Lectures on The Science of Language 34

Lectures on The Science of Language 34

For completeness’ sake I add a short account of the Turanian family,

chiefly taken from my Survey of Languages, published 1855:—

 

_Tungusic Class._

 

The _Tungusic_ branch extends from China northward to Siberia and westward

to 113°, where the river Tunguska partly marks its frontier. The Tungusic

tribes in Siberia are under Russian sway. Other Tungusic tribes belong to

the Chinese empire, and are known by the name of Mandshu, a name taken

after they had conquered China in 1644, and founded the present imperial

dynasty.

 

_Mongolic Class._

 

The original seats of the people who speak Mongolic dialects lie near the

Lake Baikal and in the eastern parts of Siberia, where we find them as

early as the ninth century after Christ. They were divided into three

classes, the _Mongols_ proper, the _Buriäts_, and the _Ölöts_ or

_Kalmüks_. Chingis-khán (1227) united them into a nation and founded the

Mongolian empire, which included, however, not only Mongolic, but Tungusic

and Turkic, commonly called Tataric, tribes.

 

The name of Tatar soon became the terror of Asia and Europe, and it was

applied promiscuously to all the nomadic warriors whom Asia then poured

forth over Europe. Originally Tatar was a name of the Mongolic races, but

through their political ascendency in Asia after Chingis-khán, it became

usual to call all the tribes which were under Mongolian sway by the name

of Tatar. In linguistic works Tataric is now used in two several senses.

Following the example of writers of the Middle Ages, Tataric, like

Scythian in Greek, has been fixed upon as the general term comprising

_all_ languages spoken by the nomadic tribes of Asia. Hence it is used

sometimes in the same sense in which we use Turanian. Secondly, Tataric

has become the name of that class of Turanian languages of which the

Turkish is the most prominent member. While the Mongolic class—that which

in fact has the greatest claims to the name of Tataric—is never so called,

it has become an almost universal custom to apply this name to the third

or Turkic branch of the Ural-Altaic division; and the races belonging to

this branch have in many instances themselves adopted the name. These

Turkish, or as they are more commonly called, Tataric races, were settled

on the northern side of the Caspian Sea, and on the Black Sea, and were

known as Komanes, Pechenegs, and Bulgars, when conquered by the Mongolic

army of the son of Chingis-khán, who founded the Kapchakian empire,

extending from the Dniestr to the Yemba and the Kirgisian steppes. Russia

for two centuries was under the sway of these Kháns, known as the Khans of

the Golden Horde. This empire was dissolved towards the end of the

fifteenth century, and several smaller kingdoms rose out of its ruins.

Among these Krim, Kasan, and Astrachan, were the most important. The

princes of these kingdoms still gloried in their descent from

Chingis-khán, and had hence a right to the name of Mongols or Tatars. But

their armies and subjects also, who were of Turkish blood, received the

name of their princes; and their languages continued to be called Tataric,

even after the tribes by whom they were spoken had been brought under the

Russian sceptre, and were no longer governed by khans of Mongolic or

Tataric origin. It would perhaps be desirable to use Turkic instead of

Tataric, when speaking of the third branch of the northern division of the

Turanian family, did not a change of terminology generally produce as much

confusion as it remedies. The recollection of their non-Tataric, _i.e._

non-Mongolic origin, remains, it appears, among the so-called Tatars of

Kasan and Astrachan. If asked whether they are Tatars, they reply no; and

they call their language Turki or Turuk, but not Tatari. Nay, they

consider Tatar as a term of abuse, synonymous with robber, evidently from

a recollection that their ancestors had once been conquered and enslaved

by Mongolic, that is, Tataric, tribes. All this rests on the authority of

Klaproth, who during his stay in Russia had great opportunities of

studying the languages spoken on the frontiers of this half-Asiatic

empire.

 

The conquests of the Mongols or the descendants of Chingis-khán were not

confined, however, to these Turkish tribes. They conquered China in the

east, where they founded the Mongolic dynasty of Yuan, and in the west,

after subduing the khalifs of Bagdad, and the Sultans of Iconium, they

conquered Moscow, and devastated the greater part of Russia. In 1240 they

invaded Poland, in 1241 Silesia. Here they recoiled before the united

armies of Germany, Poland, and Silesia. They retired into Moravia, and

having exhausted that country, occupied Hungary. At that time they had to

choose a new khan, which could only be done at Karakorum, the old capital

of their empire. Thither they withdrew to elect an emperor to govern an

empire which then extended from China to Poland, from India to Siberia.

But a realm of such vast proportions could not be long held together, and

towards the end of the thirteenth century it broke up into several

independent states, all under Mongolian princes, but no longer under one

khan of khans. Thus new independent Mongolic empires arose in China,

Turkestan, Siberia, Southern Russia, and Persia. In 1360, the Mongolian

dynasty was driven out of China; in the fifteenth century they lost their

hold on Russia. In Central Asia they rallied once more under Timur (1369),

whose sway was again acknowledged from Karakorum to Persia and Anatolia.

But in 1468, this empire also fell by its own weight, and for want of

powerful rulers like Chingis-khán or Timur. In Jagatai alone, the country

extending from the Aral Lake to the Hindu-kush, between the rivers Oxus

and Yaxartes (Jihon and Sihon), and once governed by Jagatai, the son of

Chingis-khán—the Mongolian dynasty maintained itself, and thence it was

that Baber, a descendant of Timur, conquered India, and founded there a

Mongolian dynasty, surviving up to our own times in the Great Moguls of

Delhi. Most Mongolic tribes are now under the sway of the nations whom

they once had conquered, the Tungusic sovereigns of China, the Russian

czars, and the Turkish sultans.

 

The Mongolic language, although spoken (but not continuously) from China

as far as the Volga, has given rise to but few dialects. Next to Tungusic,

the Mongolic is the poorest language of the Turanian family, and the

scantiness of grammatical terminations accounts for the fact that, as a

language, it has remained very much unchanged. There is, however, a

distinction between the language as spoken by the Eastern, Western, and

Northern tribes, and incipient traces of grammatical life have lately been

discovered by Castrén, the great Swedish traveller and Turanian

philologist, in the spoken dialect of the Buriäts. In it the persons of

the verb are distinguished by affixes, while, according to the rules of

Mongolic grammar, no other dialect distinguishes in the verb between

am_o_, am_as_, am_at_.

 

The Mongols who live in Europe have fixed their tents on each side of the

Volga and along the coast of the Caspian Sea near Astrachan. Another

colony is found south-east of Sembirsk. They belong to the Western branch,

and are Ölöts or Kalmüks, who left their seats on the Koko-nur, and

entered Europe in 1662. They proceeded from the clans Dürbet and Torgod,

but most of the Torgods returned again in 1770, and their descendants are

now scattered over the Kirgisian steppes.

 

_Turkic Class_.

 

Much more important are the languages belonging to the third branch of the

Turanian family, most prominent among which is the Turkish or Osmanli of

Constantinople. The number of the Turkish inhabitants of European Turkey

is indeed small. It is generally stated at 2,000,000; but Shafarik

estimates the number of genuine Turks at not more than 700,000, who rule

over fifteen millions of people. The different Turkic dialects of which

the Osmanli is one, occupy one of the largest linguistic areas, extending

from the Lena and the Polar Sea, down to the Adriatic.

 

The most ancient name by which the Turkic tribes of Central Asia were

known to the Chinese was Hiung-nu. These Hiung-nu founded an empire (206

B. C.) comprising a large portion of Asia, west of China. Engaged in

frequent wars with the Chinese, they were defeated at last in the middle

of the first century after Christ. Thereupon they divided into a northern

and southern empire; and, after the southern Hiung-nu had become subjects

of China, they attacked the northern Hiung-nu, together with the Chinese,

and, driving them out of their seats between the rivers Amur and Selenga,

and the Altai mountains, westward, they are supposed to have given the

first impulse to the inroads of the barbarians into Europe. In the

beginning of the third century, the Mongolic and Tungusic tribes, who had

filled the seats of the northern Hiung-nu, had grown so powerful as to

attack the southern Hiung-nu and drive them from their territories. This

occasioned a second migration of Asiatic tribes towards the west.

 

Another name by which the Chinese designate these Hiung-nu or Turkish

tribes is Tu-kiu. This Tu-kiu is supposed to be identical with Turk, and,

although the tribe to which this name was given was originally but small,

it began to spread in the sixth century from the Altai to the Caspian, and

it was probably to them that in 569 the Emperor Justinian sent an

ambassador in the person of Semarchos. The empire of the Tu-kiu was

destroyed in the eighth century, by the ’Hui-’he (Chinese Kao-che). This

tribe, equally of Turkish origin, maintained itself for about a century,

and was then conquered by the Chinese and driven back from the northern

borders of China. Part of the ’Hui-’he occupied Tangut, and, after a

second defeat by the Mongolians in 1257, the remnant proceeded still

further west, and joined the Uigurs, whose tents were pitched near the

towns of Turfan, ’Kashgar, ’Hamil, and Aksu.

 

These facts, gleaned chiefly from Chinese historians, show from the very

earliest times the westward tendency of the Turkish nations. In 568

Turkish tribes occupied the country between the Volga and the sea of Azov,

and numerous reinforcements have since strengthened their position in

those parts.

 

The northern part of Persia, west of the Caspian Sea, Armenia, the south

of Georgia, Shirwan, and Dagestan, harbor a Turkic population, known by

the general name of Turkman or Kisil-bash (Red-caps). They are nomadic

robbers, and their arrival in these countries dates from the eleventh and

twelfth centuries.

 

East of the Caspian Sea the Turkman tribes are under command of the

Usbek-Khans of Khiva, Fergana, and Bukhára. They call themselves, however,

not subjects but guests of these Khans. Still more to the east the

Turkmans are under Chinese sovereignty, and in the south-west they reach

as far as Khorasan and other provinces of Persia.

 

The Usbeks, descendants of the ’Huy-’he and Uigurs, and originally settled

in the neighborhood of the towns of ’Hoten, Kashgar, Turfan, and ’Hamil,

crossed the Yaxartes in the sixteenth century, and after several

successful campaigns gained possession of Balkh, Kharism (Khiva), Bukhára,

and Ferganah. In the latter country and in Balkh they have become

agricultural; but generally their life is nomadic, and too warlike to be called pastoral.