contact between Iran and India continued beyond the Indus Valley Civilisation. By around the 15th century BCE, it received a new impetus through language. During the early Vedic period, and later throughout the millennium-long medieval ages, Indian culture absorbed influences from Iran, shaping its identity beyond what easily comes to the mind of a contemporary Indian.Shared linguistic roots: Sanskrit and AvestanSanskrit — one of the few foundational languages of India — belongs to the Indo-Aryan language family, which had a clear link with the Indo-Iranian language family not just through their common ancestry in the Proto- Indo-European language(s). Even after the spread of the Proto from Sintashta southwest to Iran and Syria, and southeast towards Afghanistan and Punjab, the number of words they shared was amazingly large.The branch of the Proto spreading southwest became the Iranian languages, the one spreading towards India became the Indic. One form of Iranian — known as the Gathic – produced the Avesta, committed to writing in the 2nd century BCE but having originated nearly a thousand years earlier.Also read | Trade, language, and shared identities: How an ancient world linked India and Iran thousands of years agoVedic Sanskrit, likewise, having originated around the 15th century BCE, got committed to writing in the 3rd century BCE. Both these were carried forward primarily in oral tradition for a millennium or more. It was by bringing the two in close comparison with that of classical Western languages that linguists during the 19th century could re-construct the Proto Indo-European language and its many branches.Zoroaster or Zarathustra preached about Ahura Mazda, based on the idea of a moral order as the very foundation of all that exists. In the Vedas, the Iranian ‘Ahura’ is ‘Asura’, the moral order is ‘rta’.Story continues below this adIn ancient Iranian tradition, the entire central Asia is described as ‘Airyanem Vaejah’. The metrical verse in the second millennium BCE in Iran was known as Gatha, meaning ‘recited or sung verses’. The word is used in many Indian traditions with identical meaning. For instance, the 17th century Marathi saint Tukaram’s compositions are known as Tukaram’s Gatha.Numerous words in ancient Iranian sound almost identical to Sanskrit if one were to change the ‘h’ sound to ‘s’. For instance, the ‘seven-stanza’ text in the Gathas is Haptanghaiti, reminding us of a much later Indian text, Gatha-Saptashati. Similarly, the ‘good dominion’ Iranian Gatha is Khshathre-Gatha, immediately bringing to mind the Mahabharata concept of kshatra-dharma.What is even more remarkable is that the poetic meter in ancient Iranian poetry was very close to the Vedic meter known as Jagati, particularly the three-foot form, the Tristubh.The reason for these similarities is simple: they are descendants of a shared linguistic and musical ancestry. And it is not only in poetry and music that the shared ancestry is manifest; it is also seen in the names of gods and some key philosophical concepts.Story continues below this adFor instance, the Iranian ‘Asha’, the ultimate form of truth, is no further from the Upanishad’s ‘Isha’. Likewise, the Avestan terms ahura, daevo, havan, yasna, zaranya, naman and sena are, respectively, Vedic Sanskrit’s asura, deva, havan, yagna, hirnaya, naman, and sena. Scholars have produced lists of hundreds of such words to show the kinship between the Indo–Iranian and the Indo-Aryan languages.Also read | Why Sanskrit has strong links to European languages and what it learnt in IndiaOf course, contemporary Persian is not exactly a descendant of the Avestan language. Avestan ceased to be a spoken language and became a liturgical language in Zoroastrianism. A Western Iranian language, modern Persian evolved from its earlier stages of Old Persian and Middle Persian ( Pahlavi). Sanskrit, meanwhile, developed alongside the Prakrits and in interaction with ancient Dravidian languages.Persian influence in medieval IndiaIndia’s cultural and linguistic contact with Iran appears to have persisted long after Sanskrit ceased to be widely spoken and Avestan declined in Iran. Al-Biruni (973-1050 CE), a scientist and explorer who travelled to India and East Asia, was an Iranian who spoke Persian and Arabic. His travel accounts remain one of the trusted sources of Indian history.Al‑Biruni did not, however, leave any lasting impact on his Indian contemporaries, unlike Jalal ad‑Din Muhammad Balkhi, immortalised in history as Rumi. Born in 1207 CE in Afghanistan, Rumi underwent a transformation after meeting Shams of Tabriz in 1244 in northeastern Iran. Born out of this encounter was Sufi philosophy and poetry. The spirit of Rumi’s verse deeply influenced the newly emerging languages, the Bhashas, of the last millennium.Story continues below this adWhile the tradition of poetry known in India as ‘Bhakti literature’ had started growing in the south, it was after Sufism found hospitable ground in India that it blossomed in the north. Apart from producing many great poets in several of India’s medieval languages, the Bhakti movement posed a serious challenge to the idea of social hierarchy rooted in Varna.The Persian language had a sway across the length and breadth of India for several centuries, beginning with the Sultanates to the end of the eighteenth century. It also gave rise to several phenomenal literary artists, including Ferdowsi (940-1020), Nizami Ganjavi (1140-1203), Saadi Shirazi (1209-1291), Hafez Shirazi (1325-1390), Urfi Shirazi (1555–1591), and Abdul Qader Bedil (1642–1720).Enduring legacies in modern IndiaWe often forget that the very first book written by social reformer Raja Rammohan Roy was composed in Persian. When the East India Company’s first office started functioning in Surat, Sir Thomas Roe had to conduct business by employing Persian translators to communicate with local Indian officials.It should be noted that Persian was not ‘imposed’ by the medieval rulers. During the same centuries, Indian languages like Marathi, Bangla, and Kannada flourished. Persian, the language of Iran, had simply become the lingua franca for India.Story continues below this adFor example, we notice that the letters written by Chhatrapati Shivaji to Aurangzeb were drafted in Persian. The number of words that Persian gave to Indian languages far exceeds those later contributed by English. Words like roj (day or daily), sadak (street), aaj (today),darawaza (door), band (closed), kagaz (paper), dak (mail), bazar (market), sarkar (government), and many more are primarily Persian loan words.More importantly, Persian brought to India a new sense of colour and texture, enriching the arts, architecture, and music. What we now celebrate as the Indian musical tradition was shaped by Amir Khusrau, who, though not from Iran, conducted most of his artistic and intellectual activities in Persian. Khusrau can rightfully be regarded as the person whose contributions laid the foundation for many of India’s enduring musical traditions.The profusion of Persian terminology among India’s music community stands as a witness to how deeply India owes its music to Persian, a language born in Iran. In fact, the British, wary of the Persian influence on Indian cultural life, passed an Act to replace Persian with English as the language of official and intellectual transactions.Also read | How Shi’ism in India evolved differently from the rest of the Shia Muslim worldIt was in recognition of these links, and out of a deep respect for the Sufi poetry and music, that Rabindranath Tagore paid a visit to Bushehr, Shiraz and Tehran in Iran in 1932. He was welcomed and honoured there as one of their own.Story continues below this adSimilarly, Jawaharlal Nehru, during his visit to Iran in 1959, recounted the deep cultural links between the two countries.Today, as Iran faces attacks from Israel and the United States, I, as an Indian, think of how an ancient civilization related so closely to ours is being wiped out by relatively new countries that have little understanding of why and how civilisations emerge, thrive, and survive—not only through weaponry and military might, but also through music, poetry, spirituality and deep rooted resilience.Israel and America may succeed in destroying a civilisation, but will they ever succeed in creating one?