VIII. THE NORTHERN MONGOLS…

VIII. THE NORTHERN MONGOLS

Domain of the Mongolo-Turki Section--Early Contact with Caucasic Peoples--Primitive Man in Siberia--and Mongolia--Early Man in Korea and Japan--in Finland and East Europe--Early Man in Babylonia--The Sumerians--The Akkadians--Babylonian Chronology--Elamite Origins--Historical Records--Babylonian Religion--Social System--General Culture--The Mongols Proper--Physical Type--Ethnical and Administrative Divisions--Buddhism--The Tunguses--Cradle and Type--Mental Characters--Shamanism--The Manchus--Origins and Early Records--Type--The Dauri--Mongolo-Turki Speech--Language and Racial Characters--Mongol and Manchu Script--The Yukaghirs--A Primitive Writing System--Chukchis and Koryaks--Chukchi and Eskimo Relations--Type and Social State--Koryaks and Kamchadales--The Gilyaks--The Koreans--Ethnical Elements--Korean Origins and Records--Religion--The Korean Script--The Japanese--Origins-- Constituent Elements--The Japanese Type--Japanese and Liu-Kiu Islanders--Their Languages and Religions--Cult of the Dead-- Shintoism and Buddhism.

CONSPECTUS.

#Present Range.# The Northern Hemisphere from Japan to Lapland, and from the Arctic Ocean to the Great Wall and Tibet; Aralo-Caspian Basin; Parts of Irania; Asia Minor; Parts of East Russia, Balkan Peninsula, and Lower Danube.

#Hair#, generally the same as South Mongol, but in Mongolo-Caucasic transitional groups brown, chestnut, and even towy or light flaxen, also wavy and ringletty; beard mostly absent except amongst the Western Turks and some Koreans.

#Colour#, light or dirty yellowish amongst all true Mongols and Siberians; very variable (white, sallow, swarthy) in the transitional groups (Finns, Lapps, Magyars, Bulgars, Western Turks), and many Manchus and Koreans; in Japan the unexposed parts of the body also white.

#Skull#, highly brachycephalic in the true Mongol(80 to 85); variable (sub-brachy and sub-dolicho) in most transitional groups and even some Siberians (Ostyaks and Voguls 77). #Jaws#, #cheek-bones#, #nose#, and #eyes# much the same as in South Mongols; but nose often large and straight, and eyes straight, greyish, or even blue in Finns, Manchus, Koreans, and some other Mongolo-Caucasians.

#Stature#, usually short (below 1.68 m., 5 ft. 6 in.), but many Manchus and Koreans tall, 1.728 m. to 1.778 m. (5 ft. 8 or 10 in.). #Lips#, #arms#, #legs#, and #feet#, usually the same as South Mongols; but Japanese legs disproportionately short.

#Temperament#, of all true Mongols and many Mongoloids, dull, reserved, somewhat sullen and apathetic; but in some groups (Finns, Japanese) active and energetic; nearly all brave, warlike, even fierce, and capable of great atrocities, though not normally cruel; within the historic period the character has almost everywhere undergone a marked change from a rude and ferocious to a milder and more humane disposition; ethical tone higher than South Mongol, with more developed sense of right and wrong.

#Speech#, very uniform; apparently only one stock language (#Finno-Tatar# or #Ural-Altaic Family#), a highly typical agglutinating form with no prefixes, but numerous postfixes attached loosely to an unchangeable root, by which their vowels are modified in accordance with subtle laws of vocalic harmony; the chief members of the family (Finnish, Magyar, Turkish, Mongol, and especially Korean and Japanese) diverge greatly from the common prototype.

#Religion#, originally spirit-worship through a mediator (Shaman), perhaps everywhere, and still exclusively prevalent amongst Siberian and all other uncivilised groups; all Mongols proper, Manchus, and Koreans nominal Buddhists; all Turki peoples Moslem; Japanese Buddhists and Shintoists; Finns, Lapps, Bulgars, Magyars, and some Siberians real or nominal Christians.

#Culture#, rude and barbaric rather than savage amongst the Siberian aborigines, who are nearly all nomadic hunters and fishers with half-wild reindeer herds but scarcely any industries; the Mongols proper, Kirghiz, Uzbegs and Turkomans semi-nomadic pastors; the Anatolian and Balkan Turks, Manchus, and Koreans settled agriculturists, with scarcely any arts or letters and no science; Japanese, Finns, Bulgars and Magyars civilised up to, and in some respects beyond the European average (Magyar and Finnish literature, Japanese art).

#Mongol Proper.# Sharra (Eastern), Kalmak (Western), Buryat (Siberian) Mongol.

#Tungus.# Tungus proper, Manchu, Gold, Oroch, Lamut.

#Korean#; #Japanese# and #Liu-Kiu#.

#Turki.# Yakut; Kirghiz; Uzbeg; Taranchi; Kara-Kalpak; Nogai; Turkoman; Anatolian; Osmanli.

#Finno-Ugrian.# Baltic Finn; Lapp; Samoyed; Cheremiss; Votyak; Vogul; Ostyak; Bulgar; Magyar.

#East Siberian.# Yukaghir; Chukchi; Koryak; Kamchadale; Gilyak.

* * * * *

By "Northern Mongols" are here to be understood all those branches of the Mongol Division of mankind which are usually comprised under the collective geographical expression Ural-Altaic, to which corresponds the ethnical designation Mongolo-Tatar, or more properly Mongolo-Turki[569]. Their domain is roughly separated from that of the Southern Mongols (Chap. VI.) by the Great Wall and the Kuen-lun range, beyond which it spreads out westwards over most of Western Asia, and a considerable part of North Europe, with many scattered groups in Central and South Russia, the Balkan Peninsula, and the Middle Danube basin. In the extreme north their territory stretches from the shores of the Pacific with Japan and parts of Sakhalin continually westwards across Korea, Siberia, Central and North Russia to Finland and Lapland. But its southern limits can be indicated only approximately by a line drawn from the Kuen-lun range westwards along the northern escarpments of the Iranian plateau, and round the southern shores of the Caspian to the Mediterranean. This line, however, must be drawn in such a way as to include Afghan Turkestan, much of the North Persian and Caucasian steppes, and nearly the whole of Asia Minor, while excluding Armenia, Kurdestan, and Syria.

Nor is it to be supposed that even within these limits the North Mongol territory is everywhere continuous. In East Europe especially, where they are for the most part comparatively recent intruders, the Mongols are found only in isolated and vanishing groups in the Lower and Middle Volga basin, the Crimea, and the North Caucasian steppe, and in more compact bodies in Rumelia, Bulgaria, and Hungary. Throughout all these districts, however, the process of absorption or assimilation to the normal European physical type is so far completed that many of the Nogai and other Russian "Tartars," as they are called, the Volga and Baltic Finns, the Magyars, and Osmanli Turks, would scarcely be recognised as members of the North Mongol family but for their common Finno-Turki speech, and the historic evidence by which their original connection with this division is established beyond all question.

In Central Asia also (North Irania, the Aralo-Caspian and Tarim basins) the Mongols have been in close contact with Caucasic peoples probably since the New Stone Age, and here intermediate types have been developed, by which an almost unbroken transition has been brought about between the yellow and the white races.

During recent years much light has been shed on the physiographical conditions of Central Asia in early times. Stein's[570] explorations in 1900-1 and 1906-8 in Chinese Turkestan, the Pumpelly Expeditions[571] in 1903 and 1904 in Russian Turkestan, the travels of Sven Hedin[572] in 1899-1902, and 1906-8, of Carruthers[573] in N.W. Mongolia, and the researches of Ellsworth Huntington[574] (a member of the first Pumpelly Expedition) in 1905-7 all bear testimony to the variation in climate which the districts of Central Asia have undergone since glacial times. There has been a general trend towards arid conditions, alternating with periods of greater humidity, when tracts, now deserted, were capable of maintaining a dense population. Abundant evidence of man's occupation has been found in delta oases formed by snow-fed mountain streams, or on the banks of vanished rivers, where now-a-days all is desolation, though, as T. Peisker[575] points out, climate was not the sole or even the main factor in many areas. In some places, as at Merv, the earliest occupation was only a few centuries before the Christian era, but at Anau near Askhabad some 300 miles east of the Caspian, explored by the Pumpelly Expedition, the earliest strata contained remains of Stone Age culture. The North Kurgan or tumulus, rising some 40 or 50 feet above the plain, showed a definite stratification of structures in sun-dried bricks, raised by successive generations of occupants. H. Schmidt, who was in charge of the excavations, was able to collect a valuable series of potsherds, showing a gradual evolution in form, technique and ornamentation, from the earliest to the latest periods. One point of great significance for establishing cultural if not physical relationships in this obscure region is the resemblance between the geometrical designs on pots of the early period and similar pottery found by MM. Gautier and Lampre[576] at Mussian, and by M. J. de Morgan[576] at Susa, while clay figurines from the South Kurgan (copper culture) are clearly of Babylonian type, the influence of which is seen much later in terra-cotta figurines discovered by Stein[577] at Yotkan.

With the progress of archaeological research, it becomes daily more evident that the whole of the North Mongol domain, from Finland to Japan, has passed through the Stone and Metal Ages, like most other habitable parts of the globe. During his wanderings in Siberia and Mongolia in the early nineties, Hans Leder[578] came upon countless prehistoric stations, kurgans (barrows), stone circles, and many megalithic monuments of various types. In West Siberia the barrows, which consist solely of earth without any stone-work, are by the present inhabitants called Chudskiye Kurgani, "Chudish Graves," and, as in North Russia, this term "Chude" is ascribed to a now vanished unknown race which formerly inhabited the land. To them, as to the "Toltecs" in Central America, all ancient monuments are credited, and while some regard them as prehistoric Finns, others identify them with the historic Scythians, the Scythians of Herodotus.

There are reasons, however, for thinking that the Chudes may represent an earlier race, the men of the Stone Age, who, migrating from north Europe eastwards, had reached the Tom valley (which drains to the Obi) before the extinction of the mammoth, and later spread over the whole of northern Asia, leaving everywhere evidence of their presence in the megalithic monuments now being daily brought to light in East Siberia, Mongolia, Korea, and Japan. This view receives support from the characters of two skulls found in 1895 by A. P. Mostitz in one of the five prehistoric stations on the left bank of the Sava affluent of the Selenga river, near Ust-Kiakta in Trans-Baikalia. They differ markedly from the normal Buryat (Siberian Mongol) type, recalling rather the long-shaped skulls of the South Russian kurgans, with cephalic indices 73.2 and 73.5, as measured by M. J. D. Talko-Hryncewicz[579]. Thus, in the very heart of the Mongol domain, the characteristically round-headed race would appear to have been preceded, as in Europe, by a long-headed type.

In East Siberia, and especially in the Lake Baikal region, Leder found extensive tracts strewn with kurgans, many of which have already been explored, and their contents deposited in the Irkutsk museum. Amongst these are great numbers of stone implements, and objects made of bone and mammoth tusks, besides carefully worked copper ware, betraying technical skill and some artistic taste in the designs. In Trans-Baikalia, still farther east, with the kurgans are associated the so-called Kameni Babi, "Stone Women," monoliths rough-hewn in the form of human figures. Many of these monoliths bear inscriptions, which, however, appear to be of recent date (mostly Buddhist prayers and formularies), and are not to be confounded with the much older rock inscriptions deciphered by W. Thomsen through the Turki language.

Continuing his investigations in Mongolia proper, Leder here also discovered earthen kurgans, which, however, differed from those of Siberia by being for the most part surmounted either with circular or rectangular stone structures, or else with monoliths. They are called Kueruektsur by the present inhabitants, who hold them in great awe, and never venture to touch them. Unfortunately strangers also are unable to examine their contents, all disturbance of the ground with spade or shovel being forbidden under pain of death by the Chinese officials, for fear of awakening the evil spirits, now slumbering peacefully below the surface. The Siberian burial mounds have yielded no bronze, a fact which indicates considerable antiquity, although no date can be set for its introduction into these regions. Better evidence of antiquity is found in the climatic changes resulting in recent desiccation, which must have taken place here as elsewhere, for the burials bear witness to the existence of a denser population than could be supported at the present time[580].

Such an antiquity is indeed required to explain the spread of neolithic remains to the Pacific seaboard, and especially to Korea and Japan. In Korea W. Gowland examined a dolmen 30 miles from Seul, which he describes and figures[581], and which is remarkable especially for the disproportionate size of the capstone, a huge undressed megalith 14-1/2 by over 13 feet. He refers to four or five others, all in the northern part of the peninsula, and regards them as "intermediate in form between a cist and a dolmen." But he thinks it probable that they were never covered by mounds, but always stood as monuments above ground, in this respect differing from the Japanese, the majority of which are all buried in tumuli. In some of their features these present a curious resemblance to the Brittany structures, but no stone implements appear to have been found in any of the burial mounds, and the Japanese chambered tombs, according to Hamada, Professor of Archaeology in Kyoto University, are usually attributed to the Iron Age (fifth to seventh centuries A.D.[582]).

In many districts Japan contains memorials of a remote past--shell mounds, cave-dwellings, and in Yezo certain pits, which are not occupied by the present Ainu population, but are by them attributed to the Koro-pok-guru, "People of the Hollows," who occupied the land before their arrival, and lived in huts built over these pits. Similar remains on an islet near Nemuro on the north-east coast of Yezo are said by the Japanese to have belonged to the Kobito, a dwarfish race exterminated by the Ainu, hence apparently identical with the Koro-pok-guru. They are associated by John Milne with some primitive peoples of the Kurile Islands, Sakhalin, and Kamchatka, who, like the Eskimo of the American coast, had extended formerly much farther south than at present.

In a kitchen-midden, 330 by 200 feet, near Shiidzuka in the province of Ibaraki, the Japanese antiquaries S. Yagi and M. Shinomura[583] have found numerous objects belonging to the Stone Age of Japan. Amongst them were flint implements, worked bones, ashes, pottery, and a whole series of clay figures of human beings. The finders suggest that these remains may have belonged to a homogeneous race of the Stone Period, who, however, were not the ancestors of the Ainu--hitherto generally regarded as the first inhabitants of Japan. In the national records vague reference is made to other aborigines, such as the "Long Legs," and the "Eight Wild Tribes," described as the enemies of the first Japanese settlers in Kiu-shiu, and reduced by Jimmu Tenno, the semi-mythical founder of the present dynasty; the Ebisu, who are probably to be identified with the Ainu; and the Seki-Manzi, "Stone-Men," also located in the southern island of Kiu-shiu. The last-mentioned, of whom, however, little further is known, seem to have some claim to be associated with the above described remains of early man in Japan[584].

In the extreme west the present Mongol peoples, being quite recent intruders, can in no way be connected with the abundant prehistoric relics daily brought to light in that region (South Russia, the Balkan Peninsula, Hungary). The same remark applies even to Finland itself, which was at one time supposed to be the cradle of the Finnish people, but is now shown to have been first occupied by Germanic tribes. From an exhaustive study of the bronze-yielding tumuli A. Hackman[585] concludes that the population of the Bronze Period was Teutonic, and in this he agrees both with Montelius and with W. Thomsen. The latter holds on linguistic grounds that at the beginning of the new era the Finns still dwelt east of the Gulf of Finland, whence they moved west in later times.

It is unfortunate that, owing probably to the character of the country, remains of the Stone Age in Babylonia are wanting so that no comparison can yet be made with the neolithic cultures of Egypt and the Aegean. The constant floods to which Babylonia was ever subject swept away all traces of early occupations until the advent of the Sumerians, who built their cities on artificial mounds. The question of Akkado-Sumerian[586] origins is by no means clear, for many important cities are unexplored and even unidentified, but the general trend of recent opinion may be noted. The linguistic problem is peculiarly complicated by the fact that almost all the Sumerian texts show evidence of Semitic influence, and consist to a great extent of religious hymns and incantations which often appear to be merely translations of Semitic ideas turned by Semitic priests into the formal religious Sumerian language. J. Halevy, indeed, followed by others, regarded Sumerian as no true language, but merely a priestly system of cryptography[587], based on Semitic. As regards linguistic affinities, K. A. Hermann[588] endeavoured to establish a connection between the early texts and Ural-Altaic, more especially with Ugro-Finnish. A more recent suggestion that the language is of Indo-European origin and structure rests on equally slight resemblances. The comparison with Chinese has already been noticed. J. D. Prince[589] utters a word of caution against comparing ancient texts with idioms of more recent peoples of Western Asia, in spite of many tempting resemblances, and claims that until further light has been shed on the problem Sumerian should be regarded as standing quite alone, "a prehistoric philological remnant."

E. Meyer[590] claims for the Sumerians not only linguistic but also physical isolation. The Sumerian type as represented on the monuments shows a narrow pointed nose, with straight bridge and small nostrils, cheeks and lips not fleshy, like the Semites, with prominent cheek-bones, small mouth, narrow lips finely curved, the lower jaw very short, with angular sharply projecting chin, oblique Mongolian eyes, low forehead, usually sloping away directly from the root of the nose. In fact the nose has almost the appearance of a bird's beak, projecting far in advance of mouth and chin, while the forehead almost disappears. The hair and beard are closely shaven. The Sumerians were undoubtedly a warlike people, fighting not like the Semites in loosely extended battle array, but in close phalanx, their large shields protecting their bodies from neck to feet, forming a rampart beyond which projected the inclined spears of the foremost rank. Battle axe and javelin were also used. Helmets protected head and neck. Besides lance or spear the royal leaders carried a curved throwing weapon, formed of three strands bound together at intervals with thongs of leather or bands of metal; this seems to have developed later into a sign of authority and hence into a sceptre. The bow, the typical weapon of the Semites and the mountainous people to the east, was unrepresented. The gods carried clubs with stone heads. It is important to notice that, in direct contrast to the Sumerians themselves, their gods had abundant hair on their heads, carefully curled and dressed, and a long curly beard on the chin, though cheeks and lips were closely shaven; these fashions recall those of the Semites. Thus, although the general view is to regard the Sumerians as the autochthones and the Semites as the later intruders in Babylonia, the Semitic character of the Sumerian gods points to an opposite conclusion. But the time has not yet come for any definite conclusion to be reached. All that can be said is that according to our present knowledge the assumption that the earliest population was Sumerian and that the Semites were the conquering intruders is only slightly more probable than the reverse[591].

Recent archaeological discoveries make Sumerian origins a little clearer. Explorations in Central Asia (as mentioned above p. 257) show that districts once well watered, and capable of supporting a large population, have been subject to periods of excessive drought, and this no doubt is the prime cause of the racial unrest which has ever been characteristic of the dwellers in these regions. A cycle of drought may well have prompted the Sumerian migration of the fourth millennium B.C., as it is shown to have prompted the later invasions of the last two thousand years[592]. Although there is no evidence to connect the original home of the Sumerians with any of the oases yet excavated in Central Asia, yet signs of cultural contact are not wanting, and it may safely be inferred that their civilisation was evolved in some region to the east of the Euphrates valley before their entrance into Babylonia[593].

Since Semitic influence was first felt in the north of Babylonia, at Akkad, it is assumed that the immigration was from the north-west from Arabia by way of the Syrian coastlands, and in this case also the impulse may have been the occurrence of an arid period in the centre of the Arabian continent. The Semites are found not as barbarian invaders, but as a highly cultivated people. They absorbed several cultural elements of the Sumerians, notably their script, and were profoundly influenced by Sumerian religion. The Akkadians are represented with elaborately curled hair and beard, and hence, in contradistinction to the shaven Sumerians, are referred to as "the black-headed ones." Their chief weapon was the bow, but they had also lances and battle axes. As among the Sumerians the sign of kingship was a boomerang-like sceptre[594]. Except for Babylon and Sippar, which throw little light on the early periods, no systematic excavation has been undertaken in northern Babylonia, and the site of Akkad is still unidentified.

The chronology of this early age of Babylonia is much disputed. The very high dates of 5000 or 6000 B.C. formerly assigned by many writers to the earliest remains of the Sumerians and the Babylonian Semites, depended to a great extent on the statement of Nabonidus (556 B.C.) that 3200 years separated his own age from that of Naram-Sin, the son of Sargon of Agade; for to Sargon, on this statement alone, a date of 3800 has usually been assigned[595]. This date presents many difficulties, leaving many centuries unrepresented by any royal names or records. Even the suggested emendation of the text reducing the estimate by a thousand years is not generally acceptable. Most authorities hesitate to date any Babylonian records before 3000 B.C.[596] and agree that the time has not arrived for fixing any definite dates for the early period.

Despite the legendary matter associated with his memory, Shar-Gani-sharri, commonly called Sargon of Akkad, about 2500 B.C. (Meyer), 2650 B.C. (King), was beyond question a historical person though it seems that there has been some confusion with Sharru-gi, or Sharrukin, also called Sargon, earliest king of Kish[597]. Tradition records how his mother, a royal princess, concealed his birth by placing him in a rush basket closed with bitumen and sending him adrift on the stream, from which he was rescued by Akki the water-carrier, who brought him up as his own child. The incident, about which there is nothing miraculous, presents a curious parallel to, if it be not the source of, similar tales related of Moses, Cyrus, and other ancient leaders of men. Sargon also tells us that he ruled from his capital, Agade, for 45 years over Upper and Lower Mesopotamia, governed the black-headed ones, as the Akkads are constantly called, rode in bronze chariots over rugged lands, and made expeditions thrice to the sea-coast. The expeditions are confirmed by inscriptions from Syria, though the cylinder of his son, Naram-Sin, found by Cesnola in Cyprus, is now regarded as of later date[598]. As they also penetrated to Sinai their influence appears to have extended over the whole of Syria and North Arabia. They erected great structures at Nippur, which was at that time so ancient that Naram-Sin's huge brick platform stood on a mass 30 feet thick of the accumulated debris of earlier buildings. Among the most interesting of recent discoveries at Nippur are pre-Semitic tablets containing accounts similar to those recorded in the book of Genesis, from which in some cases the latter have clearly been derived. The "Deluge Fragment" published in 1910 relates the warning given by the god Ea to Utnapishtim, the Babylonian Noah, and the directions for building a ship by means of which he and his family may escape, together with the beasts of the field and the birds of heaven[599]. A still later discovery agrees more closely with the Bible version, giving the name of the one pious man as Tagtog, Semitic Nuhu, and assigning nine months as the period of the duration of the flood. The same tablet also contains an account of the Fall of Man; but it is Noah, not Adam, who is tempted and falls, and the forbidden fruit is cassia[600].

Sennacherib's grandson, Ashurbanipal, who belongs to the late Assyrian empire when the centre of power had been shifted from Babylonia to Nineveh, has left recorded on his brick tablets how he overran Elam and destroyed its capital, Susa (645 B.C.). He states that from this place he brought back the effigy of the goddess, Nana, which had been carried away from her temple at Erech by an Elamite king by whom Akkad had been conquered 1635 years before, i.e. 2280 B.C. Over Akkad Elam ruled 300 years, and it was a king of this dynasty, Khudur-Lagamar, who has been identified by T. G. Pinches with the "Chedorlaomer, king of Elam" routed by Abraham (Gen. xiv. 14-17)[601]. Thus is explained the presence of Elamites at this time so far west as Syria, their own seat being amid the Kurdish mountains in the Upper Tigris basin.

The Elamites do not appear to have been of the same stock as the Sumerians. They are described as peaceful, industrious, and skilful husbandmen, with a surprising knowledge of irrigating processes. The non-Semitic language shows possible connections with Mitanni[602]. Yet the type would appear to be on the whole rather Semitic, judging at least from the large arched nose and thick beard of the Susian god, Ramman, brought by Ashurbanipal out of Elam, and figured in Layard's Monuments of Nineveh, 1st Series, Plate 65. This, however, may be explained by the fact that the Elamites were subdued at an early date by intruding Semites, although they afterwards shook off the yoke and became strong enough to conquer Mesopotamia and extend their expeditions to Syria and the Jordan. The capital of Elam was the renowned city of Susa (Shushan, whence Susiana, the modern Khuzistan). Recent excavations show that the settlement dates from neolithic times[603].

Even after the capture of Susa by Ashurbanipal, Elam again rose to great power under Cyrus the Great, who, however, was no Persian adventurer, as stated by Herodotus, but the legitimate Elamite ruler, as inscribed on his cylinder and tablet now in the British Museum:--"Cyrus, the great king, the king of Babylon, the king of Sumir and Akkad, the king of the four zones, the son of Kambyses, the great king, the king of Elam, the grandson of Cyrus the great king," who by the favour of Merodach has overcome the black-headed people (i.e. the Akkads) and at last entered Babylon in peace. On an earlier cylinder Nabonidus, last king of Babylon, tells us how this same Cyrus subdued the Medes--here called Mandas, "Barbarians"--and captured their king Astyages and his capital Ekbatana. But although Cyrus, hitherto supposed to be a Persian and a Zoroastrian monotheist, here appears as an Elamite and a polytheist, "it is pretty certain that although descended from Elamite kings, these were [at that time] kings of Persian race, who, after the destruction of the old [Elamite] monarchy by Ashurbanipal, had established a new dynasty at the city of Susa. Cyrus always traces his descent from Achaemenes, the chief of the leading Persian clan of Pasargadae[604]." Hence although wrong in speaking of Cyrus as an adventurer, Herodotus rightly calls him a Persian, and at this late date Elam itself may well have been already Aryanised in speech[605], while still retaining its old Sumerian religion. The Babylonian pantheon survived, in fact, till the time of Darius Hystaspes, who introduced Zoroastrianism with its supreme gods, Ahura-Mazda, creator of all good, and Ahriman, author of all evil.

It is now possible to gain some idea of the gradual growth of the city states of Babylonia. Beginning with a mere collection of rude reed huts, these were succeeded by structures of sun-dried bricks, built in a group for mutual protection, probably around a centre of a local god, and surrounded by a wall. The land around the settlement was irrigated by canals, and here the corn and vegetables were grown and the flocks and herds were tended for the maintenance of the population. The central figure was always the god, who occasionally gave his name to the site, and who was the owner of all the land, the inhabitants being merely his tenants who owed him rent for their estates. It was the god who waged wars with the neighbours, and with whom treaties were made. The treaty between Lagash and Umma fixing the limitations of their boundaries, a constant matter of dispute, was made by Ningirsu, god of Lagash, and the city god of Umma, under the arbitration of Enlil, the chief of the gods, whose central shrine was at Nippur.

With the growth of the cities disputes of territory were sure to arise, and either by conquest or amalgamation, cities became absorbed into states. The problem then was the adjustment of the various city gods, each reigning supreme in his own city, but taking a higher or lower place in the Babylonian pantheon. When one city gained a supremacy over all its neighbours, its governor might assume the title of king. But the king was merely the patesi, the steward of the city god. Even when the supremacy was sufficiently permanent for the establishment of a dynasty, this was a dynasty of the city rather than of a family, for the successive kings were not necessarily of the same family[606].

Among the city gods who developed into powerful deities were Anu of Uruk (Erech), Enlil of Nippur and Ea of Eridu (originally a sea-port). These became the supreme triad, Anu ruling over the heavens, enthroned on the northern pole, as king and father of the gods; Enlil, the Semitic Bel, god of earth, lord of the lands, formerly chief of all the gods; and Ea, god of the water-depths, whose son was ultimately to eclipse his father as Marduk of Babylon. A second triad is composed of the local deities who developed into Sin, the moon-god of Ur, Shamash the sun-god of Larsa, and the famous Ishtar, the great mother, goddess of love and queen of heaven. The realm of the dead was a dark place under the earth, where the dead lived as shadows, eating the dust of the earth. Their lot depended partly on their earlier lives, and partly on the devotion of their surviving relatives. Although their dead kings were deified there seems to be no evidence for a belief in a general resurrection or in the transmigration of souls. The hymns and prayers to the gods however show a very high religious level in spite of the important part played by soothsaying and exorcism, relics of earlier culture. The permanence of these may be partly ascribed to the essentially theocratic character of Babylonian government. The king was merely the agent of the god, whose desires were interpreted by the priestly soothsayers and exorcists, and no action could be undertaken in worldly or in religious concerns without their superintendence. The kings occasionally attempted to free themselves from the power of the priests, but the attempt was always vain. The power of the priests had often a sound economic basis, for the temples of the great cities were centres of vast wealth and of far-reaching trade, as is proved by the discovery of the commercial contracts stored in the temple archives[607].

How the family expands through the clan and tribe into the nation, is clearly seen in the Babylonian social system, in which the inhabitants of each city were still "divided into clans, all of whose members claimed to be descended from a common ancestor who had flourished at a more or less remote period. The members of each clan were by no means all in the same social position, some having gone down in the world, others having raised themselves; and amongst them we find many different callings--from agricultural labourers to scribes, and from merchants to artisans. No natural tie existed among the majority of these members except the remembrance of their common origin, perhaps also a common religion, and eventual rights of succession or claims upon what belonged to each one individually[608]." The god or goddess, it is suggested, who watched over each man, and of whom each was the son, was originally the god or goddess of the clan (its totem). So also in Egypt, the members of the community were all supposed to come of the same stock (pait), and to belong to the same family (paitu), whose chiefs (ropaitu) were the guardians of the family, several groups of such families being under a ropaitu-ha, or head chief[609].

Amongst the local institutions, it is startling to find a fully developed ground-landlord system, though not quite so bad as that still patiently endured in England, already flourishing ages ago in Babylonia. "The cost of repairs fell usually on the lessee, who was also allowed to build on the land he had leased, in which case it was declared free of all charges for a period of about ten years; but the house and, as a rule, all he had built, then reverted to the landlord[610]."

In many other respects great progress had been made, and it is the belief of von Ihring[611], Hommel[612] and others that from Babylonia was first diffused a knowledge of letters, astronomy, agriculture, navigation, architecture, and other arts, to the Nile valley, and mainly through Egypt to the Western World, and through Irania to China and India. In this generalisation there is probably a large measure of truth, although it will be seen farther on that the Asiatic origin of Egyptian culture is still far from being proved[613].

One element the two peoples certainly had in common--a highly developed agricultural system, which formed the foundation of their greatness, and was maintained in a rainless climate by a stupendous system of irrigation works. Such works were carried out on a prodigious scale by the ancient Babylonians six or eight thousand years ago. The plains of the Lower Euphrates and Tigris, since rendered desolate under Turkish misrule, are intersected by the remains of an intricate network of canalisation covering all the space between the two rivers, and are strewn with the ruins of many great cities, whose inhabitants, numbering scores of thousands, were supported by the produce of a highly cultivated region, which is now an arid waste varied only by crumbling mounds, stagnant waters, and the camping-grounds of a few Arab tent-dwellers.

* * * * *

Those who attach weight to distinctive racial qualities have always found a difficulty in attributing this wonderful civilisation to the same Mongolic people, who in their own homes have scarcely anywhere advanced beyond the hunting, fishing, or pastoral states. But it has always to be remembered that man, like all other zoological forms, necessarily reflects the character of his environment. The Mongols might in time become agriculturalists in the alluvial Mesopotamian lands, though the kindred people who give their name to the whole ethnical division and present its physical characters in an exaggerated form, ever remain tented nomads on the dry Central Asiatic steppe, which yields little but herbage, and is suitable for tillage only in a few more favoured districts. Here the typical Mongols, cut off from the arable lands of South Siberia by the Tian-shan and Altai ranges, and to some extent denied access to the rich fluvial valleys of the Middle Kingdom by the barrier of the Great Wall, have for ages led a pastoral life in the inhabitable tracts and oases of the Gobi wilderness and the Ordos region within the great bend of the Hoang-ho. During the historic period these natural and artificial ramparts have been several times surmounted by fierce Mongol hordes, pouring like irresistible flood-waters over the whole of China and many parts of Siberia, and extending their predatory or conquering expeditions across the more open northern plains westwards nearly to the shores of the Atlantic. But such devastating torrents, which at intervals convulsed and caused dislocations amongst half the settled populations of the globe, had little effect on the tribal groups that remained behind. These continued and continue to occupy the original camping-grounds, as changeless and uniform in their physical appearance, mental characters, and social usages as the Arab bedouins and all other inhabitants of monotonous undiversified steppe lands.

De Ujfalvy's suggestion that the typical Mongols of the plains, with whom we are now dealing, were originally a long-headed race, can scarcely be taken seriously. At present and, in fact, throughout historic times, all true Mongol peoples are and have been distinguished by a high degree of brachycephaly, with cephalic index generally from 87 upwards, and it may be remembered that the highest known index of any undeformed skull was that of Huxley's Mongol (98.21). But, as already noticed, those recovered from prehistoric, or neolithic kurgans, are found to be dolichocephalous like those of palaeolithic and early neolithic man in Europe.

Taken in connection with the numerous prehistoric remains above recorded from all parts of Central Asia and Siberia, this fact may perhaps help to bring de Ujfalvy's view into harmony with the actual conditions. Everything will be explained by assuming that the proto-Mongolic tribes, spreading from the Tibetan plateau over the plains now bearing their name, found that region already occupied by the long-headed Caucasic peoples of the Stone Ages, whom they either exterminated or drove north to the Altai uplands, and east to Manchuria and Korea, where a strong Caucasic strain still persists. De Ujfalvy's long-heads would thus be, not the proto-Mongols who were always round-headed, but the long-headed neolithic pre-Mongol race expelled by them from Mongolia who may provisionally be termed proto-Nordics.

That this region has been their true home since the first migrations from the south there can be no doubt. Here land and people stand in the closest relation one to the other; here every conspicuous physical feature recalls some popular memory; every rugged crest is associated with the name of some national hero, every lake or stream is still worshipped or held in awe as a local deity, or else the abode of the ancestral shades. Here also the Mongols proper form two main divisions, Sharra in the east and Kalmuk in the west, while a third group, the somewhat mixed Buryats, have long been settled in the Siberian provinces of Irkutsk and Trans-Baikalia. Under the Chinese semi-military administration all except the Buryats, who are Russian subjects, are constituted since the seventeenth century in 41 Aimaks (large tribal groups or principalities with hereditary khans) and 226 Koshungs, "Banners," that is, smaller groups whose chiefs are dependent on the khans of their respective Aimaks, who are themselves directly responsible to the imperial government. Subjoined is a table of these administrative divisions, which present a curious but effective combination of the tribal and political systems, analogous to the arrangement in Pondoland and some other districts in Cape Colony, where the hereditary tribal chief assumes the functions of a responsible British magistrate.

Tribal or Territorial Aimaks Koshungs Divisions (Principalities) (Banners)

Khalkas 4 86 Inner Mongolia with Ordos 25 51 Chakars 1 8 Ala-Shan 1 3 Koko-nor and Tsaidam 5 29 Sungaria 4 32 Uriankhai 1 17 -- --- 41 226

Since their organisation in Aimaks and Koshungs, the Mongols have ceased to be a terror to the surrounding peoples. The incessant struggles between these tented warriors and the peaceful Chinese populations, which began long before the dawn of history, were brought to a close with the overthrow of the Sungarian power in the eighteenth century, when their political cohesion was broken, and the whole nation reduced to a state of abject helplessness, from which they cannot now hope to recover. The arm of Chinese rule could be replaced only by the firmer grip of the northern autocrat, whose shadow already lies athwart the Gobi wilderness.

Thus the only escape from the crushing monotony of a purely pastoral life, no longer relieved by intervals of warlike or predatory expeditions, lies in a survival of the old Shamanist superstitions, or a further development of the degrading Tibetan lamaism represented at Urga by the Kutukhtu, an incarnation of the Buddha only less revered than the Dalai Lama himself[614]. Besides this High Priest at Urga, there are over a hundred smaller incarnations--Gigens, as they are called--and these saintly beings possess unlimited means of plundering their votaries. The smallest favour, the touch of their garments, a pious ejaculation or blessing, is regarded as a priceless spiritual gift, and must be paid for with costly offerings. Even the dead do not escape these exactions. However disposed of, whether buried or cremated, like the khans and lamas, or exposed to beasts and birds of prey, as is the fate of the common folk, "masses," which also command a high price, have to be said for forty days to relieve their souls from the torments of the Buddhist purgatory.

It is a singular fact, which, however, may perhaps admit of explanation, that nearly all the true Mongol peoples have been Buddhists since the spread of Sakya-Muni's teachings throughout Central Asia, while their Turki kinsmen are zealous followers of the Prophet. Thus is seen, for instance, the strange spectacle of two Mongolic groups, the Kirghiz of the Turki branch and the Kalmuks of the West Mongol branch, encamped side by side on the Lower Volga plains, the former all under the banner of the Crescent, the latter devout worshippers of all the incarnations of Buddha. But analogous phenomena occur amongst the European peoples, the Teutons being mainly Protestants, those of neo-Latin speech mainly Roman Catholics, and the Easterns Orthodox. From all this, however, nothing more can be inferred than that the religions are partly a question of geography, partly determined by racial temperament and political conditions; while the religious sentiment, being universal, is above all local or ethnical considerations.

Under the first term of the expression Mongolo-Turki (p. 256) are comprised, besides the Mongols proper, nearly all those branches of the division which lie to the east and north-east of Mongolia, and are in most respects more closely allied with the Mongol than with the Turki section. Such are the Tunguses, with the kindred Manchus, Golds, Orochons, Lamuts, and others of the Amur basin, the Upper Lena head-streams, the eastern affluents of the Yenisei, and the shores of the Sea of Okhotsk; the Gilyaks about the Amur estuary and in the northern parts of Sakhalin; the Kamchadales in South Kamchatka; in the extreme north-east the Koryaks, Chukchis, and Yukaghirs; lastly the Koreans, Japanese, and Liu-Kiu (Lu-Chu) Islanders. To the Mongol section thus belong nearly all the peoples lying between the Yenisei and the Pacific (including most of the adjacent archipelagos), and between the Great Wall and the Arctic Ocean. The only two exceptions are the Yakuts of the middle and Lower Lena and neighbouring Arctic rivers, who are of Turki stock; and the Ainus of Yezo, South Sakhalin, and some of the Kurile Islands, who belong to the Caucasic division.

M. A. Czaplicka proposes a useful classification of the various peoples of Siberia, usually grouped on account of linguistic affinities as Ural-Altaians, and as "no other part of the world presents a racial problem of such complexity and in regard to no other part of the world's inhabitants have ethnologists of the last hundred years put forward such widely differing hypotheses of their origin[615]," her tabulation may serve to clear the way. She divides the whole area[616] into Palaeo-Siberians, representing the most ancient stock of dwellers in Siberia, and Neo-Siberians, comprising the various tribes of Central Asiatic origin who are sufficiently differentiated from the kindred peoples of their earlier homes as to deserve a generic name of their own. The Palaeo-Siberians thus include the Chukchi, Koryak, Kamchadale, Ainu, Gilyak, Eskimo, Aleut, Yukaghir, Chuvanzy and Ostyak of Yenisei. The Neo-Siberians include the Finnic Tribes (Ugrian Ostyak, and Vogul), Samoyedic Tribes, Turkic Tribes (Yakut and Turko-Tatars of Tobolsk and Tomsk Governments), Mongolic Tribes (Western Mongols or Kalmuk, Eastern Mongols, and Buryat), and Tungusic Tribes (Tungus, Chapogir, Gold, Lamut, Manchu, Manyarg, Oroch, Orochon ("Reindeer Tungus"), Oroke).

A striking illustration of the general statement that the various cultural states are a question not of race, but of environment, is afforded by the varying social conditions of the widespread Tungus family, who are fishers on the Arctic coast, hunters in the East Siberian woodlands, and for the most part sedentary tillers of the soil and townspeople in the rich alluvial valleys of the Amur and its southern affluents. The Russians, from whom we get the term Tungus[617], recognise these various pursuits, and speak of Horse, Cattle, Reindeer, Dog, Steppe, and Forest Tunguses, besides the settled farmers and stock-breeders of the Amur. Their original home appears to have been the Shan-alin uplands, where they dwelt with the kindred Niu-chi (Manchus) till the thirteenth century, when the disturbances brought about by the wars and conquests of Jenghiz-Khan drove them to their present seat in East Siberia. The type, although essentially Mongolic in the somewhat flat features, very prominent cheek-bones, slant eyes, long lank hair, yellowish brown colour and low stature, seems to show admixture with a higher race in the shapely frame, the nimble, active figure, and quick, intelligent expression, and especially in the variable skull. While generally round (indices 80 deg. to 84 deg.), the head is sometimes flat on the top, like that of the true Mongol, sometimes high and short, which, as Hamy tells us, is specially characteristic of the Turki race[618].

All observers speak in enthusiastic language of the temperament and moral qualities of the Tunguses, and particularly of those groups that roam the forests about the Tunguska tributaries of the Yenisei, which take their name from these daring hunters and trappers. "Full of animation and natural impulse, always cheerful even in the deepest misery, holding themselves and others in like respect, of gentle manners and poetic speech, obliging without servility, unaffectedly proud, scorning falsehood, and indifferent to suffering and death, the Tunguses are unquestionably an heroic people[619]."

A few have been brought within the pale of the Orthodox Church, and in the extreme south some are classed as Buddhists. But the great bulk of the Tungus nation are still Shamanists. Indeed the very word Shaman is of Tungus origin, though current also amongst the Buryats and Yakuts. It is often taken to be the equivalent of priest; but in point of fact it represents a stage in the development of natural religion which has scarcely yet reached the sacerdotal state. "Although in many cases the shamans act as priests, and take part in popular and family festivals, prayers, and sacrifices, their chief importance is based on the performance of duties which distinguish them sharply from ordinary priests[620]." Their functions are threefold, those of the medicine-man (the leech, or healer by supernatural means); of the soothsayer (the prophet through communion with the invisible world); and of the priest, especially in his capacity as exorcist, and in his general power to influence, control, or even coerce the good and evil spirits on behalf of their votaries. But as all spirits are, or were originally, identified with the souls of the departed, it follows that in its ultimate analysis Shamanism resolves itself into a form of ancestry-worship.

The system, of which there are many phases reflecting the different cultural states of its adherents, still prevails amongst all the Siberian aborigines[621], and generally amongst all the uncivilised Ural-Altaic populations, so that here again the religions strictly reflect the social condition of the peoples. Thus the somewhat cultured Finns, Turks, Mongols, and Manchus are all either Christians, Muhammadans, or Buddhists; while the uncultured but closely related Samoyeds, Ostyaks, Orochons, Tunguses, Golds, Gilyaks, Koryaks, and Chukchi, are almost without exception Shamanists.

The shamans do not appear to constitute a special caste or sacerdotal order, like the hierarchies of the Christian Churches. Some are hereditary, some elected by popular vote, so to say. They may be either men, or women (shamanka), married or single; and if "rank" is spoken of, it simply means greater or less proficiency in the performance of the duties imposed on them. Everything thus depends on their personal merits, which naturally gives rise to much jealousy between the members of the craft. Thus amongst the "whites" and the "blacks," that is, those whose dealings are with the good and the bad spirits respectively, there is in some districts a standing feud, often resulting in fierce encounters and bloodshed. The Buryats tell how the two factions throw axes at each other at great distances, the struggle usually ending in the death of one of the combatants. The blacks, who serve the evil spirits, bringing only disease, death, or ill-luck, and even killing people by eating up their souls, are of course the least popular, but also the most dreaded. Many are credited with extraordinary and even miraculous powers, and there can be no doubt that they often act up to their reputation by performing almost incredible conjuring tricks in order to impose on the credulity of the ignorant, or outbid their rivals for the public favour. Old Richard Johnson of Chancelour's expedition to Muscovy records how he saw a Samoyed shaman stab himself with a sword, then make the sword red hot and thrust it through his body, so that the point protruded at the back, and Johnson was able to touch it with his finger. They then bound the wizard tight with a reindeer-rope, and went through some performances curiously like those of the Davenport brothers and other modern conjurers[622].

To the much-discussed question whether the shamans are impostors, the best answer has perhaps been given by Castren, who, speaking of the same Samoyed magicians, remarks that if they were merely cheats, we should have to suppose that they did not share the religious beliefs of their fellow-tribesmen, but were a sort of rationalists far in advance of the times. Hence it would seem much more probable that they deceived both themselves and others[623], while no doubt many bolster up a waning reputation by playing the mountebank where there is no danger of detection.

"Shamanism amongst the Siberian peoples," concludes our Russian authority, "is at the present time in a moribund condition; it must die out with those beliefs among which alone such phenomena can arise and flourish. Buddhism on the one hand, and Muhammadanism on the other, not to mention Christianity, are rapidly destroying the old ideas of the tribes among whom the shamans performed. Especially has the more ancient Black Faith suffered from the Yellow Faith preached by the lamas. But the shamans, with their dark mysterious rites, have made a good struggle for life, and are still frequently found among the native Christians and Muhammadans. The mullahs and lamas have even been obliged to become shamans to a great extent, and many Siberian tribes, who are nominally Christians, believe in shamans, and have recourse to them."

Of all members of the Tungusic family the Manchus alone can be called a historical people. If they were really descended from the Khitans of the Sungari valley, then their authentic records will date from the tenth century A.D., when these renowned warriors, after overthrowing the Pu-hai (925), founded the Liao dynasty and reduced a great part of North China and surrounding lands. The Khitans, from whom China was known to Marco Polo as Khitai (Cathay), as it still is to the Russians, were conquered in 1125 by the Niu-chi (Yu-chi, Nu-chin) of the Shan-alin uplands, reputed cradle of the Manchu race. These Niu-chi, direct ancestors of the Manchus, founded (1115) the State known as that of the "Golden Tartars," from Kin, "gold," the title adopted by their chief Aguta, "because iron (in reference to the Liao, 'Iron' dynasty) may rust, but gold remains ever pure and bright." The Kins, however, retained their brightness only a little over a century, having been eclipsed by Jenghiz-Khan in 1234. But about the middle of the fourteenth century the Niu-chi again rose to power under Aishiu-Gioro, who, although of miraculous birth and surrounded by other legendary matter, appears to have been a historical person. He may be regarded as the true founder of the Manchu dynasty, for it was in his time that this name came into general use. Sing-tsu, one of his descendants, constructed the palisade, a feeble imitation of the Great Wall, sections of which still exist. Thai-tsu, a still more famous member of the family, greatly extended the Manchu Kingdom (1580-1626), and it was his son Tai-dsung who first assumed the imperial dignity under the title of Tai-Tsing. After his death, the Ming dynasty having been overthrown by a rebel chief, the Manchus were invited by the imperialists to aid in restoring order, entered Peking in triumph, and, finding that the last of the Mings had committed suicide, placed Tai-dsung's nephew on the throne, thus founding the Manchu dynasty (1644) which lasted down to 1912.

Such has been the contribution of the Manchu people to history; their contributions to arts, letters, science, in a word, to the general progress of mankind, have been nil. They found the Middle Kingdom, after ages of a sluggish growth, in a state of absolute stagnation, and there they have left it. On the other hand their assumption of the imperial administration brought about their own ruin, their effacement, and almost their very extinction as a separate nationality[624]. Manchuria, like Mongolia, is organised in a number of half military, half civil divisions, the so-called Paki, or "Eight Banners," and the constant demand made on these reserves, to support the dynasty and supply trustworthy garrisons for all the strongholds of the empire, has drawn off the best blood of the people, in fact sapped its vitality at the fountain-head. Then the rich arable tracts thus depleted were gradually occupied by agricultural settlers from the south, with the result that the Manchu race has nearly disappeared. From the ethnical standpoint the whole region beyond the Great Wall as far north as the Amur has practically become an integral part of China, and from the political standpoint since 1898 an integral part of the Russian empire. Towards the middle of the nineteenth century the Eight Banners numbered scarcely more than a quarter of a million, and about that time the Abbe Huc declared that "the Manchu nationality is destroyed beyond recovery. At present we shall look in vain for a single town or a single village throughout Manchuria which is not exclusively inhabited by Chinese. The local colour has been completely effaced, and except a few nomad groups nobody speaks Manchu[625]."

Similar testimony is afforded by later observers, and Henry Lansdell, amongst others, remarks that "the Manchu, during the two centuries they have reigned in China, may be said to have been working out their own annihilation. Their manners, language, their very country has become Chinese, and some maintain that the Manchu proper are now extinct[626]."

But the type, so far from being extinct, may be said to have received a considerable expansion, especially amongst the populations of north-east China. The taller stature and greatly superior physical appearance of the inhabitants of Tien-tsin and surrounding districts[627] over those of the southern provinces (Fokien, Kwang-tung), who are the chief representatives of the Chinese race abroad, seem best explained by continual crossings with the neighbouring Manchu people, at least since the twelfth century, if not earlier.

Closely related to the Manchus (of the same stock says Sir H. H. Howorth, the distinction being purely political) are the Dauri, who give their name to the extensive Daur plateau, and formerly occupied both sides of the Upper Amur. Daur is, in fact, the name applied by the Buryats to all the Tungus peoples of the Amur basin. The Dauri proper, who are now perhaps the best representatives of the original Manchu type, would seem to have intermingled at a remote time with the long-headed pre-Mongol populations of Central Asia. They are "taller and stronger than the Oronchons [Tungus groups lower down the Amur]; the countenance is oval and more intellectual, and the cheeks are less broad. The nose is rather prominent, and the eyebrows straight. The skin is tawny, and the hair brown[628]." Most of these characters are such as we should expect to find in a people of mixed Mongolo-Caucasic descent, the latter element being derived from the long-headed race who had already reached the present Mongolia, Manchuria, Korea, and the adjacent islands during neolithic times. Thus may be explained the tall stature, somewhat regular features, brown hair, light eyes, and even florid complexion so often observed amongst the present inhabitants of Manchuria, Korea, and parts of North China.

But no admixture, except of Chinese literary terms, is seen in the Manchu language, which, like Mongolic, is a typical member of the agglutinating Ural-Altaic family. Despite great differences, lexical, phonetic, and even structural, all the members of this widespread order of speech have in common a number of fundamental features, which justify the assumption that all spring from an original stock language, which has long been extinct, and the germs of which were perhaps first developed on the Tibetan plateau. The essential characters of the system are:--(1) a "root" or notional term, generally a closed syllable, nominal or verbal, with a vowel or diphthong, strong or weak (hard or soft) according to the meaning of the term, hence incapable of change; (2) a number of particles or relational terms somewhat loosely postfixed to the root, but incorporated with it by the principle of (3) vowel harmony, a kind of vocal concordance, in virtue of which the vowels of all the postfixes must harmonise with the unchangeable vowel of the root. If this is strong all the following vowels of the combination, no matter what its length, must be strong; if weak they must conform in the same way. With nominal roots the postfixes are necessarily limited to the expression of a few simple relations; but with verbal roots they are in principle unlimited, so that the multifarious relations of the verb to its subject and object are all incorporated in the verbal compound itself, which may thus run at times to inordinate lengths. Hence we have the expression "incorporating," commonly applied to this agglutinating system, which sometimes goes so far as to embody the notions of causality, possibility, passivity, negation, intensity, condition, and so on, besides the direct pronominal objects, in one interminable conglomerate, which is then treated as a simple verb, and run through all the secondary changes of number, person, tense, and mood. The result is an endless number of theoretically possible verbal forms, which, although in practice naturally limited to the ordinary requirements of speech, are far too numerous to allow of a complete verbal paradigm being constructed of any fully developed member of the Ural-Altaic group, such, for instance, as Yakut, Tungus, Turki, Mordvinian, Finnish, or Magyar.

In this system the vowels are classed as strong or hard (a, o, u), weak or soft (the same umlauted: ae, oe, ue), and neutral (generally e, i), these last being so called because they occur indifferently with the two other classes. Thus, if the determining root vowel is a (strong), that of the postfixes may be either a (strong), e or i (neutral); if ae (weak), that of the postfixes may be either ae (weak), or e or i as before. The postfixes themselves no doubt were originally notional terms worn down in form and meaning, so as to express mere abstract relation, as in the Magyar vel = with, from veli = companion. Tacked on to the root fa = tree, this will give the ablative case, first unharmonised, fa-vel, then harmonised, fa-val = tree-with, with a tree. In the early Magyar texts of the twelfth century inharmonic compounds, such as halal-nek, later halak-nak = at death, are numerous, from which it has been inferred that the principle of vowel harmony is not an original feature of the Ural-Altaic languages, but a later development, due in fact to phonetic decay, and still scarcely known in some members of the group, such as Votyak and Highland Cheremissian (Volga Finn). But M. Lucien Adam holds that these idioms have lost the principle through foreign (Russian) influence, and that the few traces still perceptible are survivals from a time when all the Ural-Altaic tongues were subject to progressive vowel harmony[629].

But however this be, Dean Byrne is disposed to regard the alternating energetic utterance of the hard, and indolent utterance of the soft vowel series, as an expression of the alternating active and lethargic temperament of the race, such alternations being themselves due to the climatic conditions of their environment. "Certainly the life of the great nomadic races involves a twofold experience of this kind, as they must during their abundant summer provide for their rigorous winter, when little can be done. Their character, too, involves a striking combination of intermittent indolence and energy; and it is very remarkable that this distinction of roots is peculiar to the languages spoken originally where this great distinction of seasons exists. The fact that the distinction [between hard and soft] is imparted to all the suffixes of a root proves that the radical characteristic which it expresses is thought with these; and consequently that the radical idea is retained in the consciousness while these are added to it[630]."

This is a highly characteristic instance of the methods followed by Dean Byrne in his ingenious but hopeless attempt to explain the subtle structure of speech by the still more subtle temperament of the speaker, taken in connection with the alternating nature of the climate. The feature in question cannot be due to such alternation of mood and climate, because it is persistent throughout all seasons, while the hard and soft elements occur simultaneously, one might say, promiscuously, in conversation under all mental states of those conversing.

The true explanation is given by Schleicher, who points out that progressive vocal assimilation is the necessary result of agglutination, which by this means binds together the idea and its relations in their outward expression, just as they are already inseparately associated in the mind of the speaker. Hence it is that such assonance is not confined to the Ural-Altaic group, analogous processes occurring at certain stages of their growth in all forms of speech, as in Wolof, Zulu-Xosa, Celtic (expressed by the formula of Irish grammarians: "broad to broad, slender to slender"), and even in Latin, as in such vocalic concordance as: annus, perennis; ars, iners; lego, diligo. In these examples the root vowel is influenced by that of the prefix, while in the Mongolo-Turki family the root vowel, coming first, is unchangeable, but, as explained, influences the vowels of the postfixes, the phonetic principle being the same in both systems.

Both Mongol and Manchu are cultivated languages employing modified forms of the Uiguric (Turki) script, which is based on the Syriac introduced by the Christian (Nestorian) missionaries in the seventh century. It was first adopted by the Mongols about 1280, and perfected by the scribe Tsorji Osir under Jenezek Khan (1307-1311). The letters, connected together by continuous strokes, and slightly modified, as in Syriac, according to their position at the beginning, middle, or end of the word, are disposed in vertical columns from left to right, an arrangement due no doubt to Chinese influence. This is the more probable since the Manchus, before the introduction of the Mongol system in the sixteenth century, employed the Chinese characters ever since the time of the Kin dynasty.

None of the other Tungusic or north-east Siberian peoples possess any writing system except the Yukaghirs of the Yasachnaya affluent of the Kolymariver, who were visited in 1892 by the Russian traveller, S. Shargorodsky. From his report[631], it appears that this symbolic writing is carved with a sharp knife out of soft fresh birch-bark, these simple materials sufficing to describe the tracks followed on hunting and fishing expeditions, as well as the sentiments of the young women in their correspondence with their sweethearts. Specimens are given of these curious documents, some of which are touching and even pathetic. "Thou goest hence, and I bide alone, for thy sake still to weep and moan," writes one disconsolate maid to her parting lover. Another with a touch of jealousy: "Thou goest forth thy Russian flame to seek, who stands 'twixt thee and me, thy heart from me apart to keep. In a new home joy wilt thou find, while I must ever grieve, as thee I bear in mind, though another yet there be who loveth me." Or again: "Each youth his mate doth find; my fate alone it is of him to dream, who to another wedded is, and I must fain contented be, if only he forget not me." And with a note of wail: "Thou hast gone hence, and of late it seems this place for me is desolate; and I too forth must fare, that so the memories old I may forget, and from the pangs thus flee of those bright days, which here I once enjoyed with thee."

Details of domestic life may even be given, and one accomplished maiden is able to make a record in her note-book of the combs, shawls, needles, thimble, cake of soap, lollipops, skeins of wool, and other sundries, which she has received from a Yakut packman, in exchange for some clothes she has made him. Without illustrations no description of the process would be intelligible. Indeed it would seem these primitive documents are not always understood by the young folks themselves. They gather at times in groups to watch the process of composition by some expert damsel, the village "notary," and much merriment, we are told, is caused by the blunders of those who fail to read the text aright.

It is not stated whether the system is current amongst the other Yukaghir tribes, who dwell on the banks of the Indigirka, Yana, Kerkodona, and neighbouring districts. They thus skirt the Frozen Ocean from near the Lena delta to and beyond the Kolyma, and are conterminous landwards with the Yakuts on the south-west and the Chukchi on the north-east. With the Chukchi, the Koryaks, the Kamchadales, and the Gilyaks they form a separate branch of the Mongolic division sometimes grouped together as "Hyperboreans," but distinguished from other Ural-Altaic peoples perhaps strictly on linguistic grounds. Although now reduced to scarcely 1500, the Yukaghirs were formerly a numerous people, and the popular saying that their hearths on the banks of the Kolyma at one time outnumbered the stars in the sky seems a reminiscence of more prosperous days. But great inroads have been made by epidemics, tribal wars, the excessive use of coarse Ukraine tobacco and of bad spirits, indulged in even by the women and children. "A Yukaghir, it is said, never intoxicates himself alone, but calls upon his family to share the drink, even children in arms being supplied with a portion[632]." Their language, which A. Schiefner regards as radically distinct from all others[633], is disappearing even more rapidly than the people themselves, if it be not already quite extinct. In the eighties it was spoken only by about a dozen old persons, its place being taken almost everywhere by the Turki dialect of the Yakuts[634].

There appears to be a curious interchange of tribal names between the Chukchi and their Koryak neighbours, the term Koryak being the Chukchi Khorana, "Reindeer," while the Koryaks are said to call themselves Chauchau, whence some derive the word Chukchi. Hooper, however, tells us that the proper form of Chukchi is Tuski, "Brothers," or "Confederates[635]," and in any case the point is of little consequence, as Dittmar is probably right in regarding both groups as closely related, and sprung originally from one stock[636]. Jointly they occupy the north-east extremity of the continent between the Kolyma and Bering Strait, together with the northern parts of Kamchatka; the Chukchi lying to the north, the Koryaks to the south, mainly round about the north-eastern inlets of the Sea of Okhotsk. Reasons have already been advanced for supposing that the Chukchi were a Tungus people who came originally from the Amur basin. In their arctic homes they appear to have waged long wars with the Onkilon (Ang-kali) aborigines, gradually merging with the survivors and also mingling both with the Koryaks and Chuklukmiut Eskimo settled on the Asiatic side of Bering Strait.

But their relations to all these peoples are involved in great obscurity, and while some connect them with the Itelmes of Kamchatka[637], by others they have been affiliated to the Eskimo, owing to the Eskimo dialect said to be spoken by them. But this "dialect" is only a trading jargon, a sort of "pidgin Eskimo" current all round the coast, and consisting of Chukchi, Innuit, Koryak, English, and even Hawaii elements, mingled together in varying proportions. The true Chukchi language, of which Nordenskioeld collected 1000 words, is quite distinct from Eskimo, and probably akin to Koryak[638], and the Swedish explorer aptly remarks that "this race, settled on the primeval route between the Old and New World, bears an unmistakable stamp of the Mongols of Asia and the Eskimo and Indians of America." He was much struck by the great resemblance of the Chukchi weapons and household utensils to those of the Greenland Eskimo, while Signe Rink shows that even popular legends have been diffused amongst the populations on both sides of Bering Strait[639]. Such common elements, however, prove little for racial affinity, which seems excluded by the extremely round shape of the Chukchi skull, as compared with the long-headed Eskimo. But the type varies considerably both amongst the so-called "Fishing Chukchi," who occupy permanent stations along the seaboard, and the "Reindeer Chukchi," who roam the inland districts, shifting their camping-grounds with the seasons. There are no hereditary chiefs, and little deference is paid to the authority even of the owner of the largest reindeer herds, on whom the Russians have conferred the title of Jerema, regarding him as the head of the Chukchi nation, and holding him responsible for the good conduct of his rude subjects. Although nominal Christians, they continue to sacrifice animals to the spirits of the rivers and mountains, and also to practise Shamanist rites. They believe in an after-life, but only for those who die a violent death. Hence the resignation and even alacrity with which the hopelessly infirm and the aged submit, when the time comes, to be dispatched by their kinsfolk, in accordance with the tribal custom of kamitok, which still survives in full vigour amongst the Chukchi, as amongst the Sumatran Battas, and may be traced in many other parts of the world.

"The doomed one," writes Harry de Windt, "takes a lively interest in the proceedings, and often assists in the preparation for his own death. The execution is always preceded by a feast, where seal and walrus meat are greedily devoured, and whisky consumed till all are intoxicated. A spontaneous burst of singing and the muffled roll of walrus-hide drums then herald the fatal moment. At a given signal a ring is formed by the relations and friends, the entire settlement looking on from the background. The executioner (usually the victim's son or brother) then steps forward, and placing his right foot behind the back of the condemned, slowly strangles him to death with a walrus-thong. A kamitok took place during the latter part of our stay[640]."

This custom of "voluntary death" is sometimes due to sorrow at the death of a near relative, a quarrel at home, or merely weariness of life, and Bogoras thinks that the custom of killing old people does not exist as such, but is voluntarily chosen in preference to the hard life of an invalid[641].

Most recent observers have come to look upon the Chukchi and Koryaks as essentially one and the same people, the chief difference being that the latter are if possible even more degraded than their northern neighbours[642]. Like them they are classed as sedentary fisherfolk or nomad reindeer-owners, the latter, who call themselves Tumugulu, "Wanderers," roaming chiefly between Ghiyiginsk Bay and the Anadyr river. Through them the Chukchi merge gradually in the Itelmes, who are better known as Kamchadales, from the Kamchatka river, where they are now chiefly concentrated. Most of the Itelmes are already Russified in speech and--outwardly at least--in religion; but they still secretly immolate a dog now and then, to propitiate the malevolent beings who throw obstacles in the way of their hunting and fishing expeditions. Yet their very existence depends on their canine associates, who are of a stout, almost wolfish breed, inured to hunger and hardships, and excellent for sledge work.

Somewhat distinct both from all these Hyperboreans and from their neighbours, the Orochons, Golds, Manegrs and other Tungus peoples, are the Gilyaks, formerly widespread, but now confined to the Amur delta and the northern parts of Sakhalin[643]. Some observers have connected them with the Ainu and the Korean aborigines, while A. Anuchin detects two types--a Mongoloid with sparse beard, high cheek-bones, and flat face, and a Caucasic with bushy beard and more regular features[644]. The latter traits have been attributed to Russian mixture, but, as conjectured by H. von Siebold, are more probably due to a fundamental connection with their Ainu neighbours[645].

Mentally the Gilyaks take a low position--H. Lansdell thought the lowest of any people he had met in Siberia[646]. Despite the zeal of the Russian missionaries, and the inducements to join the fold, they remain obdurate Shamanists, and even fatalists, so that "if one falls into the water the others will not help him out, on the plea that they would thus be opposing a higher power, who wills that he should perish.... The soul of the Gilyak is supposed to pass at death into his favourite dog, which is accordingly fed with choice food; and when the spirit has been prayed by the shamans out of the dog, the animal is sacrificed on his master's grave. The soul is then represented as passing underground, lighted and guided by its own sun and moon, and continuing to lead there, in its spiritual abode, the same manner of life and pursuits as in the flesh[647]."

A speciality of the Gilyaks, as well as of their Gold neighbours, is the fish-skin costume, made from the skins of two kinds of salmon, and from this all these aborigines are known to the Chinese as Yupitatse, "Fish-skin-clad-People." "They strip it off with great dexterity, and by beating with a mallet remove the scales, and so render it supple. Clothes thus made are waterproof. I saw a travelling-bag, and even the sail of a boat, made of this material[648]."

Like the Ainu, the Gilyaks may be called bear-worshippers. At least this animal is supposed to be one of their chief gods, although they ensnare him in winter, keep him in confinement, and when well fattened tear him to pieces, devouring his mangled remains with much feasting and jubilation.

Since the opening up of Korea, some fresh light has been thrown upon the origins and ethnical relations of its present inhabitants. In his monograph on the Yellow Races[649] Hamy had included them in the Mongol division, but not without reserve, adding that "while some might be taken for Tibetans, others look like an Oceanic cross; hence the contradictory reports and theories of modern travellers." Since then the study of some skulls forwarded to Paris has enabled him to clear up some of the confusion, which is obviously due to interminglings of different elements dating from remote (neolithic) times. On the data supplied by these skulls Hamy classes the Koreans in three groups:--1. The natives of the northern provinces (Ping-ngan-tao and Hienking-tao), strikingly like their Mongol [Tungus] neighbours; 2. Those of the southern provinces (Klingchang-tao and Thsiusan-lo-tao), descendants of the ancient Chinhans and Pien-hans, showing Japanese affinities; 3. Those of the inner provinces (Hoanghae-tao and Ching-tsing-tao), who present a transitional form between the northerns and southerns, both in their physical type and geographical position[650].

Caucasic features--light eyes, large nose, hair often brown, full beard, fair and even white skin, tall stature--are conspicuous, especially amongst the upper classes and many of the southern Koreans[651]. They are thus shown to be a mixed race, the Mongol element dominating in the north, as might be expected, and the Caucasic in the south.

These conclusions seem to be confirmed by what is known of the early movements, migrations, and displacements of the populations in north-east Asia about the dawn of history. In these vicissitudes the Koreans, as they are now called[652], appear to have first taken part in the twelfth century B.C., when the peninsula was already occupied, as it still is, by Mongols, the Sien-pi, in the north, and in the south by several branches of the Hans (San-San), of whom it is recorded that they spoke a language unintelligible to the Sien-pi, and resembled the Japanese in appearance, manners, and customs. From this it may be inferred that the Hans were the true aborigines, probably direct descendants of the Caucasic peoples of the New Stone Age, while the Sien-pi were Mongolic (Tungusic) intruders from the present Manchuria. For some time these Sien-pi played a leading part in the political convulsions prior and subsequent to the erection of the Great Wall by Shih Hwang Ti, founder of the Tsin dynasty (221-209 B.C.)[653]. Soon after the completion of this barrier, the Hiung-nu, no longer able to scour the fertile plains of the Middle Kingdom, turned their arms against the neighbouring Yue-chi, whom they drove westwards to the Sungarian valleys. Here they were soon displaced by the Usuns (Wusun), a fair, blue-eyed people of unknown origin, who have been called "Aryans," and even "Teutons," and whom Ch. de Ujfalvy identifies with the tall long-headed western blonds (de Lapouge's Homo Europaeus), mixed with brown round-headed hordes of white complexion[654]. Accepting this view, we may go further, and identify the Usuns, as well as the other white peoples of the early Chinese records, with the already described Central Asiatic Caucasians of the Stone Ages, whose osseous remains we now possess, and who come to the surface in the very first Chinese documents dealing with the turbulent populations beyond the Great Wall. The white element, with all the correlated characters, existed beyond all question, for it is continuously referred to in those documents. How is its presence in East Central Asia, including Manchuria and Korea, to be explained? Only on two assumptions--proto-historic migrations from the Far West, barred by the proto-historic migrations from the Far East, as largely determined by the erection of the Great Wall; or pre-historic (neolithic) migrations, also from the Far West, but barred by no serious obstacle, because antecedent to the arrival of the proto-Mongolic tribes from the Tibetan plateau. The true solution of the endless ethnical complications in the extreme East, as in the Oceanic world, will still be found in the now-demonstrated presence of a Caucasic element antecedent to the Mongol in those regions.

When the Hiung-nu[655] power was weakened by their westerly migrations to Sungaria and south-west Siberia (Upper Irtysh and Lake Balkash depression), and broken into two sections during their wars with the two Han dynasties (201 B.C.-220 A.D.), the Korean Sien-pi became the dominant nation north of the Great Wall. After destroying the last vestiges of the unstable Hiung-nu empire, and driving the Mongolo-Turki hordes still westwards, the Yuan-yuans, most powerful of all the Sien-pi tribes, remained masters of East Central Asia for about 400 years and then disappeared from history[656]. At least after the sixth century A.D. no further mention is made of the Sien-pi principalities either in Manchuria or in Korea. Here, however, they appear still to form a dominant element in the northern (Mongol) provinces, calling themselves Ghirin (Khirin), from the Khirin (Sungari) valley of the Amur, where they once held sway.

Since those days Korea has been alternately a vassal State and a province of the Middle Kingdom, with interludes of Japanese ascendancy, interrupted only by the four centuries of Korai ascendancy (934-1368). This was the most brilliant epoch in the national records, when Korea was rather the ally than the vassal of China, and when trade, industry, and the arts, especially porcelain and bronze work, flourished in the land. But by centuries of subsequent misrule, a people endowed with excellent natural qualities have been reduced to the lowest state of degradation. Before the reforms introduced by the political events of 1895-96, "the country was eaten up by officialism. It is not only that abuses without number prevailed, but the whole system of government was an abuse, a sea of corruption, without a bottom or a shore, an engine of robbery, crushing the life out of all industry[657]." But an improvement was speedily remarked. "The air of the men has undergone a subtle and real change, and the women, though they nominally keep up their habits by seclusion, have lost the hang-dog air which distinguished them at home. The alacrity of movement is a change also, and has replaced the conceited swing of the yang-ban [nobles] and the heartless lounge of the peasant." This improvement was merely temporary. The last years of the century were marked by the waning of Japanese influence, due to Russian intrigues, the restoration of absolute monarchy together with its worst abuses, the abandonment of reforms and a retrograde movement throughout the kingdom. The successes of Japan in 1904-5 resulted in the restoration of her ascendancy, culminating in 1910 in the cession of sovereignty by the emperor of Korea to the emperor of Japan.

The religious sentiment is perhaps less developed than among any other Asiatic people. Buddhism, introduced about 380 A.D., never took root, and while the literati are satisfied with the moral precepts of Confucius, the rest have not progressed beyond the nature-worship which was the ancient religion of the land. Every mountain, pass, ford or even eddy of a river has a spirit to whom offerings are made. Honour is also paid to ancestors, both royal and domestic, at their temples or altars, and chapels are built and dedicated to men who have specially distinguished themselves in loyalty, virtue or lofty teaching.

Philologists now recognise some affinity between the Korean and Japanese languages, both of which appear to be remotely connected with the Ural-Altaic family. The Koreans possess a true alphabet of 28 letters, which, however, is not a local invention, as is sometimes asserted. It appears to have been introduced by the Buddhist monks about or before the tenth century, and to be based on some cursive form of the Indian (Devanagari) system[658], although scarcely any resemblance can now be traced between the two alphabets. This script is little used except by the lower classes and the women, the literati preferring to write either in Chinese, or else in the so-called nido, that is, an adaptation of the Chinese symbols to the phonetic expression of the Korean syllables. The nido is exactly analogous to the Japanese Katakana script, in which modified forms of Chinese ideographs are used phonetically to express 47 syllables (the so-called I-ro-fa syllabary), raised to 73 by the nigori and maru diacritical marks.

The present population of Japan, according to E. Baelz, shows the following types. The first and most important is the Manchu-Korean type, characteristic of North China and Korea, and most frequent among the upper classes in Japan. The stature is conspicuously tall, the effect being heightened by slender and elegant figure. The face is long, with more or less oblique eyes but no marked prominence of the cheek-bones. The nose is aquiline, the chin slightly receding. With this type is associated a narrow chest, giving an air of elegance rather than of muscularity, an effect which is enhanced by the extremely delicate hands with long slender fingers. The second type is the Mongol, and presents a distinct contrast, with strong and squarely built figure, broad face, prominent cheek-bones, oblique eyes, flat nose and wide mouth. This type is not common in the Japanese Islands. The third type, more conspicuous than either of the preceding, is the Malay. The stature is small, with well-knit frame, and broad, well-developed chest. The face is generally round, the nose short, jaws and chin frequently projecting. None of these three types represents the aboriginal race of Japan, for there seems to be no doubt that the Ainu, who now survive in parts of the northern island of Yezo, occupied a greater area in earlier times and to them the prehistoric shell-mounds and other remains are usually attributed[659]. The Ainu are thickly and strongly built, but differ from all other Oriental types in the hairiness of face and body. The head is long, with a cephalic index of 77.8. Face and nose are broad, and the eyes are horizontal, not oblique, lacking the Mongolian fold.

It is generally assumed that this population represents the easterly migration of that long-headed type which can be traced across the continents of Europe and Asia in the Stone Age, and that their entrance into the islands was effected at a time when the channel separating them from the mainland was neither so wide nor so deep as at the present time. Later Manchu-Korean invaders from the West, Mongols from the South, and Malays from the East pressed the aborigines further and further north, to Yezo, Sakhalin and the Kuriles. But it is possible that the Ainu were not the earliest inhabitants of Japan, for they themselves bear witness to predecessors, the Koro-pok-guru, mentioned above (p. 260). Neither is the assumption of kinship between the Ainu and prehistoric populations of Western Europe accepted without demur. Deniker, while acknowledging the resemblance to certain European types, classes the Ainu as a separate race, the Palaeasiatics. For while in head-length, prominent superciliary ridges, hairiness and the form of the nose they may be compared to Russians, Todas, and Australians, their skin colour, prominent cheek-bones, and other somatic features make any close affinity impossible[660].

In spite of these various ingredients the Japanese people may be regarded as fairly homogeneous. Apart from some tall and robust persons amongst the upper classes, and athletes, acrobats, and wrestlers, the general impression that the Japanese are a short finely moulded race is fully borne out by the now regularly recorded military measurements of recruits, showing for height an average of 1.585 m. (5 ft. 2-1/2 in.) to 1.639 m. (5 ft. 4-1/2 in.), for chest 33 in., and disproportionately short legs. Other distinctive characters, all tending to stamp a certain individuality on the people, taken as a whole and irrespective of local peculiarities, are a flat forehead, great distance between the eyebrows, a very small nose with raised nostrils, no glabella, no perceptible nasal root[661]; an active, wiry figure; the exposed skin less yellow than the Chinese, and rather inclining to a light fawn, but the covered parts very light, some say even white; the eyes also less oblique, and all other characteristically Mongol features generally softened, except the black lank hair, which in transverse section is perhaps even rounder than that of most other Mongol peoples[662].

With this it will be instructive to compare F. H. H. Guillemard's graphic account of the Liu-Kiu islanders, whose Koreo-Japanese affinities are now placed beyond all doubt: "They are a short race, probably even shorter than the Japanese, but much better proportioned, being without the long bodies and short legs of the latter people, and having as a rule extremely well-developed chests. The colour of the skin varies of course with the social position of the individual. Those who work in the fields, clad only in a waist-cloth, are nearly as dark as a Malay, but the upper classes are much fairer, and are at the same time devoid of any of the yellow tint of the Chinaman. To the latter race indeed they cannot be said to bear any resemblance, and though the type is much closer to the Japanese, it is nevertheless very distinct.... In Liu-Kiu the Japanese and natives were easily recognised by us from the first, and must therefore be possessed of very considerable differences. The Liu-Kiuan has the face less flattened, the eyes are more deeply set, and the nose more prominent at its origin. The forehead is high and the cheek-bones somewhat less marked than in the Japanese; the eyebrows are arched and thick, and the eyelashes long. The expression is gentle and pleasing, though somewhat sad, and is apparently a true index of their character[663]."

This description is not accepted without some reserve by Chamberlain, who in fact holds that "the physical type of the Luchuans resembles that of the Japanese almost to identity[664]." In explanation however of the singularly mild, inoffensive, and "even timid disposition" of the Liu-Kiuans, this observer suggests "the probable absence of any admixture of Malay blood in the race[665]." But everybody admits a Malay element in Japan. It would therefore appear that Guillemard must be right, and that, as even shown by all good photographs, differences do exist, due in fact to the presence of this very Malay strain in the Japanese race.

Elsewhere[666] Chamberlain has given us a scholarly account of the Liu-Kiu language, which is not merely a "sister," as he says, but obviously an elder sister, more archaic in structure and partly in its phonetics, than the oldest known form of Japanese. In the verb, for instance, Japanese retains only one past tense of the indicative, with but one grammatical form, whereas Liu-Kiuan preserves the three original past tenses, each of which possesses a five-fold inflection. All these racial, linguistic, and even mental resemblances, such as the fundamental similarity of many of their customs and ways of thought, he would explain with much probability by the routes followed by the first emigrants from the mainland. While the great bulk spread east and north over the great archipelago, everywhere "driving the aborigines before them," a smaller stream may have trended southward to the little southern group, whose islets stretch like stepping-stones the whole way from Japan to Great Liu-Kiu[667].

Amongst the common mental traits, mention is made of the Shinto religion, "the simplest and most rustic form" of which still survives in Liu-Kiu. Here, as in Japan, it was originally a rude system of nature-worship, the normal development of which was arrested by Chinese and Buddhist influences. Later it became associated with spirit-worship, the spirits being at first the souls of the dead, and although there is at present no cult of the dead, in the strict sense of the expression, the Liu-Kiu islanders probably pay more respect to the departed than any other people in the world.

In Japan, Shintoism, as reformed in recent times, has become much more a political institution than a religious system. The Kami-no-michi, that is, the Japanese form of the Chinese Shin-to, "way of the Gods," or "spirits," is not merely the national faith, but is inseparably bound up with the interests of the reigning dynasty, holding the Mikado to be the direct descendant of the Sun-goddess Hence its three cardinal precepts now are:--1. Honour the Kami (spirits), of whom the emperor is the chief representative on earth; 2. Revere him as thy sovereign; 3. Obey the will of his Court, and that is the whole duty of man. There is no moral code, and loyal expositors have declared that the Mikado's will is the only test of right and wrong.

But apart from this political exegesis, Shintoism in its higher form may be called a cultured deism, in its lower a "blind obedience to governmental and priestly dictates[668]." There are dim notions about a supreme creator, immortality, and even rewards and penalties in the after-life. Some also talk vaguely, as a pantheist might, of a sublime being or essence pervading all nature, too vast and ethereal to be personified or addressed in prayer, identified with the tenka, "heavens," from which all things emanate, to which all return. Yet, although a personal deity seems thus excluded, there are Shinto temples, apparently for the worship of the heavenly bodies and powers of nature, conceived as self-existing personalities--the so-called Kami, "spirits," "gods," of which there are "eight millions," that is, they are countless.

One cannot but suspect that some of these notions have been grafted on the old national faith by Buddhism, which was introduced about 550 A.D. and for a time had great vogue. It was encouraged especially by the Shoguns, or military usurpers of the Mikado's[669] functions, obviously as a set-off against the Shinto theocracy. During their tenure of power (1192-1868 A.D.) the land was covered with Buddhist shrines and temples, some of vast size and quaint design, filled with hideous idols, huge bells, and colossal statues of Buddha.

But with the fall of the Shogun the little prestige still enjoyed by Buddhism came to an end, and the temples, spoiled of their treasures, have more than ever become the resort of pleasure-seekers rather than of pious worshippers. "To all the larger temples are attached regular spectacles, playhouses, panoramas, besides lotteries, games of various sorts, including the famous 'fan-throwing,' and shooting-galleries, where the bow and arrow and the blow-pipe take the place of the rifle. The accumulated treasures of the priests have been confiscated, the monks driven from their monasteries, and many of these buildings converted into profane uses. Countless temple bells have already found their way to America, or have been sold for old metal[670]."

Besides these forms of belief, there is a third religious, or rather philosophic system, the so-called Siza, based on the ethical teachings of Confucius, a sort of refined materialism, such as underlies the whole religious thought of the nation. Siza, always confined to the literati, has in recent years found a formidable rival in the "English Philosophy," represented by such writers as Buckle, Mill, Herbert Spencer, Darwin, and Huxley, most of whose works have already been translated into Japanese.

Thus this highly gifted people are being assimilated to the western world in their social and religious, as well as their political institutions. Their intellectual powers, already tested in the fields of war, science, diplomacy, and self-government, are certainly superior to those of all other Asiatic peoples, and this is perhaps the best guarantee for the stability of the stupendous transformation that a single generation has witnessed from an exaggerated form of medieval feudalism to a political and social system in harmony with the most advanced phases of modern thought. The system has doubtless not yet penetrated to the lower strata, especially amongst the rural populations. But their natural receptivity, combined with a singular freedom from "insular prejudice," must ensure the ultimate acceptance of the new order by all classes of the community.

FOOTNOTES:

[569] As fully explained in Eth. p. 303.

[570] Mark Aurel Stein, Sand-buried Cities of Khotan, 1903, and Geog. Journ., July, Sept. 1909.

[571] R. Pumpelly, Explorations in Turkestan, 1905, and Explorations in Turkestan; Expedition of 1904, 1908.

[572] Sven Hedin, Scientific Results of a Journey in Central Asia, 1899-1902, 1906, and Geog. Journ., April, 1909.

[573] Douglas Carruthers, Unknown Mongolia, 1913 (with bibliography).

[574] Ellsworth Huntington, The Pulse of Asia, 1910.

[575] "The Asiatic Background," Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. I. 1911.

[576] Memoires de la Delegation en Perse; Recherches archeologiques (from 1899).

[577] Sand-buried Cities of Khotan, 1903.

[578] "Ueber Alte Grabstaetten in Sibirien und der Mongolei," in Mitt. d. Anthrop. Ges., Vienna, 1895, XXV. 9.

[579] Th. Volkov, in L'Anthropologie, 1896, p. 82.

[580] Too much stress must not, however, be laid upon the theory of gradual desiccation as a factor in depopulation. There are many causes such as earthquake, water-spouts, shifting of currents, neglect of irrigation and, above all, the work of enemies to account for the sand-buried ruins of populous cities in Central Asia. See T. Peisker, "The Asiatic Background," Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. I. 1911, p. 326.

[581] Journ. Anthr. Inst. 1895, p. 318 sq.

[582] Cf. Archaeologia Cambrensis, 6th Ser. XIV. Part 1, 1914, p. 131, and Zeitschr. f. Ethnol. 1910, p. 601.

[583] "Zur Praehistorik Japans," Globus, 1896, No. 10.

[584] The best account of the archaeology of Japan will be found in Prehistoric Japan, by N. G. Munro, 1912.

[585] Die Bronzezeit Finnlands, Helsingfors, 1897.

[586] "Akkadian," first applied by Rawlinson to the non-Semitic texts found at Nineveh, is still often used by English writers in place of the more correct Sumerian, the Akkadians being now shown to be Semitic immigrants into Northern Babylonia (p. 264).

[587] Cf. L. W. King, History of Sumer and Akkad, 1910, pp. 5, 6.

[588] Ueber die Summerische Sprache, Paper read at the Russian Archaeological Congress, Riga, 1896.

[589] "Sumer and Sumerian," Ency. Brit. 1911, with references.

[590] Geschichte des Altertums, I. 2, 2nd ed. 1909, p. 404.

[591] E. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, I. 2, 2nd ed. 1909, p. 406. L. W. King (History of Sumer and Akkad, 1910) discusses Meyer's arguments and points out that the earliest Sumerian gods appear to be free from Semitic influence (p. 51). He is inclined, however, to regard the Sumerians as displacing an earlier Semitic people (Hutchinson's History of the Nations, 1914, pp. 221 and 229).

[592] Ellsworth Huntington, The Pulse of Asia, 1910, p. 382.

[593] L. W. King, History of Sumer and Akkad, 1910, p. 357.

[594] E. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, I. 2, 2nd ed. 1909, p. 463.

[595] L. W. King, History of Sumer and Akkad, 1910, p. 61, and the article, "Chronology. Babylonia and Assyria," Ency. Brit. 1911. Cf. also E. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, I. 2, 2nd ed. 1909, Sec.Sec. 329 and 383.

[596] The cylinder-seals and tablets of Fara, excavated by Koldewey, Andrae and Noeldeke in 1902-3 may go back to 3400 B.C. Cf. L. W. King, loc. cit. p. 65.

[597] C. H. W. Johns, Ancient Babylonia, 1913, regards Sharrukin as "Sargon of Akkad," p. 39.

[598] L. W. King, History of Sumer and Akkad, 1910, pp. 234, 343, where the seal is referred to a period not much earlier than the First Dynasty of Babylon.

[599] H. V. Hilprecht, The Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania, Series D, Vol. v. 1. 1910.

[600] See The Times, June 24, 1914.

[601] "Babylonia and Elam Four Thousand Years Ago," in Knowledge, May 1, 1896, p. 116 sq. and elsewhere.

[602] The term "Elam" is said to have the same meaning as "Akkad" (i.e. Highland) in contradistinction to "Sumer" (Lowland). It should be noted that neither Akkad nor Sumer occurs in the oldest texts, where Akkad is called Kish from the name of its capital, and Sumer Kiengi (Kengi), probably a general name meaning "the land." Kish has been identified with the Kush of Gen. x., one of the best abused words in Palethnology. For this identification, however, there is some ground, seeing that Kush is mentioned in the closest connection with "Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar" (Mesopotamia) v. 10.

[603] J. de Morgan, Memoires de la Delegation en Perse, 1899-1906.

[604] S. Laing, Human Origins, p. 74.

[605] And it has remained so ever since, the present Lur and Bakhtiari inhabitants of Susiana speaking, not the standard Neo-Persian, but dialects of the ruder Kurdish branch of the Iranian family, as if they had been Aryanised from Media, the capital of which was Ekbatana. We have here, perhaps, a clue to the origin of the Medes themselves, who were certainly the above-mentioned Mandas of Nabonidus, their capital being also the same Ekbatana. Now Sayce (Academy, Sept. 7, 1895, p. 189) identified the Kimmerians with these Manda nomads, whose king Tukdamme (Tugdamme) was the Lygdanis of Strabo (I. 3, 16), who led a horde of Kimmerians into Lydia and captured Sardis. We know from Esarhaddon's inscriptions that by the Assyrians these Kimmerians were called Manda, their prince Teupsa (Teispe) being described as "of the people of the Manda." An oracle given to Esar-haddon begins: "The Kimmerian in the mountains has set fire in the land of Ellip," i.e. the land where Ekbatana was afterwards founded, which is now shown to have already been occupied by the Kimmerian or Manda hordes. It follows that Kimmerians, Mandas, Medes with their modern Kurd and Bakhtiari representatives, were all one people, who were almost certainly of Aryan speech, if not actually of proto-Aryan stock. "The Kurds are the descendants of Aryan invaders and have maintained their type and their language for more than 3300 years," F. v. Luschan, "The Early Inhabitants of Western Asia," Journ. Roy. Anthr. Inst. XLI. 1911, p. 230. For a classification of Kurds see Mark Sykes, "The Kurdish Tribes of the Ottoman Empire," Journ. Roy. Anthr. Inst. XXXVIII. 1908, p. 451. Cf. also D. G. Hogarth, The Nearer East, 1902.

[606] C. H. W. Johns, Ancient Babylonia, 1913, p. 27.

[607] Cf. H. Zimmern, article "Babylonians and Assyrians," Ency. Religion and Ethics, 1909.

[608] G. Maspero, Dawn of Civilisation, p. 733.

[609] Ibid. p. 71.

[610] Ibid. p. 752.

[611] Vorgeschichte, etc., Book II. passim.

[612] Geschichte Babyloniens u. Assyriens.

[613] G. Maspero, The Struggle of the Nations, Egypt, Syria and Assyria, 1910.

[614] It is noteworthy that Dalai, "Ocean," is itself a Mongol word, though Lama, "Priest," is Tibetan. The explanation is that in the thirteenth century a local incarnation of Buddha was raised by the then dominant Mongols to the first rank, and this title of Dalai Lama, the "Ocean Priest," i.e. the Priest of fathomless wisdom, was bestowed on one of his successors in the sixteenth century, and still retained by the High Pontiff at Lhasa.

[615] Aboriginal Siberia, 1914, p. 13.

[616] Loc. cit. pp. 18-21.

[617] Either from the Chinese Tunghu, "Eastern Barbarians," or from the Turki Tinghiz, as in Isaac Massa: per interpretes se Tingoesi vocari dixerunt (Descriptio, etc., Amsterdam, 1612). But there is no collective national name, and at present they call themselves Don-ki, Boia, Boie, etc., terms all meaning "Men," "People." In the Chinese records they are referred to under the name of I-lu so early as 263 A.D., when they dwelt in the forest region between the Upper Temen and Yalu rivers on the one hand and the Pacific Ocean on the other, and paid tribute in kind--sable furs, bows, and stone arrow-heads. Arrows and stone arrow-heads were also the tribute paid to the emperors of the Shang dynasty (1766-1154 B.C.) by the Su-shen, who dwelt north of the Liao-tung peninsula, so that we have here official proof of a Stone Age of long duration in Manchuria. Later, the Chinese chronicles mention the U-ki or Mo-ho, a warlike people of the Sungari valley and surrounding uplands, who in the 7th century founded the kingdom of Pu-ha[=i], overthrown in 925 by the Khitans of the Lower Sungari below its Noni confluence, who were themselves Tunguses and according to some Chinese authorities the direct ancestors of the Manchus.

[618] "C'est la tendance de la tete a se developper en hauteur, juste en sens inverse de l'aplatissement vertical du Mongol. La tete du Turc est donc a la fois plus haute et plus courte" (L'Anthropologie, VI. 3, p. 8).

[619] Reclus, VI.; Eng. ed. p. 360.

[620] V. M. Mikhailovskii, Shamanism in Siberia and European Russia, translated by Oliver Wardrop, Journ. Anthr. Inst. 1895, p. 91.

[621] M. A. Czaplicka, Aboriginal Siberia, 1914. Part III. discusses Shamanism, pp. 166-255.

[622] Hakluyt, 1809 ed., I. p. 317 sq.

[623] Quoted by Mikhailovskii, p. 144.

[624] Cf. H. A. Giles, China and the Manchus, 1912.

[625] Souvenirs d'un voyage dans la Tartarie, 1853, I. 162.

[626] Through Siberia, 1882, Vol. II. p. 172.

[627] European visitors often notice with surprise the fine physique of these natives, many of whom average nearly six feet in height. But there is an extraordinary disparity between the two sexes, perhaps greater than in any other country. The much smaller stature and feebler constitution of the women is no doubt due to the detestable custom of crippling the feet in childhood, thereby depriving them of natural exercise during the period of growth. It may be noted that the anti-foot-bandaging movement is making progress throughout China, the object being to abolish the cruel practice by making the kin lien ("golden lilies") unfashionable, and the ti mien, the "heavenly feet,"--i.e. the natural--popular in their stead.

[628] H. Lansdell, Through Siberia, 1882, II. p. 172.

[629] De l'Harmonie des Voyelles dans les Langues Uralo-Altaiques, 1874, p. 67 sq.

[630] General Principles of the Structure of Language, 1885, Vol. I. p. 357. The evidence here chiefly relied upon is that afforded by the Yakutic, a pure Turki idiom, which is spoken in the region of extremest heat and cold (Middle and Lower Lena basin), and in which the principle of progressive assonance attains its greatest development.

[631] Explained and illustrated by General Krahmer in Globus, 1896, p. 208 sq.

[632] H. Lansdell, Through Siberia, 1882, I. p. 299.

[633] "Ueber die Sprache der Jukagiren," in Melanges Asiatiques, 1859, III. p. 595 sq.

[634] W. I. Jochelson recently discovered two independent Yukaghir dialects. "Essay on the Grammar of the Yukaghir Language," Annals N. Y. Ac. Sc. 1905; The Yukaghir and the Yukaghirized Tungus. Memoir of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition, Vol. IX. 1910. For the Koryak see his monograph in the same series, Vol. VI. 1905-8.

[635] Ten Months among the Tents of the Tuski.

[636] "Ueber die Koriaken u. ihnen nahe verwandten Tchouktchen," in Bul. Acad. Sc., St Petersburg, XII. p. 99.

[637] Peschel, Races of Man, p. 391, who says the Chukchi are "as closely related to the Itelmes in speech as are Spaniards to Portuguese."

[638] Petermann's Mitt. Vol. 25, 1879, p. 138.

[639] "The Girl and the Dogs, an Eskimo Folk-tale," Amer. Anthropologist, June 1898, p. 181 sq.

[640] Through the Gold Fields of Alaska to Bering Strait, 1898.

[641] Cf. W. Bogoras, The Chukchee, Memoir of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition, Vol. VII. 1904-10

[642] This, however, applies only to the fishing Koryaks, for G. Kennan speaks highly of the domestic virtues, hospitality, and other good qualities of the nomad groups (Tent Life in Siberia, 1871).

[643] See L. Sternberg, The Tribes of the Amur River, Memoirs of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition, Vol. IV. 1900.

[644] Mem. Imp. Soc. Nat. Sc. XX. Supplement, Moscow, 1877.

[645] "Scheinen grosse Aenlichkeit in Sprache, Gesichtsbildung und Sitten mit den Aino zu haben" (Ueber die Aino, Berlin, 1881, p. 12).

[646] Through Siberia, 1882, II. p. 227.

[647] Ibid. p. 235.

[648] Ibid. p. 221.

[649] L'Anthropologie, VI. No. 3.

[650] Bul. du Museum d'Hist. Nat. 1896, No. 4. All the skulls were brachy or sub-brachy, varying from 81 to 83.8 and 84.8. The author remarks generally that "photographes et cranes different, du tout au tout, des choses similaires venues jusqu'a present de Mongolie et de Chine, et font plutot penser au Japon, a Formose, et d'une maniere plus generale a ce vaste ensemble de peuples maritimes que Lesson designait jadis sous le nom de 'Mongols-pelasgiens,'" p. 3.

[651] On this juxtaposition of the yellow and blond types in Korea V. de Saint-Martin's language is highly significative: "Cette dualite de type, un type tout a fait caucasique a cote du type mongol, est un fait commun a toute la ceinture d'iles qui couvre les cotes orientales de l'Asie, depuis les Kouriles jusqu'a Formose, et meme jusqu'a la zone orientale de l'Indo-Chine" (Art. Coree, p. 800).

[652] From Korai, in Japanese Kome (Chinese Kaoli), name of a petty state, which enjoyed political predominance in the peninsula for about 500 years (tenth to fourteenth century A.D.). An older designation still in official use is Tsio-sien, that is, the Chinese Chao-sien, "Bright Dawn" (Klaproth, Asia Polyglotta, p. 334 sq.).

[653] This stupendous work, on which about 1,000,000 hands are said to have been engaged for five years, possesses great ethnical as well as political importance. Running for over 1500 miles across hills, valleys, and rivers along the northern frontier of China proper, it long arrested the southern movements of the restless Mongolo-Turki hordes, and thus gave a westerly direction to their incursions many centuries before the great invasions of Jenghiz-Khan and his successors. It is strange to reflect that the ethnological relations were thus profoundly disturbed throughout the eastern hemisphere by the work of a ruthless despot who reigned only twelve years, and in that time waged war against all the best traditions of the empire, destroying the books of Confucius and the other sages, and burying alive 460 men of letters for their efforts to rescue those writings from total extinction.

[654] Les Aryens au Nord et au Sud de l'Hindou-Kouch, 1896, p. 25. This writer does not think that the Usuns should be identified with the tall race of horse-like face, large nose, and deep-set eyes mentioned in the early Chinese records, because no reference is made to "blue eyes," which would not have been omitted had they existed. But, if I remember, "green eyes" are spoken of, and we know that none of the early writers use colour terms with strict accuracy.

[655] I have not thought it desirable to touch on the interminable controversy respecting the ethnical relations of the Hiung-nu, regarding them, not as a distinct ethnical group, but like the Huns, their later western representatives, as a heterogeneous collection of Mongol, Tungus, Turki, and perhaps even Finnish hordes under a Mongol military caste. At the same time I have little doubt that Mongolo-Tungus elements greatly predominated in the eastern regions (Mongolia proper, Manchuria) both amongst the Hiung-nu and their Yuan-yuan (Sien-pi) successors, and that all the founders of the first great empires prior to that of the Turki Assena in the Altai region (sixth century A.D.) were full-blood Mongols, as indeed recognised by Jenghiz-Khan himself. For the migrations of these and neighbouring peoples, consult A. C. Haddon, The Wanderings of Peoples, 1911, pp. 16 and 28.

[656] On the authority of the Wei-Shu documents contained in the Wei-Ch[=i], E. H. Parker gives (in the China Review and A Thousand Years of the Tartars, Shanghai, 1895) the dates 386-556 A.D. as the period covered by the "Sien-pi Tartar dynasty of Wei." This is not to be confused with the Chinese dynasty of Wei (224-264, or according to Kwong Ki-Chiu 234-274 A.D.). The term "Tartar" (Ta-Ta), it may be explained, is used by Parker, as well as by the Chinese historians generally, in a somewhat wide sense, so as to include all the nomad populations north of the Great Wall, whether of Tungus (Manchu), Mongol, or even Turki stock. The original tribes bearing the name were Mongols, and Jenghiz-Khan himself was a Tata on his mother's side.

[657] Mrs Bishop, Korea and Her Neighbours, 1898.

[658] T. de Lacouperie says on "a Tibeto-Indian base" (Beginnings of Writing in Central and Eastern Asia, 1894, p. 148); and E. H. Parker: "It is demonstrable that the Korean letters are an adaptation from the Sanskrit," i.e. the Devanagari (Academy, Dec. 21, 1895, p. 550).

[659] See p. 261. Also Koganei, "Ueber die Urbewohner von Japan," Mitt. d. Deutsch. Gesell. f. Natur- u. Voelkerkunde Ostasiens, IX. 3, 1903, containing an exhaustive review of recent literature, and N. G. Munro, Prehistoric Japan, 1912.

[660] J. Deniker, Races of Man, 1900, pp. 371-2. See also J. Batchelor, The Ainu of Japan, 1892, and the article "Ainus" in Ency. of Religion and Ethics, 1908.

[661] G. Baudens, Bul. Soc. Geogr. X. p. 419.

[662] See especially E. Baelz, "Die koerperlichen Eigenschaften der Japaner," in Mitt. der Deutsch. Gesell. f. Natur- u. Voelkerkunde Ostasiens, 28 and 32.

[663] Cruise of the Marchesa, 1886, I. p. 36.

[664] Geogr. Journ. 1895, II. p. 318.

[665] Geogr. Journ. 1895, II. p. 460.

[666] Journ. Anthrop. Soc. 1897, p. 47 sq.

[667] Ibid. p. 58.

[668] Ripley and Dana, Amer. Cyc. IX. 538.

[669] Shogun from Sho = general, and gun = army, hence Commander-in-chief; Mikado from mi = sublime, and kado = gate, with which cf. the "Sublime Porte" (J. J. Rein, Japan nach Reisen u. Studien, 1881, I. p. 245). But Mikado has become somewhat antiquated, being now generally replaced by the title Kotei, "Emperor."

[670] Keane's Asia, I. p. 487.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

IX. THE NORTHERN MONGOLS (continued)

The Finno-Turki Peoples--Assimilation to the Caucasic Type--Turki Cradle--Ural-Altaian Invasions--The Scythians--Parthians and Turkomans--Massagetae and Yue-chi--Indo-Scythians and Graeco-Baktrians--Dahae, Jat, and Rajput Origins--The "White Huns"--The Uigurs--Orkhon Inscriptions--The Assena Turki Dynasty--Toghuz-Uigur Empire--Kashgarian and Sungarian Populations--The Oghuz Turks and their Migrations--Seljuks and Osmanli--The Yakuts--The Kirghiz--Kazak and Kossack--The Kara-Kirghiz--The Finnish Peoples--Former and Present Domain--Late Westward Spread of the Finns--The Bronze and Iron Ages in the Finnish Lands--The Baltic Finns--Relations to Goths, Letts, and Slavs--Finno-Russ Origins--Tavastian and Karelian Finns--The Kwaens--The Lapps--Samoyeds and Permian Finns--Lapp Origins and Migrations--Temperament--Religion--The Volga Finns--The Votyak Pagans--Human Sacrifices--The Bulgars--Origins and Migrations--An Ethnical Transformation--Great and Little Bulgaria--Avars and Magyars--Magyar Origins and early Records--Present Position of the Magyars--Ethnical and Linguistic Relations in Eastern Europe.

In a very broad way all the western branches of the North Mongol division may be comprised under the collective designation of Finno-Turki Mongols. Jointly they constitute a well-marked section of the family, being distinguished from the eastern section by several features which they have in common, and the most important of which is unquestionably a much larger infusion of Caucasic blood than is seen in any of the Mongolo-Tungusic groups. So pronounced is this feature amongst many Finnish as well as Turkish peoples, that some anthropologists have felt inclined to deny any direct connection between the eastern and western divisions of Mongolian man and to regard the Baltic Finns, for instance, rather as "Allophylian Whites" than as original members of the yellow race. Prichard, to whom we owe this now nearly obsolete term "Allophylian," held this view[671], and even Sayce is "more than doubtful whether we can class the Mongols physiologically with the Turkish-Tatars [the Turki peoples], or the Ugro-Finns[672]."

It may, indeed, be allowed that at present the great majority of the Finno-Turki populations occupy a position amongst the varieties of mankind which is extremely perplexing for the strict systematist. When the whole division is brought under survey, every shade of transition is observed between the Siberian Samoyeds of the Finnic branch and the steppe Kirghiz of the Turki branch on the one hand, both of whom show Mongol characters in an exaggerated form, and on the other the Osmanli Turks and Hungarian Magyars, most of whom may be regarded as typical Caucasians. Moreover, the difficulty is increased by the fact, already pointed out, that these mixed Mongolo-Caucasic characters occur not only amongst the late historic groups, but also amongst the earliest known groups--"Chudes," Usuns, Uigurs and others--who may be called Proto-Finnish and Proto-Turki peoples. But precisely herein lies the solution of the problem. Most of the region now held by Turki and Finnish nations was originally occupied by long-headed Caucasic men of the late Stone Ages (see above). Then followed the Proto-Mongol intruders from the Tibetan table-land, who partly submerged, partly intermingled with their neolithic neighbours, many thus acquiring those mixed characters by which they have been distinguished from the earliest historic times. Later, further interminglings took place according as the Finno-Turki hordes, leaving their original seats in the Altai and surrounding regions, advanced westwards and came more and more into contact with the European populations of Caucasic type.

We may therefore conclude that the majority of the Finno-Turki were almost from the first a somewhat mixed race, and that during historic times the original Mongol element has gradually yielded to the Caucasic in the direction from east to west. Such is the picture now presented by these heterogeneous populations, who in their primeval eastern seats are still mostly typical Mongols, but have been more and more assimilated to the European type in their new Anatolian, Baltic, Danubian, and Balkan homes.

Observant travellers have often been impressed by this progressive conformity of the Mongolo-Turki to Europeans. During his westward journey through Central Asia Younghusband, on passing from Mongolia to Eastern Turkestan, found that the people, though tall and fine-looking, had at first more of the Mongol cast of feature than he had expected. "Their faces, however, though somewhat round, were slightly more elongated than the Mongol, and there was considerably more intelligence about them. But there was more roundness, less intelligence, less sharpness in the outlines than is seen in the inhabitants of Kashgar and Yarkand." Then he adds: "As I proceeded westwards I noticed a gradual, scarcely perceptible, change from the round of a Mongolian type to a sharper and yet more sharp type of feature.... As we get farther away from Mongolia, we notice that the faces become gradually longer and narrower; and farther west still, among some of the inhabitants of Afghan Turkestan, we see that the Tartar or Mongol type of feature is almost entirely lost[673]." To complete the picture it need only be added that still further west, in Asia Minor, the Balkan Peninsula, Hungary, and Finland, the Mongol features are often entirely lost. "The Turks of the west have so much Aryan and Semitic blood in them, that the last vestiges of their original physical characters have been lost, and their language alone indicates their previous descent[674]."

Before they were broken up and dispersed over half the northern hemisphere by Mongol pressure from the east, the primitive Turki tribes dwelt, according to Howorth, mainly between the Ulugh-dagh mountains and the Orkhon river in Mongolia, that is, along the southern slopes and spurs of the Altai-Sayan system from the head waters of the Irtysh to the valleys draining north to Lake Baikal. But the Turki cradle is shifted farther east by Richthofen, who thinks that their true home lay between the Amur, the Lena, and the Selenga, where at one time they had their camping-grounds in close proximity to their Mongol and Tungus kinsmen. There is nothing to show that the Yakuts, who are admittedly of Turki stock, ever migrated to their present northern homes in the Lena basin, which has more probably always been their native land[675].

But when they come within the horizon of history the Turki are already a numerous nation, with a north-western and south-eastern division[676], which may well have jointly occupied the whole region from the Irtysh to the Lena, and both views may thus be reconciled. In any case the Turki domain lay west of the Mongol, and the Altai uplands, taken in the widest sense, may still be regarded as the most probable zone of specialisation for the Turki physical type. The typical characteristics are a yellowish white complexion, a high brachycephalic head, often almost cuboid, due to parieto-occipital flattening (especially noticeable among the Yakuts), an elongated oval face, with straight, somewhat prominent nose, and non-Mongolian eyes. The stature is moderate, with an average of 1.675 m. (5 ft. 6 in.), and a tendency to stoutness.

Intermediate between the typical Turki and the Mongols Hamy places the Uzbegs, Kirghiz, Bashkirs, and Nogais; and between the Turks and Finns those extremely mixed groups of East Russia commonly but wrongly called "Tartars," as well as other transitions between Turk, Slav, Greek, Arab, Osmanli of Constantinople, Kurugli of Algeria and others, whose study shows the extreme difficulty of accurately determining the limits of the Yellow and the White races[677].

Analogous difficulties recur in the study of the Northern (Siberian) groups--Samoyeds, Ostyaks, Voguls and other Ugrians--who present great individual variations, leading almost without a break from the Mongol to the Lapp, from the Lapp to the Finn, from Finn to Slav and Teuton. Thus may be shown a series of observations continuous between the most typical Mongol, and those aberrant Mongolo-Caucasic groups which answer to Prichard's "Allophylian races." Thus also is confirmed by a study of details the above broad generalisation in which I have endeavoured to determine the relation of the Finno-Turki peoples to the primary Mongol and Caucasic divisions.

Peisker's description of the Scythian invasions of Irania[678] may be taken as typical of the whole area, and explains the complexity of the ethnological problems. The steppes and deserts of Central Asia are an impassable barrier for the South Asiatics, the Aryans, but not for the North Asiatic, the Altaian; for him they are an open country, providing him with the indispensable winter pastures. On the other hand, for the South Asiatic Aryan these deserts are an object of terror, and besides he is not impelled towards them as he has winter pastures near at hand. It is this difference in the distance of summer and winter pastures that makes the North Asiatic Altaian an ever-wandering herdsman, and the grazing part of the Indo-European race cattle-rearers settled in limited districts. Thus, while the native Iranian must halt before the trackless region of steppes and deserts and cannot follow the well-mounted robber-nomad thither, Iran itself is the object of greatest longing to the nomadic Altaian. Here he can plunder and enslave to his heart's delight, and if he succeeds in maintaining himself for a considerable time among the Aryans, he learns the language of the subjugated people and, by mingling with them, loses his Mongol characteristics more and more. If the Iranian is now fortunate enough to shake off the yoke, the dispossessed iranised Altaian intruder inflicts himself upon other lands. So it was with the Scythians. Leaving their families behind in the South Russian steppes, the Scythians invaded Media c. B.C. 630, and advanced into Mesopotamia as far as Egypt.

In Media they took Median wives and learned the Median language. After being driven out by Cyaxares, on their return, some 28 years later, they met with a new generation, the offspring of the wives and daughters whom they had left behind, and slaves of an alien race. A hundred and fifty years later Hippocrates remarked their yellowish red complexion, corpulence, smooth skins, and their consequent eunuch-like appearance--all typically Mongol characteristics. Hippocrates was the most celebrated physician and natural philosopher of the ancient world. His evidence is unshakeable and cannot be invalidated by the Aryan speech of the Scythians. Their Mongol type was innate in them, whereas their Iranian speech was acquired and is no refutation of Hippocrates' testimony. On the later Greek vases from South Russian excavations they already appear strongly demongolised and the Altaian is only suggested by their hair, which is as stiff as a horse's mane--hence Aristotle's epithet [Greek: euthytriches]--the characteristic that survives longest among all Ural-Altaian hybrid peoples.

E. H. Parker unfortunately lent the weight of his authority to the statement that the word "Tuerkoe" [Turki] "goes no farther back than the fifth century of our era," and that "so far as recorded history is concerned the name of Turk dates from this time[679]." But Turki tribes bearing this national name had penetrated into East Europe hundreds of years before that time, and were already seated on the Tanais (Don) about the new era. They are mentioned by name both by Pomponius Mela[680] and by Pliny[681], and to the same connection belonged, beyond all doubt, the warlike Parthians, who 300 years earlier were already seated on the confines of Iran and Turan, routed the legions of Crassus and Antony, and for five centuries (250 B.C.-229 A.D.) usurped the throne of the "King of Kings," holding sway from the Euphrates to the Ganges, and from the Caspian to the Indian Ocean. Direct descendants of the Parthians are the fierce Turkoman nomads, who for ages terrorised over all the settled populations encircling the Aralo-Caspian depression. Their power has at last been broken by the Russians, but they are still politically dominant in Persia[682]. They have thus been for many ages in the closest contact with Caucasic Iranians, with the result that the present Turkoman type is shown by J. L. Yavorsky's observations to be extremely variable[683].

Both the Parthians and the Massagetae have been identified with the Yue-chi, who figured so largely in the annals of the Han dynasties, and are above mentioned as having been driven west to Sungaria by the Hiung-nu after the erection of the Great Wall. It has been said that, could we follow the peregrinations of the Yue-chi bands from their early seats at the foot of the Kinghan mountains to their disappearance amid the snows of the Western Himalayas, we should hold the key to the solution of the obscure problems associated with the migrations of the Mongolo-Turki hordes since the torrent of invasion was diverted westwards by Shih Hwang Ti's mighty barrier. One point, however, seems clear enough, that the Yue-chi were a different people both from the Parthians who had already occupied Hyrcania (Khorasan) at least in the third century B.C., if not earlier, and from the Massagetae. For the latter were seated on the Yaxartes (Sir-darya) in the time of Cyrus (sixth century B.C.), whereas the Yue-chi still dwelt east of Lake Lob (Tarim basin) in the third century. After their defeat by the Hiung-nu and the Usuns (201 and 165 B.C.), they withdrew to Sogdiana (Transoxiana), reduced the Ta-Hia of Baktria, and in 126 B.C. overthrew the Graeco-Baktrian kingdom, which had been founded after the death of Alexander towards the close of the fourth century. But in the Kabul valley, south of the Hindu-Kush, the Greeks still held their ground for over 100 years, until Kadphises I., king of the Kushans--a branch of the Yue-chi--after uniting the whole nation in a single Indo-Scythian state, extended his conquests to Kabul and succeeded Hermaeus, last of the Greek dynasty (40-20 B.C.?). Kadphises' son Kadaphes (10 A.D.) added to his empire a great part of North India, where his successors of the Yue-chi dynasty reigned from the middle of the first to the end of the fourth century A.D. Here they are supposed by some authorities to be still represented by the Jats and Rajputs, and even Prichard allows that the supposition "does not appear altogether preposterous," although "the physical characters of the Jats are very different from those attributed to the Yuetschi [Yue-chi] and the kindred tribes [Suns, Kushans, etc.] by the writers cited by Klaproth and Abel Remusat, who say that they are of sanguine complexion with blue eyes[684]."

We now know that these characters present little difficulty when the composite origin of the Turki people is borne in mind. On the other hand it is interesting to note that the above-mentioned Ta-Hia have by some been identified with the warlike Scythian Dahae[685], and these with the Dehiya or Dhe one of the great divisions of the Indian Jats. But if Rawlinson[686] is right, the term Dahae was not racial but social, meaning rustici,--the peasantry as opposed to the nomads; hence the Dahae are heard of everywhere throughout Irania, just as Dehwar[687] is still the common designation of the Tajik (Persian) peasantry in Afghanistan and Baluchistan. This is also the view taken by de Ujfalvy, who identifies the Ta-Hia, not with the Scythian Dahae, or with any other particular tribe, but with the peaceful rural population of Baktriana[688], whose reduction by the Yue-chi, possibly Strabo's Tokhari, was followed by the overthrow of the Graeco-Baktrians. The solution of the puzzling Yue-chi-Jat problem would therefore seem to be that the Dehiya and other Jats, always an agricultural people, are descended from the old Iranian peasantry of Baktriana, some of whom followed the fortunes of their Greek rulers into Kabul valley, while others accompanied the conquering Yue-chi founders of the Indo-Scythian empire into northern India.

Then followed the overthrow of the Yue-chi themselves by the Ye-tha (Ye-tha-i-li-to) of the Chinese records, that is, the Ephthalites, or so-called "White Huns," of the Greek and Arab writers, who about 425 A.D. overran Transoxiana, and soon afterwards penetrated through the mountain passes into the Kabul and Indus valleys. Although confused by some contemporary writers (Zosimus, Am. Marcellinus) with Attila's Huns, M. Drouin has made it clear that the Ye-tha were not Huns (Mongols) at all, but, like the Yue-chi, a Turki people, who were driven westwards about the same time as the Hiung-nu by the Yuan-yuans (see above). Of Hun they had little but the name, and the more accurate Procopius was aware that they differed entirely from "the Huns known to us, not being nomads, but settled for a long time in a fertile region." He speaks also of their white colour and regular features, and their sedentary life[689] as in the Chinese accounts, where they are described as warlike conquerors of twenty kingdoms, as far as that of the A-si (Arsacides, Parthians), and in their customs resembling the Tu-Kiu (Turks), being in fact "of the same race." On the ruins of the Indo-Scythian (Yue-chi) empire, the White Huns ruled in India and the surrounding lands from 425 to the middle of the sixth century. A little later came the Arabs, who in 706 captured Samarkand, and under the Abassides were supreme in Central Asia till scattered to the winds by the Oghuz Turki hordes.

From all this it has been suggested that--while the Baktrian peasants entered India as settlers, and are now represented by the agricultural Jats--the Yue-chi and Ye-tha, both of fair Turki stock, came as conquerors, and are now represented by the Rajputs, "Sons of Kings," the warrior and land-owning race of northern India. It is significant that these Thakur, "feudal lords," mostly trace their genealogies from about the beginning of the seventh century, as if they had become Hinduized soon after the fall of the foreign Ye-tha dynasty, while on the other hand "the country legends abound with instances of the conflict between the Rajput and the Brahman in prehistoric times[690]." This supports the conjecture that the Rajputs entered India, not as "Aryans" of the Kshatriya or military caste, as is commonly assumed, but as aliens (Turki), the avowed foes of the true Aryans, that is, the Brahman or theocratic (priestly) caste. Thus also is explained the intimate association of the Rajputs and the Jats from the first--the Rajputs being the Turki leaders of the invasions; and the Jats their peaceful Baktrian subjects following in their wake.

The theory that the haughty Rajputs are of unsullied "Aryan blood" is scarcely any longer held even by the Rajputs themselves; they are undoubtedly of mixed origin. But the definite physical type which H. H. Risley[691] describes as characteristic of Rajputs and Jats in the Kashmir Valley, Punjab and Rajputana, shows them to be wavy-haired dark-skinned dolichocephals, linked rather with the "Caucasic" than the "Mongolian" division.

Nearly related to the White Huns were the Uigurs, the Kao-che of the Chinese annals, who may claim to be the first Turki nation that founded a relatively civilised State in Central Asia. Before the general commotion caused by the westward pressure of the Hiung-nu, they appear to have dwelt in eastern Turkestan (Kashgaria) between the Usuns and the Sacae, and here they had already made considerable progress under Buddhist influences about the fourth or fifth century of the new era. Later, the Buddhist missionaries from Tibet were replaced by Christian (Nestorian) evangelists from western Asia, who in the seventh century reduced the Uigur language to written form, adapting for the purpose the Syriac alphabet, which was afterwards borrowed by the Mongols and the Manchus.

This Syriac script--which, as shown by the authentic inscription of Si-ngan-fu, was introduced into China in 635 A.D.--is not to be confused with that of the Orkhon inscriptions[692] dating from 732 A.D., and bearing a certain resemblance to some of the Runic characters, as also to the Korean, at least in form, but never in sound. Yet although differing from the Uiguric, Prof. Thomsen, who has successfully deciphered the Orkhon text, thinks that this script may also be derived, at least indirectly through some of the Iranian varieties, from the same Aramean (Syriac) form of the Semitic alphabet that gave birth to the Uiguric[693].

It is more important to note that all the non-Chinese inscriptions are in the Turki language, while the Chinese text refers by name to the father, the grandfather, and the great-grandfather of the reigning Khan Bilga, which takes us back nearly to the time when Sinjibu (Dizabul), Great Khan of the Altai Turks, was visited by the Byzantine envoy, Zimarchus, in 569 A.D. In the still extant report of this embassy[694] the Turks ([Greek: Tourkoi]) are mentioned by name, and are described as nomads who dwelt in tents mounted on wagons, burnt the dead, and raised to their memory monuments, statues, and cairns with as many stones as the foes slain by the deceased in battle. It is also stated that they had a peculiar writing system, which must have been that of these Orkhon inscriptions, the Uiguric having apparently been introduced somewhat later.

Originally the Uigurs comprised nineteen clans, which at a remote period already formed two great sections:--the On-Uigur ("Ten Uigurs") in the south, and the Toghuz-Uigur ("Nine Uigurs") in the north. The former had penetrated westwards to the Aral Sea[695] as early as the second century A.D., and many of them undoubtedly took part in Attila's invasion of Europe.

Later, all these Western Uigurs, mentioned amongst the hordes that harassed the Eastern Empire in the fifth and sixth centuries, in association especially with the Turki Avars, disappear from history, being merged in the Ugrian and other Finnish peoples of the Volga basin. The Toghuz section also, after throwing off the yoke of the Mongol or Tungus Geugen (Jeu-Jen) in the fifth century, were for a time submerged in the vast empire of the Altai Turks, founded in 552 by Tumen of the House of Assena (A-shi-na), who was the first to assume the title of Kha-Khan, "Great Khan," and whose dynasty ruled over the united Turki and Mongol peoples from the Pacific to the Caspian, and from the Frozen Ocean to the confines of China and Tibet. Both the above-mentioned Sinjibu, who received the Byzantine envoy, and the Bilga Khan of the Orkhon stele, belonged to this dynasty, which was replaced in 774 by Pei-lo (Huei-hu), chief of the Toghuz-Uigurs. This is how we are to understand the statement that all the Turki peoples who during the somewhat unstable rule of the Assena dynasty from 552 to 774 had undergone many vicissitudes, and about 580 were even broken into two great sections (Eastern Turks of the Karakoram region and Western Turks of the Tarim basin), were again united in one vast political system under the Toghuz-Uigurs. These are henceforth known in history simply as Uigurs, the On branch having, as stated, long disappeared in the West. The centre of their power seems to have oscillated between Karakoram and Turfan in Eastern Turkestan, the extensive ruins of which have been explored by D. A. Klements, Sven Hedin and M. A. Stein. Their vast dominions were gradually dismembered, first by the Hakas, or Ki-li-Kisse, precursors of the present Kirghiz, who overran the eastern (Orkhon) districts about 840, and then by the Muhammadans of Mawar-en-Nahar (Transoxiana), who overthrew the "Lion Kings," as the Uigur Khans of Turfan were called, and set up several petty Mussulman states in Eastern Turkestan. Later they fell under the yoke of the Kara-Khitais, and were amongst the first to join the devastating hordes of Jenghiz-Khan; their name, which henceforth vanishes from history[696], has been popularly recognised under the form of "Ogres," in fable and nursery tales, but the derivation lacks historical foundation.

At present the heterogeneous populations of the Tarim basin (Kashgaria, Eastern Turkestan), where the various elements have been intermingled, offer a striking contrast to those of the Ili valley (Sungaria), where one invading horde has succeeded and been superimposed on another. Hence the complexity of the Kashgarian type, in which the original "horse-like face" everywhere crops out, absorbing the later Mongolo-Turki arrivals. But in Sungaria the Kalmuk, Chinese, Dungan, Taranchi, and Kirghiz groups are all still sharply distinguished and perceptible at a glance. "Amongst the Kashgarians--a term as vague ethnically as 'Aryan'--Richthofen has determined the successive presence of the Su, Yue-chi, and Usun hordes, as described in the early Chinese chronicles[697]."

The recent explorations of M. A. Stein have thrown some light on the ethnology of this region, and a preliminary survey of results was prepared and published by T. A. Joyce. He concludes that the original inhabitants were of Alpine type, with, in the west, traces of the Indo-Afghan, and that the Mongolian has had very little influence upon the population[698].

In close proximity to the Toghuz-Uigurs dwelt the Oghuz (Ghuz, Uz), for whom eponymous heroes have been provided in the legendary records of the Eastern Turks, although all these terms would appear to be merely shortened forms of Toghuz[699]. But whether true Uigurs, or a distinct branch of the Turki people, the Ghuz, as they are commonly called by the Arab writers, began their westward migrations about the year 780. After occupying Transoxiana, where they are now represented by the Uzbegs[700] of Bokhara and surrounding lands, they gradually spread as conquerors over all the northern parts of Irania, Asia Minor, Syria, the Russian and Caucasian steppes, Ukrainia, Dacia, and the Balkan Peninsula. In most of these lands they formed fresh ethnical combinations both with the Caucasic aborigines, and with many kindred Turki as well as Mongol peoples, some of whom were settled in these regions since neolithic times, while others had either accompanied Attila's expeditions, or followed in his wake (Pechenegs, Komans, Alans, Kipchaks, Kara-Kalpaks), or else arrived later in company with Jenghiz-Khan and his successors (Kazan and Nogai "Tatars"[701]).

In Russia, Rumania (Dacia), and most of the Balkan Peninsula these Mongolo-Turki blends have been again submerged by the dominant Slav and Rumanian peoples (Great and Little Russians, Servo-Croatians, Montenegrini, Moldavians, and Walachians). But in south-western Asia they still constitute perhaps the majority of the population between the Indus and Constantinople, in many places forming numerous compact communities, in which the Mongolo-Turki physical and mental characters are conspicuous. Such, besides the already mentioned Turkomans of Parthian lineage, are all the nomad and many of the settled inhabitants of Khiva, Ferghana, Karategin, Bokhara, generally comprised under the name of Uzbegs and "Sartes." Such also are the Turki peoples of Afghan Turkestan, and of the neighbouring uplands (Hazaras and Aimaks who claim Mongol descent, though now of Persian speech); the Aderbaijani and many other more scattered groups in Persia; the Nogai and Kumuk tribes of Caucasia, and especially most of the nomad and settled agricultural populations of Asia Minor. The Anatolian peasantry form, in fact, the most numerous and compact division of the Turki family still surviving in any part of their vast domain between the Bosporus and the Lena.

Out of this prolific Oghuz stock arose many renowned chiefs, founders of vast but somewhat unstable empires, such as those of the Gasnevides, who ruled from Persia to the Indus; the Seljuks, who first wrested the Asiatic provinces from Byzantium; the Osmanli, so named from Othman, the Arabised form of Athman, who prepared the way for Orkhan (1326-60), true builder of the Ottoman power, which has alone survived the shipwreck of all the historical Turki states. The vicissitudes of these monarchies, looked on perhaps with too kindly an eye by Gibbon, belong to the domain of history, and it will suffice here to state that from the ethnical standpoint the chief interest centres in that of the Seljukides, covering the period from about the middle of the eleventh to the middle of the thirteenth century. It was under Togrul-beg of this dynasty (1038-63) that "the whole body of the Turkish nation embraced with fervour and sincerity the religion of Mahomet[702]." A little later began the permanent Turki occupation of Asia Minor, where, after the conquest of Armenia (1065-68) and the overthrow of the Byzantine emperor Romanus Diogenes (1071), numerous military settlements, followed by nomad Turkoman encampments, were established by the great Seljuk rulers, Alp Arslan and Malek Shah (1063-92), at all the strategical points. These first arrivals were joined later by others fleeing before the Mongol hosts led by Jenghiz-Khan's successors down to the time of Timur-beg. But the Christians (Greeks and earlier aborigines) were not exterminated, and we read that, while great numbers apostatised, "many thousand children were marked by the knife of circumcision; and many thousand captives were devoted to the service or the pleasures of their masters" (ib.). In other words, the already mixed Turki intruders were yet more modified by further interminglings with the earlier inhabitants of Asia Minor. Those who, following the fortunes of the Othman dynasty, crossed the Bosporus and settled in Rumelia and some other parts of the Balkan Peninsula, now prefer to call themselves Osmanli, even repudiating the national name "Turk" still retained with pride by the ruder peasant classes of Asia Minor. The latter are often spoken of as "Seljuk Turks," as if there were some racial difference between them and the European Osmanli, and for the distinction there is some foundation. As pointed out by Arminius Vambery[703], the Osmanli have been influenced and modified by their closer association with the Christian populations of the Balkan lands, while in Anatolia the Seljuks have been able better to preserve the national type and temperament. The true Turki spirit ("das Tuerkentum") survives especially in the provinces of Lykaonia and Kappadokia, where the few surviving natives were not only Islamised but ethnically fused, whereas in Europe most of them (Bosnians, Albanians) were only Islamised, and here the Turki element has always been slight.

At present the original Turki type and temperament are perhaps best preserved amongst the remote Yakuts of the Lena, and the Kirghiz groups (Kirghiz Kazaks and Kara Kirghiz) of the West Siberian steppe and the Pamir uplands. The Turki connection of the Yakuts, about which some unnecessary doubts had been raised, has been set at rest by V. A. Sierochevsky[704], who, however, describes them as now a very mixed people, owing to alliances with the Tunguses and Russians. They are of short stature, averaging scarcely 5 ft. 4 in., and this observer thought their dark but not brilliant black eyes, deeply sunk in narrow orbits, gave them more of a Red Indian than of a Mongol cast. They are almost the only progressive aboriginal people in Siberia, although numbering not more than 200,000 souls, concentrated chiefly along the river banks on the plateau between the Lena and the Aldan.

In the Yakuts we have an extreme instance of the capacity of man to adapt himself to the milieu. They not merely exist, but thrive and display a considerable degree of energy and enterprise in the coldest region on the globe. Within the isothermal of -72 deg. Fahr., Verkhoyansk, in the heart of their territory, is alone included, for the period from November to February, and in this temperature, at which the quicksilver freezes, the Yakut children may be seen gambolling naked in the snow. In midwinter R. Kennan met some of these "men of iron," as Wrangel calls them, airily arrayed in nothing but a shirt and a sheepskin, lounging about as if in the enjoyment of the balmy zephyrs of some genial sub-tropical zone.

Although nearly all are Orthodox Christians, or at least baptized as such, they are mere Shamanists at heart, still conjuring the powers of nature, but offering no worship to a supreme deity, of whom they have a vague notion, though he is too far off to hear, or too good to need their supplications. The world of good and evil spirits, however, has been enriched by accessions from the Russian calendar and pandemonium. Thanks to their commercial spirit, the Yakut language, a very pure Turki idiom, is even more widespread than the race, having become a general medium of intercourse for Tungus, Russian, Mongol and other traders throughout East Siberia, from Irkutsk to the Sea of Okhotsk, and from the Chinese frontier to the Arctic Ocean[705].

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 passed 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 illustrious 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 partition 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 horsemen 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. Kumiss, 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, Kamassintzi, Matores, Karagasses 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 shores of the Baltic and Lapland (Baltic and Lake Finns).

Thus were constituted 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 assimilated 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 passed 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, associated 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 institutions. 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 Norsemen. 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 assumption 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 constituted 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, Somelaized, those of Esthonia, Samelats (Sabmelad), the Lapps, Samoyad, the Samoyeds. In Ohthere's time the Norsemen 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, passive 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 assimilated 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. Loennrot, 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 pass round the Gulf of Bothnia and up through Lappmarken to Kittalae, 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 Norsemen followed in their wanderings from Finland[722]." The references of the Sagas are mostly to these primitive Bothnian Finns, with whom the Norsemen 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 butter 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. Cocks, 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 class," 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 Dueben, 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 pronounced 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 shores of the White Sea, at some remote period prior to the occupation of Finland by its present inhabitants. This assumption 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 gods, 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 god 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 passing 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, God of Heaven, to whom they sacrifice animals as well as human beings whenever it can be safely done. We are assured 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 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).

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