ETHNOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE TURANIAN AND IRANIAN RACES OF CENTRAL ASIA.
THE TURKS OF EASTERN ASIA.—PHYSIOGNOMY AND CUSTOMS.
I think that there are few points upon the whole terrestrial globe, which are of greater importance for our historical researches than the oases of Central Asia. These in the primitive times were inexhaustible floodgates for those warlike hordes, who often inundated and conquered the most beautiful spots of Asia, streaming towards the west in wild torrents, and even occasioning alarm among Europeans. No people can be so interesting for us upon the subject of Ethnography as the Turko-Tartars, who, under such various names and forms, have appeared on the scene of the events of the world, and have had such powerful influence over our own circumstances. Is it not surprising that of all nations we are the least acquainted with these? Huns, Avars, Utigurs, Kutrigurs, Khazars, and so many others, float before our sight only in the mist of fable. The clash of arms which sounded through them from the Yaxartes to the heart of Gaul and Rome has long since ceased. In vain should we inquire even into their origin, did we not find in the scanty dates of the Western chronicles of that period some points of reliance. These dates show us that between the Tartar tribes of that age and the present inhabitants of Central Asia there did exist an analogy of an unmistakeable character. We detect this in descriptions of them—in the accounts of their manner of living—all evincing much resemblance to the customs and physical condition of the present inhabitants of Turkestan. A similar life to what Priscus describes in the Court of the King of the Huns is met with to-day in the tent of a nomadic chief. Attila is more original than Djingis or Taimur, but as historical personages they resemble each other. Energy and good fortune could now almost produce upon the borders of the Oxus and Yaxartes one of those heroes, whose soldiers, like an avalanche, carrying everything before them, would increase to hundreds of thousands, and would appear as a new example of God's scourge, if the powerful barriers of our civilisation, which has a great influence in the East, did not stop the way. The people of Central Asia, particularly the nomadic tribes, are, in the internal relations of their existence, the same as they were two thousand years ago. In these physiognomical signs we find already changes from a mixture of Iranian and Semitic blood (chiefly after the Arabian occupation). The features of the Mongolian-Kalmuck type here and there approach the Caucasian race. The Tartar in Central Asia is no longer what we see him represented by the Greek-Gothic writers, for even in the times of Djingis he was no longer the same. It is, therefore, of great interest to mark how this change in physiognomical type continually decreases from the east to the west—how this Deturkism, if I may so express myself, is perceptible among the various races of Central Asia, and in what degree their various gradations through social circumstances came, more or less, in contact with foreign elements. This will especially be seen by a cursory view of the Turkish nations of Central Asia from Inner China to the Caspian Sea; but those Turks who stretch hence up to the Adriatic, or to the banks of the Danube, are West Turks, and cannot be included in the unity of race so much by physiognomical type as by analogy of speech, characters, and customs.
With the former, whose masses have retained compactly together the unity of the race, in spite of all those ways in which the Central Asiatics differ remarkably from one another—in spite of our ethnographical names,—the distinction shows itself clearly in their features and common physical type. Whatever views we may entertain of the origin of the Turks, so much is certain, that they are closely related to the Mongols; the relation being much closer than those which subsist between the Indians and Persians in Iran. Much, very much indeed, is to be done before we have investigated the mutual relations of the whole Turko-Tartaric race, which stretches from the Hindu Kush to the Polar Sea, from the interior of China to the shores of the Danube. Our present sketch is only a weak attempt at a small portion—general views upon all that personal experience has presented to our observation; and it may here and there exhibit somewhat of novelty. Through the extent known to us from East to West, we divide the Turks into the following classes:—
1. Buruts, black or pure Kirghese. 2. Kirghis, properly Kazaks. 3. Karakalpaks. 4. Turkomans. 5. Œzbegs.
Buruts.
These are pure, or black (Kirghis), and dwell on the eastern boundary of Turkestan, namely, the valleys of the Thian-shan chain of mountains, and inhabit several points on the shores of the Issik Köl, close upon the frontier towns of Khokand. As I am told (I have only seen a few of them), they are thick-set, but of powerful stature, strong-boned, but remarkably agile, to which last quality their warlike renown is attributed. By their physiognomy alone are they to be distinguished from the Mongolians and Kalmucks: the face is less flat, their cheeks less fleshy, their foreheads somewhat higher, their eyes are less almond-shaped than those of the latter. With regard to their colour, they can be little distinguished from the neighbouring nomadic races; red or fair hair and white complexion (by which type our European scholars would claim relationship for this race with the Finlanders and other north Altaic races) are rarely found; at least, my Khokand friends assured me that among hundreds there were scarcely one or two.[38] In all likelihood the Kiptchaks, of whom I have made mention in my travelling journal at page 382, are no other than a division of the Buruts, who are settled down in and around Khokand, and have caught, both from Islam and from their social relationship with Turkestan, far more than the rest of the Buruts, who, through their contact with Kalmucks and Mongolians, now and then profess themselves more or less Islam. Their language also contains many more Mongolian words than the dialect of the Kiptchaks. From this most original Turkish people we pass over to the second gradation, which is—
The Kirghis.
Among the Kirghis or Kasak (as he calls himself), the character of the Mongol Kalmuck type is no longer to be met with in such a striking manner as among the Buruts, although he is hardly to be distinguished from the latter in language and manner of life. In colour, he nearly resembles the rest of the inhabitants of the deserts of Central Asia. The women and youths, in general, have a white and almost European complexion; still this becomes soon altered, through the manner of living in the open air, in heat and cold. The Kirghis are of thick-set and powerful frames, with large bones; they have mostly short necks,—a real type of the Turanian, opposed to the long-necked Iranian; not very large heads, of which the crown is round, more pointed than flat. They have eyes less almond-shaped, but awry and sparkling, prominent cheek-bones, pug noses, a broad flat forehead, and a larger chin than the Buruts. Their beards have little hair on the chin, only on both ends of the upper lip; and it is remarkable, that they lament this deficiency, and by no means find such delight in this physiognomical characteristic as in the projecting cheek-bones, small eyes, &c., which are esteemed by them as beauties.[39]