Man, Past and Present Part 36

[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 = u_) 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, pa.s.sim._

[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 sh.o.r.es 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 Turken 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. Balkas.h.i.+n 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 fur 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 G.o.d 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 gra.s.s; then G.o.d divides the good from the bad, sending these below and those above. In heaven n.o.body 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. Karaga.s.sischen Sprachlehre_, 1858, Vol. I. _pa.s.sim_. 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 superst.i.tions 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 Nors.e.m.e.n, 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 immigra.s.sent 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 Forminnesforeningens Tidskrift, Journ. Fin. Antiq. Soc._ 1896, p. 137 sq.

[717] "Les Finnois et leurs congeneres ont occupe autrefois, sur d'immenses es.p.a.ces, 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] "a Finnas, him uhte, and a Beormas spraecon neah an geeode"

(Orosius, I. 14).

[720] See my paper on the Finns in Ca.s.sel'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."