Chapter IX: THE NORTHERN MONGOLS (continued) (2)

To the Ugrian branch, rudest and most savage of all the Finnish peoples, belong these now moribund Volga groups, as well as the fierce Bulgar and Magyar hordes, if not also their precursors, the _Jazyges_ and _Rhoxolani_, who in the second century A.D. swarmed into Pannonia from the Russian steppe, and in company with the Germanic Quadi and Marcomanni twice (168 and 172) advanced to the walls of Aquileia, and were twice arrested by the legions of Marcus Aurelius and Verus. Of the once numerous Jazyges, whom Pliny calls Sarmates, there were several branches--_Maeotae_, Metanastae, _Basilii_ ("Royal")--who were first reduced by the Goths spreading from the Baltic to the Euxine and Lower Danube, and then overwhelmed with the Dacians, Getae, Bastarnae, and a hundred other ancient peoples in the great deluge of the Hunnish invasion.

From the same South Russian steppe--the plains watered by the Lower Don and Dnieper--came the _Bulgars_, first in association with the Huns, from whom they are scarcely distinguished by the early Byzantine writers, and then as a separate people, who, after throwing off the yoke of the Avars (635 A.D.), withdrew before the pressure of the Khazars westwards to the Lower Danube (678). But their records go much farther back than these dates, and while philologists and archaeologists are able to trace their wanderings step by step north to the Middle Volga and the Ural Mountains, authentic Armenian documents carry their history back to the second century B.C. Under the Arsacides numerous bands of Bulgars, driven from their homes about the Kama confluence by civil strife, settled on the banks of the Aras, and since that time (150-114 B.C.) the Bulgars were known to the Armenians as a great nation dwelling away to the north far beyond the Caucasus.

Originally the name, which afterwards acquired such an odious notoriety amongst the European peoples, may have been more geographical than ethnical, implying not so much a particular nation as all the inhabitants of the _Bulga_ (Volga) between the Kama and the Caspian. But at that time this section of the great river seems to have been mainly held by more or less homogeneous branches of the Finno-Ugrian family, and palethnologists have now shown that to this connection beyond all question belonged in physical appearance, speech, and usages those bands known as Bulgars, who formed permanent settlements in Moesia south of the Lower Danube towards the close of the seventh century[728]. Here "these bold and dexterous archers, who drank the milk and feasted on the flesh of their fleet and indefatigable horses; whose flocks and herds followed, or rather guided, the motions of their roving camps; to whose inroads no country was remote or impervious, and who were practised in flight, though incapable of fear[729]," established a powerful state, which maintained its independence for over seven hundred years (678-1392).

Acting at first in association with the Slavs, and then assuming "a vague dominion" over their restless Sarmatian allies, the Bulgars spread the terror of their hated name throughout the Balkan lands, and were prevented only by the skill of Belisarius from anticipating their Turki kinsmen in the overthrow of the Byzantine Empire itself. Procopius and Jornandes have left terrible pictures of the ferocity, debasement, and utter savagery, both of the Bulgars and of their Slav confederates during the period preceding the foundation of the Bulgar dynasty in Moesia. Wherever the Slavs (Antes, Slavini) passed, no soul was left alive; Thrace and Illyria were strewn with unburied corpses; captives were shut up with horse and cattle in stables, and all consumed together, while the brutal hordes danced to the music of their shrieks and groans. Indescribable was the horror inspired by the Bulgars, who killed for killing's sake, wasted for sheer love of destruction, swept away all works of the human hand, burnt, razed cities, left in their wake nought but a picture of their own cheerless native steppes. Of all the barbarians that harried the Empire, the Bulgars have left the most detested name, although closely rivalled by the Slavs.

To the ethnologist the later history of the Bulgarians is of exceptional interest. They entered the Danubian lands in the seventh century as typical Ugro-Finns, repulsive alike in physical appearance and mental characters. Their dreaded chief, Krum, celebrated his triumphs with sanguinary rites, and his followers yielded in no respects to the Huns themselves in coarseness and brutality. Yet an almost complete moral if not physical transformation had been effected by the middle of the ninth century, when the Bulgars were evangelised by Byzantine missionaries, exchanged their rude Ugrian speech for a Slavonic tongue, the so-called "Church Slav," or even "Old Bulgarian," and became henceforth merged in the surrounding Slav populations. The national name "Bulgar" alone survives, as that of a somewhat peaceful southern "Slav" people, who in our time again acquired the political independence of which they had been deprived by Bajazet I. in 1392.

Nor did this name disappear from the Volga lands after the great migration of Bulgar hordes to the Don basin during the third and fourth centuries A.D. On the contrary, here arose another and a greater Bulgar empire, which was known to the Byzantines of the tenth century as "Black Bulgaria," and later to the Arabs and Western peoples as "Great Bulgaria," in contradistinction to the "Little Bulgaria" south of the Danube[730]. It fell to pieces during the later "Tatar" wars, and nothing now remains of the Volga Bulgars, except the Volga itself from which they were named.

In the same region, but farther north[731], lay also a "Great Hungary," the original seat of those other Ugrian Finns known as Hungarians and Magyars, who followed later in the track of the Bulgars, and like them formed permanent settlements in the Danube basin, but higher up in Pannonia, the present kingdom of Hungary. Here, however, the Magyars had been preceded by the kindred (or at least distantly connected) Avars, the dominant people in the Middle Danube lands for a great part of the period between the departure of the Huns and the arrival of the Magyars[732]. Rolling up like a storm cloud from the depths of Siberia to the Volga and Euxine, sweeping everything before them, reducing Kutigurs, Utigurs, Bulgars, and Slavs, the Avars presented themselves in the sixth century on the frontiers of the empire as the unwelcome allies of Justinian. Arrested at the Elbe by the Austrasian Franks, and hard pressed by the Gepidae, they withdrew to the Lower Danube under the ferocious Khagan Bayan, who, before his overthrow by the Emperor Mauritius and death in 602, had crossed the Danube, captured Sirmium, and reduced the whole region bordering on the Byzantine empire. Later the still powerful Avars with their Slav followers, "the Avar viper and the Slav locust," overran the Balkan lands, and in 625 nearly captured Constantinople. They were at last crushed by Pepin, king of Italy, who reoccupied Sirmium in 799, and brought back such treasure that the value of gold was for a time enormously reduced.

Then came the opportunity of the _Hunagars_ (Hungarians), who, after advancing from the Urals to the Volga (550 A.D.), had reached the Danube about 886. Here they were invited to the aid of the Germanic king Arnulf, threatened by a formidable coalition of the western Slavs under the redoubtable Zventibolg, a nominal Christian who would enter the church on horseback followed by his wild retainers, and threaten the priest at the altar with the lash. In the upland Transylvanian valleys the Hunagars had been joined by eight of the derelict Khazar tribes, amongst whom were the _Megers_ or _Mogers_, whose name under the form of _Magyar_ was eventually extended to the united Hunagar-Khazar nation. Under their renowned king Arpad, son of Almuth, they first overthrew Zventibolg, and then with the help of the surviving Avars reduced the surrounding Slav populations. Thus towards the close of the ninth century was founded in Pannonia the present kingdom of Hungary, in which were absorbed all the kindred Mongol and Finno-Turki elements that still survived from the two previous Mongolo-Turki empires, established in the same region by the Huns under Attila (430-453), and by the Avars under Khagan Bayan (562-602).

After reducing the whole of Pannonia and ravaging Carinthia and Friuli, the Hunagars raided Bavaria and Italy (899-900), imposed a tribute on the feeble successor of Arnulf (910), and pushed their plundering expeditions as far west as Alsace, Lorraine, and Burgundy, everywhere committing atrocities that recalled the memory of Attila's savage hordes. Trained riders, archers and javelin-throwers from infancy, they advanced to the attack in numerous companies following hard upon each other, avoiding close quarters, but wearing out their antagonists by the persistence of their onslaughts. They were the scourge and terror of Europe, and were publicly proclaimed by the Emperor Otto I. (955) the enemies of God and humanity.

This period of lawlessness and savagery was closed by the conversion of Saint Stephen I. (997-1038), after which the Magyars became gradually assimilated in type and general culture, but not in speech, to the western nations[733]. Their harmonious and highly cultivated language still remains a typical member of the Ural-Altaic family, reflecting in its somewhat composite vocabulary the various Finno-Ugric and Turki elements (Ugrians and Permians from the Urals, Volga Finns, Turki Avars and Khazars), of which the substratum of the Magyar nation is constituted[734].

"The modern Magyars," says Peisker, "are one of the most varied race-mixtures on the face of the earth, and one of the two chief Magyar types of today--traced to the Arpad era [end of ninth century] by tomb-findings--is dolichocephalic with a narrow visage. There we have before us Altaian origin, Ugrian speech and Indo-European type combined[735]."

Politically the Magyars continue to occupy a position of vital importance in Eastern Europe, wedged in between the northern and southern Slav peoples, and thus presenting an insurmountable obstacle to the aspirations of the Panslavist dreamers. The fiery and vigorous Magyar nationality, a compact body of about 8,000,000 (1898), holds the boundless plains watered by the Middle Danube and the Theiss, and thus permanently separates the Chechs, Moravians, and Slovaks of Bohemia and the northern Carpathians from their kinsmen, the Yugo-Slavs ("Southern Slavs") of Servia and the other now Slavonised Balkan lands. These Yugo-Slavs are in their turn severed by the Rumanians of Neo-Latin speech from their northern and eastern brethren, the Ruthenians, Poles, Great and Little Russians. Had the Magyars and Rumanians adopted any of the neighbouring Slav idioms, it is safe to say that, like the Ugrian Bulgarians, they must have long ago been absorbed in the surrounding Panslav world, with consequences to the central European nations which it would not be difficult to forecast. Here we have a striking illustration of the influence of language in developing and preserving the national sentiment, analogous in many respects to that now witnessed on a larger scale amongst the English-speaking populations on both sides of the Atlantic and in the Austral lands. From this point of view the ethnologist may unreservedly accept Ehrenreich's trenchant remark that "the nation stands and falls with its speech[736]."

FOOTNOTES:

[671] _Natural History of Man_, 1865 ed. pp. 185-6.

[672] _Science of Language_, 1879, II. p. 190.

[673] _The Heart of a Continent,_ 1896, p. 118.

[674] O. Peschel, _Races of Man,_ 1894, p. 380.

[675] See Ch. de Ujfalvy, _Les Aryens_, etc., 1896, p. 25. Reference should perhaps be also made to E. H. Parker's theory (_Academy_, Dec. 21, 1895) that the Turki cradle lay, not in the Altai or Altun-dagh ("Golden Mountains") of North Mongolia, but 1000 miles farther south in the "Golden Mountains" (_Kin-shan_) of the present Chinese province of Kansu. But the evidence relied on is not satisfactory, and indeed in one or two important instances is not evidence at all.

[676] J. B. Bury, _English Historical Rev.,_ July, 1897.

[677] _L'Anthropologie,_ VI. No. 3.

[678] T. Peisker, "The Asiatic Background," _Cambridge Medieval History,_ Vol. I. 1911, p. 354.

[679] _Academy,_ Dec. 21, 1895, p. 548.

[680] "Budini Gelonion urbem ligneam habitant; juxta Thyssagetae _Turcaeque_ vastas silvas occupant, alunturque venando" (I. 19, p. 27 of Leipzig ed. 1880).

[681] "Dein Tanain amnem gemino ore influentem incolunt Sarmatae ... Tindari, Thussagetae, _Tyrcae_, usque ad solitudines saltuosis convallibus asperas, etc." (Bk. VIII. 7, Vol. I. p. 234 of Berlin ed. 1886). The variants _Turcae_ and _Tyrcae_ are noteworthy, as indicating the same vacillating sound of the root vowel (_u_ and _y = ue_) that still persists.

[682] Not only was the usurper Nadir Shah a Turkoman of the Afshar tribe but the present reigning family belongs to the rival clan of Qajar Turkomans long settled in Khorasan, the home of their Parthian forefathers.

[683] Of 59 Turkomans the hair was generally a dark brown; the eyes brown (45) and light grey (14); face orthognathous (52) and prognathous (7); eyes mostly _not_ oblique; cephalic index 68.69 to 81.76, mean 75.64; dolicho 28, sub-dolicho 18, 9 mesati, 4 sub-brachy. Five skulls from an old graveyard at Samarkand were also very heterogeneous, cephalic index ranging from 77.72 to 94.93. This last, unless deformed, exceeds in brachycephaly "le celebre crane d'un Slave vende qu'on cite dans les manuels d'anthropologie" (Th. Volkov, _L'Anthropologie,_ 1897, pp. 355-7).

[684] Quoted by W. Crooke, who points out that "the opinion of the best Indian authorities seems to be gradually turning to the belief that the connection between Jats and Rajputs is more intimate than was formerly supposed" (_The Tribes and Castes of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh_, Calcutta, 1896, III. p. 27).

[685] Virgil's "indomiti Dahae" (_Aen._ VIII. 728): possibly the Dehavites (Dievi) of Ezra iv. 9.

[686] _Herodotus_, Vol. I. p. 413.

[687] From Pers. [Arabic Symbol], _dih, dah_, village (Parsi _dahi_).

[688] _Les Aryens_, etc., p. 68 sq.

[689] _De Bello Persico, passim._

[690] Crooke, _op. cit._ IV. p. 221.

[691] _The Tribes and Castes of Bengal_, 1892; _The People of India_, 1908.

[692] Discovered in 1889 by N. M. Yadrintseff in the Orkhon valley, which drains to the Selenga affluent of Lake Baikal. The inscriptions, one in Chinese and three in Turki, cover the four sides of a monument erected by a Chinese emperor to the memory of Kyul-teghin, brother of the then reigning Turki Khan Bilga (Mogilan). In the same historical district, where stand the ruins of Karakoram--long the centre of Turki and later of Mongol power--other inscribed monuments have also been found, all apparently in the same Turki language and script, but quite distinct from the glyptic rock carvings of the Upper Yenisei river, Siberia. The chief workers in this field were the Finnish archaeologists, J. R. Aspelin, A. Snellman and Axel O. Heikel, the results of whose labours are collected in the _Inscriptions de l'Jenissei recueillies et publiees par la Societe Finlandaise d'Archeologie_, Helsingfors, 1889; and _Inscriptions de l'Orkhon_, etc., Helsingfors, 1892.

[693] "La source d'ou est tiree l'origine de l'alphabet turc, sinon immediatement, du moins par intermediaire, c'est la forme de l'alphabet semitique qu'on appelle arameenne" (_Inscriptions de l'Orkhon dechiffrees_, Helsingfors, 1894).

[694] See Klaproth, _Tableau Historique de l'Asie_, p. 116 sq.

[695] They are the _Onoi_, the "Tens," who at this time dwelt beyond the Scythians of the Caspian Sea (Dionysius Periegetes).

[696] It still persists, however, as a tribal designation both amongst the Kirghiz and Uzbegs, and in 1885 Potanin visited the _Yegurs_ of the Edzin-gol valley in south-east Mongolia, said to be the last surviving representatives of the Uigur nation (H. Schott, "Zur Uigurenfrage," in _Abhandl. d. k. Akad. d. Wiss._, Berlin, 1873, pp. 101-21).

[697] Ch. de Ujfalvy, _Les Aryens au Nord et au Sud de l'Hindou-Kouch_, p. 28.

[698] "Notes on the Physical Anthropology of Chinese Turkestan and the Pamirs," _Journ. Roy. Anthr. Inst._ XLII. 1912.

[699] "The Uzi of the Greeks are the Gozz [Ghuz] of the Orientals. They appear on the Danube and the Volga, in Armenia, Syria, and Chorasan, and their name seems to have been extended to the whole Turkoman [Turki] race" [by the Arab writers]; Gibbon, Ch. LVII.

[700] Who take their name from a mythical Uz-beg, "Prince Uz" (_beg_ in Turki = a chief, or hereditary ruler).

[701] Both of these take their name, not from mythical but from historical chiefs:--_Kazan Khan_ of the Volga, "the rival of Cyrus and Alexander," who was however of the house of Jenghiz, consequently not a Turk, like most of his subjects, but a true Mongol (_ob._ 1304); and _Noga_, the ally and champion of Michael Palaeologus against the Mongols marching under the terrible Holagu almost to the shores of the Bosporus.

[702] Gibbon, Chap. LVII. By the "Turkish nation" is here to be understood the western section only. The Turks of Mawar-en-Nahar and Kashgaria (Eastern Turkestan) had been brought under the influences of Islam by the first Arab invaders from Persia two centuries earlier.

[703] "Die Stellung der Tuerken in Europa," in _Geogr. Zeitschrift_, Leipzig, 1897, Part 5, p. 250 sq.

[704] "Ethnographic Researches," edited by N. E. Vasilofsky for the _Imperial Geogr. Soc._ 1896, quoted in _Nature_, Dec. 3, 1896, p. 97.

[705] A. Erman, _Reise um die Erde_, 1835, Vol. III. p. 51.

[706] Quoted by Peschel, _Races of Man_, p. 383.

[707] M. Balkashin in _Izvestia Russ. Geogr. Soc._, April, 1883.

[708] _Kara_ = "Black," with reference to the colour of their round felt tents.

[709] On the obscure relations of these Hordes to the Kara-Kirghiz and prehistoric Usuns some light has been thrown by the investigations of N. A. Aristov, a summary of whose conclusions is given by A. Ivanovski in _Centralblatt fuer Anthropologie_, etc., 1896, p. 47.

[710] Although officially returned as Muhammadans of the Sunni sect, Levchine tells as that it is hard to say whether they are Moslem, Pagan (Shamanists), or Manichean, this last because they believe God has made good angels called _Mankir_ and bad angels called _Nankir_. Two of these spirits sit invisibly on the shoulders of every person from his birth, the good on the right, the bad on the left, each noting his actions in their respective books, and balancing accounts at his death. It is interesting to compare these ideas with those of the Uzbeg prince who explained to Lansdell that at the resurrection, the earth being flat, the dead grow out of it like grass; then God divides the good from the bad, sending these below and those above. In heaven nobody dies, and every wish is gratified; even the wicked creditor may seek out his debtor, and in lieu of the money owing may take over the equivalent in his good deeds, if there be any, and thus be saved (_Through Central Asia_, 1887, p. 438).

[711] See especially his _Reiseberichte u. Briefe aus den Jahren 1845-49_, p. 401 sq.; and _Versuch einer Koibalischen u. Karagassischen Sprachlehre_, 1858, Vol. I. _passim_. But cf. J. Szinnyei, _Finnisch-ugrische Sprachwissenschaft_, 1910, pp. 19-20.

[712] Peschel, _Races of Man_, p. 386.

[713] In a suggestive paper on this collection of Finnish songs C. U. Clark (_Forum_, April, 1898, p. 238 sq.) shows from the primitive character of the mythology, the frequent allusions to copper or bronze, and the almost utter absence of Christian ideas and other indications, that these songs must be of great antiquity. "There seems to be no doubt that some parts date back to at least 3000 years ago, before the Finns and the Hungarians had become distinct peoples; for the names of the divinities, many of the customs, and even particular incantations and bits of superstitions mentioned in the Kalevala are curiously duplicated in ancient Hungarian writings."

[714] When Ohthere made his famous voyage round North Cape to the Cwen Sea (White Sea) all this Arctic seaboard was inhabited, not by Samoyeds, as at present, but by true Finns, whom King Alfred calls _Beormas_, _i.e._ the _Biarmians_ of the Norsemen, and the _Permiaki_ (_Permians_) of the Russians (_Orosius_, I. 13). In medieval times the whole region between the White Sea and the Urals was often called Permia; but since the withdrawal southwards of the Zirynians and other Permian Finns this Arctic region has been thinly occupied by Samoyed tribes spreading slowly westward from Siberia to the Pechora and Lower Dvina.

[715] See A. Hackman, _Die Bronzezeit Finnlands_, Helsingfors, 1897; also M. Aspelin, O. Montelius, V. Thomsen and others, who have all, on various grounds, arrived at the same conclusion. Even D. E. D. Europaeus, who has advanced so many heterodox views on the Finnish cradleland, and on the relations of the Finnic to the Mongolo-Turki languages, agrees that "vers l'epoque de la naissance de J. C., c'est-a-dire bien longtemps avant que ces tribus immigrassent en Finlande, elles [the western Finns] etaient etablies immediatement au sud des lacs d'Onega et de Ladoga." (_Travaux Geographiques executes en Finlande jusqu'en_ 1895, Helsingfors, 1895, p. 141.)

[716] _Finska Forminnesfoereningens Tidskrift, Journ. Fin. Antiq. Soc._ 1896, p. 137 sq.

[717] "Les Finnois et leurs congeneres ont occupe autrefois, sur d'immenses espaces, les vastes regions forestieres de la Russie septentrionale et centrale, et de la Siberie occidentale; mais plus tard, refoules et divises par d'autres peuples, ils furent reduits a des tribus isolees, dont il ne reste maintenant que des debris epars" (_Travaux Geographiques_, p. 132).

[718] A word of doubtful meaning, commonly but wrongly supposed to mean _swamp_ or _fen_, and thus to be the original of the Teutonic _Finnas_, "Fen People" (see Thomsen, _Einfluss d. ger. Spr. auf die finnisch-lappischen_, p. 14).

[719] "Şa Finnas, him şuhte, and şa Beormas spraecon neah an geetheode" (Orosius, I. 14).

[720] See my paper on the Finns in Cassel's _Storehouse of Information_, p. 296.

[721] The fullest information concerning Finland and its inhabitants is found in the _Atlas de Finlande_, with _Texte_ (2 vols.) published by the _Soc. Geog. Finland_ in 1910.

[722] _Laila_, Earl of Ducie's English ed., p. 58. The Swedish _Bothnia_ is stated to be a translation of _Kwaen_, meaning low-lying coastlands; hence _Kainulaiset_, as they call themselves, would mean "Coastlanders."

[723] _A Boat Journey to Inari_, Viking Club, Feb. 1, 1895.

[724] _The Great Frozen Land_, 1895, p. 61.

[725] _The Great Frozen Land_, p. 84.

[726] Cf. M. A. Czaplicka, _Aboriginal Siberia_, 1914, pp. 162, 289 _n._

[727] _Notes sur les Votiaks payens des Gouvernements de Kazan et Viatka_, Paris, 1897. They are still numerous, especially in Viatka, where they numbered 240,000 in 1897.

[728] See especially Schafarik's classical work _Slavische Alterthuemer_, II. p. 159 sq. and V. de Saint-Martin, _Etudes de Geographie Ancienne et d'Ethnographie asiatique_, II. p. 10 sq., also the still indispensable Gibbon, Ch. XLII., etc.

[729] _Decline and Fall_, XLII.

[730] Rubruquis (thirteenth century): "We came to the Etil, a very large and deep river four times wider than the Seine, flowing from 'Great Bulgaria,' which lies to the north." Farther on he adds: "It is from this Great Bulgaria that issued those Bulgarians who are beyond the Danube, on the Constantinople side" (quoted by V. de Saint-Martin).

[731] Evidently much nearer to the Ural Mountains, for Jean du Plan Carpin says this "Great Hungary was the land of _Bascart_," that is, _Bashkir_, a large Finno-Turki people, who still occupy a considerable territory in the Orenburg Government about the southern slopes of the Urals.

[732] With them were associated many of the surviving fugitive On-Uigurs (Gibbon's "Ogors or Varchonites"), whence the report that they were not true Avars. But the Turki genealogies would appear to admit their claim to the name, and in any case the Uigurs and Avars of those times cannot now be ethnically distinguished. _Kandish_, one of their envoys to Justinian, is clearly a Turki name, and _Varchonites_ seems to point to the Warkhon (Orkhon), seat in successive ages of the eastern Turks, the Uigurs, and the true Mongols.

[733] _Ethnology_, p. 309.

[734] Vambery, perhaps the best authority on this point, holds that in its structure Magyar leans more to the Finno-Ugric, and in its vocabulary to the Turki branch of the Ural-Altaic linguistic family. He attributes the effacement of the physical type partly to the effects of the environment, partly to the continuous interminglings of the Ugric, Turki, Slav, and Germanic peoples in Pannonia ("Ueber den Ursprung der Magyaren," in _Mitt. d. K. K. Geograph. Ges._, Vienna, 1897, XL. Nos. 3 and 4).

[735] T. Peisker, "The Asiatic Background," _Cambridge Medieval History_, Vol. I. 1911, p. 356.

[736] "Das Volk steht und faellt mit der Sprache" (_Urbewohner Brasiliens_, 1897, p. 14).