Man, Past and Present Part 35

To some extent W. Radloff is right in describing the great Kirghiz Turki family as "of all Turks most nearly allied to the Mongols in their physical characters, and by their family names such as Kyptshak [Kipchak], Argyn, Naiman, giving evidence of Mongolian descent, or at least of intermixture with Mongols[706]." But we have already been warned against the danger of attaching too much importance to these tribal designations, many of which seem, after acquiring renown on the battle-field, to have pa.s.sed readily from one ethnic group to another.

There are certain Hindu-Kush and Afghan tribes who think themselves Greeks or Arabs, because of the supposed descent of their chiefs from Alexander the Great or the Prophet's family, and genealogical trees spring up like the conjurer's mango plant in support of such ill.u.s.trious lineage. The Chagatai (Jagatai) tribes, of Turki stock and speech, take their name from a full-blood Mongol, Chagatai, second son of Jenghiz-Khan, to whom fell Eastern Turkestan in the part.i.tion of the empire.

In the same way many Uzbeg and Kirghiz Turki tribes are named from famous Mongol chiefs, although no one will deny a strain of true Mongol blood in all these heterogeneous groups. This is evident enough from the square and somewhat flat Mongol features, prominent cheek-bones, oblique eyes, large mouth, feet and hands, yellowish brown complexion, ungainly obese figures and short stature, all of which are characteristic of both sections, the Kara-Kirghiz highlanders, and the Kazaks of the lowlands. Some ethnologists regard these Kirghiz groups, not as a distinct branch of the Mongolo-Turki race, but rather as a confederation of several nomad tribes stretching from the Gobi to the Lower Volga, and mingled together by Jenghiz-Khan and his successors[707].

The true national name is _Kazak_, "Riders," and as they were originally for the most part mounted marauders, or free lances of the steppe, the term came to be gradually applied to all nomad and other hors.e.m.e.n engaged in predatory warfare. It thus at an early date reached the South Russian steppe, where it was adopted in the form of _Kossack_ by the Russians themselves. It should be noted that the compound term Kirghiz-Kazak, introduced by the Russians to distinguish these nomads from their own Cossacks, is really a misnomer. The word "Kirghiz,"

whatever its origin, is never used by the Kazaks in reference to themselves, but only to their near relations, the Kirghiz, or Kara-Kirghiz[708], of the uplands.

These highlanders, who roam the Tian-Shan and Pamir valleys, form two sections:--_On_, "Right," or East, and _Sol_, "Left," or West. They are the _Diko Kamennyi_, that is, "Wild Rock People," of the Russians, whence the expression "Block Kirghiz" still found in some English books of travel. But they call themselves simply Kirghiz, claiming descent from an original tribe of that name, itself sprung from a legendary Kirghiz-beg, from whom are also descended the Chiliks, Kitars and others, all now reunited with the Ons and the Sols.

The Kazaks also are grouped in long-established and still jealously maintained sections--the _Great_, _Middle_, _Little_, and _Inner Horde_--whose joint domain extends from Lake Balkash round the north side of the Caspian down to the Lower Volga[709]. All accepted the teachings of Islam many centuries ago, but their Muhammadanism[710] is of a somewhat negative character, without mosques, mollahs, or fanaticism, and in practice not greatly to be distinguished from the old Siberian Shamanism. k.u.miss, fermented mare's milk, their universal drink, as amongst the ancient Scythians, plays a large part in the life of these hospitable steppe nomads.

One of the lasting results of Castren's labours has been to place beyond reasonable doubt the Altai origin of the Finnish peoples[711]. Their cradle may now be localised with some confidence about the head waters of the Yenisei, in proximity to that of their Turki kinsmen. Here is the seat of the _Soyotes_ and of the closely allied _Koibals_, _Kama.s.sintzi_, _Matores_, _Karaga.s.ses_ and others, who occupy a considerable territory along both slopes of the Sayan range, and may be regarded as the primitive stock of the widely diffused Finnish race.

Some of these groups have intermingled with the neighbouring Turki peoples, and even speak Turki dialects. But the original Finnish type and speech are well represented by the Soyotes, who are here indigenous, and "from these their ... kinsmen, the Samoyeds have spread as breeders of reindeer to the north of the continent from the White Sea to the Bay of Chatanga[712]." Others, following a westerly route along the foot of the Altai and down the Irtysh to the Urals, appear to have long occupied both slopes of that range, where they acquired some degree of culture, and especially that knowledge of, and skill in working, the precious and other metals, for which the "White-eyed Chudes" were famous, and to which repeated reference is made in the songs of the _Kalevala_[713].

As there are no mines or minerals in Finland itself, it seems obvious that the legendary heroes of the Finnish national epic must have dwelt in some metalliferous region, which could only be the Altai or the Urals, possibly both.

In any case the Urals became a second home and point of dispersion for the Finnish tribes (_Ugrian Finns_), whose migrations--some prehistoric, some historic--can be followed thence down the Pechora and Dvina to the Frozen Ocean[714], and down the Kama to the Volga. From this artery, where permanent settlements were formed (_Volga Finns_), some conquering hordes went south and west (_Danubian Finns_), while more peaceful wanderers ascended the great river to Lakes Ladoga and Onega, and thence to the sh.o.r.es of the Baltic and Lapland (_Baltic and Lake Finns_).

Thus were const.i.tuted the main branches of the widespread Finnish family, whose domain formerly extended from the Katanga beyond the Yenisei to Lapland, and from the Arctic Ocean to the Altai range, the Caspian, and the Volga, with considerable _enclaves_ in the Danube basin. But throughout their relatively short historic life the Finnish peoples, despite a characteristic tenacity and power of resistance, have in many places been encroached upon, absorbed, or even entirely eliminated, by more aggressive races, such as the Siberian "Tatars" in their Altai cradleland, the Turki Kirghiz and Bashkirs in the West Siberian steppes and the Urals, the Russians in the Volga and Lake districts, the Germans and Lithuanians in the Baltic Provinces (Kurland, Livonia, Esthonia), the Rumanians, Slavs, and others in the Danube regions, where the Ugrian Bulgars and Magyars have been almost entirely a.s.similated in type (and the former also in speech) to the surrounding European populations.

Few anthropologists now attach much importance to the views not yet quite obsolete regarding a former extension of the Finnish race over the whole of Europe and the British Isles. Despite the fact that all the Finns are essentially round-headed, they were identified first with the long-headed cavemen, who retreated north with the reindeer, as was the favourite hypothesis, and then with the early neolithic races who were also long-headed. Elaborate but now forgotten essays were written by learned philologists to establish a common origin of the Basque and the Finnic tongues, which have nothing in common, and half the myths, folklore, and legendary heroes of the western nations were traced to Finno-Ugrian sources.

Now we know better, and both archaeologists and philologists have made it evident that the Finnish peoples are relatively quite recent arrivals in Europe, that the men of the Bronze Age in Finland itself were not Finns but Teutons, and that at the beginning of the new era all the Finnish tribes still dwelt east of the Gulf of Finland[715].

Not only so, but the eastern migrations themselves, as above roughly outlined, appear to have taken place at a relatively late epoch, long after the inhabitants of West Siberia had pa.s.sed from the New Stone to the Metal Ages. J. R. Aspelin, "founder of Finno-Ugrian archaeology,"

points out that the Finno-Ugrian peoples originally occupied a geographical position between the Indo-Germanic and the Mongolic races, and that their first Iron Age was most probably a development, between the Yenisei and the Kama, of the so-called Ural-Altai Bronze Age, the last echoes of which may be traced westwards to Finland and North Scandinavia. In the Upper Yenisei districts iron objects had still the forms of the Bronze Age, when that ancient civilisation, a.s.sociated with the name of the "Chudes," was interrupted by an invasion which introduced the still persisting Turki Iron Age, expelled the aboriginal inhabitants, and thus gave rise to the great migrations first of the Finno-Ugrians, and then of the Turki peoples (Bashkirs, Volga "Tatars"

and others) to and across the Urals. It was here, in the Permian territory between the Irtysh and the Kama, that the West Siberian (Chudish) Iron Age continued its normal and unbroken evolution. The objects recovered from the old graves and kurgans in the present governments of Tver and Iaroslav, and especially at Ananyino on the Kama, centre of this culture, show that here took place the transition from the Bronze to the Iron Age some 300 years before the new era, and here was developed a later Iron Age, whose forms are characteristic of the northern Finno-Ugrian lands. The whole region would thus appear to have been first occupied by these immigrants from Asia after the irruption of the Turki hordes into Western Siberia during the first Iron Age, at most some 500 or 600 years before the Christian era. The Finno-Ugrian migrations are thus limited to a period of not more than 2600 years from the present time, and this conclusion, based on archaeological grounds, agrees fairly well with the historical, linguistic, and ethnical data.

It is especially in this obscure field of research that the eminent Danish scholar, Vilhelm Thomsen, has rendered inestimable services to European ethnology. By the light of his linguistic studies A. H.

Snellman[716] has elucidated the origins of the Baltic Finns, the Proto-Esthonians, the now all but extinct Livonians, and the quite extinct Kurlanders, from the time when they still dwelt east and south-east of the Baltic lands, under the influence of the surrounding Lithuanian and Gothic tribes, till the German conquest of the Baltic provinces. We learn from Jordanes, to whom is due the first authentic account of these populations, that the various Finnish tribes were subject to the Gothic king Hermanarich, and Thomsen now shows that all the Western Finns (Esthonians, Livonians, Votes, Vepses, Karelians, Tavastians, and others of Finland) must in the first centuries of the new era have lived practically as one people in the closest social union, speaking one language, and following the same religious, tribal, and political inst.i.tutions. Earlier than the Gothic was the Letto-Lithuanian contact, as shown by the fact that its traces are perceptible in the language of the Volga Finns, in which German loan-words are absent. From these investigations it becomes clear that the Finnish domain must at that time have stretched from the present Esthonia, Livonia, and Lake Ladoga south to the western Dvina.

The westward movement was connected with the Slav migrations. When the Slavs south of the Letts moved west, other Slav tribes must have pushed north, thus driving both Letts and Finns west to the Baltic provinces, which had previously been occupied by the Germans (Goths). Some of the Western Finns must have found their way about 500 A.D., scarcely earlier, into parts of this region, where they came into hostile and friendly contact with the Nors.e.m.e.n. These relations would even appear to be reflected in the Norse mythology, which may be regarded as in great measure an echo of historic events. The wars of the Swedish and Danish kings referred to in these oral records may be interpreted as plundering expeditions rather than permanent conquests, while the undoubtedly active intercourse between the east and west coasts of the Baltic may be explained on the a.s.sumption that, after the withdrawal of the Goths, a remnant of the Germanic populations remained behind in the Baltic provinces.

From Nestor's statement that all three of the Varangian princes settled, not amongst Slavish but amongst Finnish peoples, it may be inferred that the Finnish element const.i.tuted the most important section in the newly founded Russian State; and it may here be mentioned that the term "Russ"

itself has now been traced to the Finnish word _Ruost_ (_Ruosti_), a "Norseman." But although at first greatly outnumbering the Slavs, the Finnish peoples soon lost the political ascendancy, and their subsequent history may be summed up in the expression--gradual absorption in the surrounding Slav populations. This inevitable process is still going on amongst all the Volga, Lake and Baltic Finns, except in Finland and Lapland, where other conditions obtain[717].

Most Finnish ethnologists agree that however much they may now differ in their physical and mental characters and usages, Finns and Lapps were all originally one people. Some variant of _Suoma_[718] enters into the national name of all the Baltic groups--_Suomalaiset_, the Finns of Finland, _Somelazed_, those of Esthonia, _Samelats_ (Sabmelad), the Lapps, _Samoyad_, the Samoyeds. In Ohthere's time the Nors.e.m.e.n called all the Lapps "Finnas" (as the Norwegians still do), and that early navigator already noticed that these "Finns" seemed to speak the same language as the Beormas, who were true Finns[719]. Nor do the present inhabitants of Finland, taken as a whole, differ more in outward appearance and temperament from their Lapp neighbours than do the Tavastians and the Karelians, that is, their western and eastern sections, from each other. The Tavastians, who call themselves Hemelaiset, "Lake People," have rather broad, heavy frames, small and oblique blue or grey eyes, towy hair and white complexion, without the clear florid colour of the North Germanic and English peoples. The temperament is somewhat sluggish, pa.s.sive and enduring, morose and vindictive, but honest and trustworthy.

Very different are the tall, slim, active Karelians (_Karialaiset_, "Cowherds," from _Kari_, "Cow"), with more regular features, straight grey eyes, brown complexion, and chestnut hair, like that of the hero of the Kalevala, hanging in ringlets down the shoulders. Many of the Karelians, and most of the neighbouring _Ingrians_ about the head of the Gulf of Finland, as well as the Votes and Vepses of the great lakes, have been a.s.similated in speech, religion, and usages to the surrounding Russian populations. But the more conservative Tavastians have hitherto tenaciously preserved the national sentiment, language, and traditions.

Despite the pressure of Sweden on the west, and of Russia on the east, the Finns still stand out as a distinct European nationality, and continue to cultivate with success their harmonious and highly poetical language. Since the twelfth century they have been Christians, converted to the Catholic faith by "Saint" Eric, King of Sweden, and later to Lutheranism, again by the Swedes[720]. The national university, removed in 1827 from Abo to Helsingfors, is a centre of much scientific and literary work, and here E. Lonnrot, father of Finnish literature, brought out his various editions of the _Kalevala_, that of 1849 consisting of some 50,000 strophes[721].

A kind of transition from these settled and cultured Finns to the Lapps of Scandinavia and Russia is formed by the still almost nomad, or at least restless _Kwaens_, who formerly roamed as far as the White Sea, which in Alfred's time was known as the _Cwen Sae_ (Kwaen Sea). These Kwaens, who still number nearly 300,000, are even called nomads by J. A.

Friis, who tells us that there is a continual movement of small bands between Finland and Scandinavia. "The wandering Kwaens pa.s.s round the Gulf of Bothnia and up through Lappmarken to Kittala, where they separate, some going to Varanger, and others to Alten. They follow the same route as that which, according to historians, some of the Nors.e.m.e.n followed in their wanderings from Finland[722]." The references of the Sagas are mostly to these primitive Bothnian Finns, with whom the Nors.e.m.e.n first came in contact, and who in the sixth and following centuries were still in a rude state not greatly removed from that of their Ugrian forefathers. As shown by Almqvist's researches, they lived almost exclusively by hunting and fishing, had scarcely a rudimentary knowledge of agriculture, and could prepare neither b.u.t.ter nor cheese from the milk of their half-wild reindeer herds.

Such were also, and in some measure still are, the kindred Lapps, who with the allied _Yurak Samoyeds_ of Arctic Russia are the only true nomads still surviving in Europe. A. H. c.o.c.ks, who travelled amongst all these rude aborigines in 1888, describes the Kwaens who range north to Lake Enara, as "for the most part of a very rough cla.s.s," and found that the Russian Lapps of the Kola Peninsula, "except as to their clothing and the addition of coffee and sugar to their food supply, are living now much the same life as their ancestors probably lived 2000 or more years ago, a far more primitive life, in fact, than the Reindeer Lapps [of Scandinavia]. They have not yet begun to use tobacco, and reading and writing are entirely unknown among them. Unlike the three other divisions of the race [the Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish Lapps], they are a very cheerful, light-hearted people, and have the curious habit of expressing their thoughts aloud in extempore sing-song[723]."

Similar traits have been noticed in the Samoyeds, whom F. G. Jackson describes as an extremely sociable and hospitable people, delighting in gossip, and much given to laughter and merriment[724]. He gives their mean height as nearly 5 ft. 2 in., which is about the same as that of the Lapps (Von Duben, 5 ft. 2 in., others rather less), while that of the Finns averages 5 ft. 5 in. (Topinard). Although the general Mongol appearance is much less p.r.o.nounced in the Lapps than in the Samoyeds, in some respects--low stature, flat face with peculiar round outline--the latter reminded Jackson of the Ziryanians, who are a branch of the Beormas (Permian Finns), though like them now much mixed with the Russians. The so-called prehistoric "Lapp Graves," occurring throughout the southern parts of Scandinavia, are now known from their contents to have belonged to the Norse race, who appear to have occupied this region since the New Stone Age, while the Lapp domain seems never to have reached very much farther south than Trondhjem.

All these facts, taken especially in connection with the late arrival of the Finns themselves in Finland, lend support to the view that the Lapps are a branch, not of the Suomalaiset, but of the Permian Finns, and reached their present homes, not from Finland, but from North Russia through the Kanin and Kola Peninsulas, if not round the sh.o.r.es of the White Sea, at some remote period prior to the occupation of Finland by its present inhabitants. This a.s.sumption would also explain Ohthere's statement that Lapps and Permians seemed to speak nearly the same language. The resemblance is still close, though I am not competent to say to which branch of the Finno-Ugrian family Lapp is most nearly allied.

Of the Mongol physical characters the Lapp still retains the round low skull (index 83), the prominent cheek-bones, somewhat flat features, and ungainly figure. The temperament, also, is still perhaps more Asiatic than European, although since the eighteenth century they have been Christians--Lutherans in Scandinavia, Orthodox in Russia. In pagan times Shamanism had nowhere acquired a greater development than among the Lapps. A great feature of the system were the "rune-trees," made of pine or birch bark, inscribed with figures of G.o.ds, men, or animals, which were consulted on all important occasions, and their mysterious signs interpreted by the Shamans. Even foreign potentates hearkened to the voice of these renowned magicians, and in England the expression "Lapland witches" became proverbial, although it appears that there never were any witches, but only wizards, in Lapland. Such rites have long ceased to be practised, although some of the crude ideas of a material after-life still linger on. Money and other treasures are often buried or hid away, the owners dying without revealing the secret, either through forgetfulness, or more probably of set purpose in the hope of thus making provision for the other world.

Amongst the kindred Samoyeds, despite their Russian orthodoxy, the old pagan beliefs enjoy a still more vigorous existence. "As long as things go well with him, he is a Christian; but should his reindeer die, or other catastrophe happen, he immediately returns to his old G.o.d _Num_ or _Chaddi_.... He conducts his heathen services by night and in secret, and carefully screens from sight any image of Chaddi[725]." Jackson noticed several instances of this compromise between the old and the new, such as the wooden cross supplemented on the Samoyed graves by an overturned sledge to convey the dead safely over the snows of the under-world, and the rings of stones, within which the human sacrifices were perhaps formerly offered to propitiate Chaddi; and although these things have ceased, "it is only a few years ago that a Samoyad living on Novaia Zemlia sacrificed a young girl[726]."

Similar beliefs and practices still prevail not only amongst the Siberian Finns--Ostyaks of the Yenisei and Obi rivers, Voguls of the Urals--but even amongst the Votyaks, Mordvinians, Cheremisses and other scattered groups still surviving in the Volga basin. So recently as the year 1896 a number of Votyaks were tried and convicted for the murder of a pa.s.sing mendicant, whom they had beheaded to appease the wrath of Kiremet, Spirit of Evil and author of the famine raging at that time in Central Russia. Besides Kiremet, the Votyaks--who appear to have migrated from the Urals to their present homes between the Kama and the Viatka rivers about 400 A.D., and are mostly heathens--also worship Inmar, G.o.d of Heaven, to whom they sacrifice animals as well as human beings whenever it can be safely done. We are a.s.sured by Baron de Baye that even the few who are baptized take part secretly in these unhallowed rites[727].

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 a.s.sociation 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 doc.u.ments 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 h.o.m.ogeneous 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 a.s.sociation with the Slavs, and then a.s.suming "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 antic.i.p.ating their Turki kinsmen in the overthrow of the Byzantine Empire itself. Procopius and Jornandes have left terrible pictures of the ferocity, debas.e.m.e.nt, 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) pa.s.sed, 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 coa.r.s.eness 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 G.o.d 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 a.s.similated 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 const.i.tuted[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 ill.u.s.tration of the influence of language in developing and preserving the national sentiment, a.n.a.logous 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.