Name of Iran their country "Arya", "Iran", "Iranshahr", "Iranzamin" (Land of Iran), "Aryānām" (the equivalent of "Iran" in the proto-Iranian language) or its equivalents. The term "Arya" has been used by the Iranian people, as well as by the rulers and emperors of Iran, from the time of the Avesta. Evidently from the time of the Sassanids (226–651 CE) Iranians have called it "Iran", meaning "the land of Aryans" and "Iranshahr". In Middle Persian sources, the name "Arya" and "Iran" is used for the pre-Sassanid Iranian empires as well as the Sassanid empire. As an example, the use of the name "Iran" for
The Raksha Country and the Sea Market there exist at least three stories from the Tang dynasty that revolve around a romance between a Chinese scholar and a dragon princess, and more plays adapted from these stories, like "Liu Yi and the Dragon Princess of Dongting" (）and "A Tower of Mirage" (). Pu's contemporary, Tang Menglai (), suggests that "The Raksha Country" allows for the "satiric demystification of the strange", musing in the second-to-earliest preface of "Liaozhai" that "strangeness" is both relative as well as most pertinent to human ethics: In his 1877 translation of "The Lo-Ch'a Country and the Sea Market", Giles states his preference for