13. Origin of the Magyars
in a separate volume. In different scientific articles I had already hinted at the manner in which I intended to treat this still open question. I pointed out that Árpád and his warriors who, towards the close of the ninth century founded what is now Hungary, were most certainly Turkish nomads forming a north-westerly branch of the Turkish chain of nationalities; that they pushed forward from the Ural, across the Volga, into Europe, and established in Pannonia what is now the State of Hungary. The ethnology and the language of the Magyars is a curious mixture of dialects, for the Turkish nomads during their wanderings incorporated into their language many kindred Finnish-Ugrian elements, and in the lowlands of Hungary they came upon many ethnological remains of the same original stock. All these various elements gradually amalgamated and formed the people and the language of Hungary as it is now. Considering this problematic origin, and the elasticity of philological speculation, it stands to reason that much has been written and argued in Hungary about the origin of the nation. Many different views were held, and at the time that I joined in the discussion, the theory of the Finnish-Ugrian descent of the Magyars held the upper hand. My labour, therefore, was directed against these, for on the ground of my personal experiences in the manner of living and the migrations of the Turkish nomads in general, based upon historical evidence, I endeavoured to prove the Turkish nationality of Árpád and his companions. I conceded the mixed character of the language with the reservation, however, that in the amalgamation not the Finnish-Ugrian but the Turko-Tartar element predominated. Philologists opposed this view in their most zealous and ablest representative, Doctor Budenz, a German by birth; he pleaded with all the enthusiasm of an etymological philologist for the eminently Ugrian character of the Magyar tongue. The arguments of the opposing party were chiefly based upon what they considered the sacred and fundamental rules of comparative philology; but to me these threw no light upon the matter, and were not likely to convince me of my error. The struggle, which my fanatical opponents made into a personal matter, lasted for some time, but the old Latin proverb: "Philologi certant, lumen sub judice lis," again proved true in this case. The etymological Salto Mortales and the grammatical violence of the opposing school had rudely shaken my confidence in the entire apparatus of comparative philology. I realised that with such evidence one might take any one Ural-Altaic language and call it the nearest kindred tongue of the Magyar. The etymological connection between the Tartar words "tongue" and "navel"—because both are long, hanging objects—and the use of fictitious root-words to explain the inexplicable, with which my learned opponent tried to justify his theory, were altogether too fantastic and too airy for my practical notions. So I gave up the struggle and satisfied myself with the result that the home-bred Magyars were no longer exclusively considered to be of Finnish-Ugrian extraction, as used to be the case, and that even my bitterest opponent had to allow the possibility that Árpád and his warriors were originally Turks.
The learned world outside naturally took but little part in this essentially Magyar controversy, and I was, therefore, all the more pleased to see Ranke, the Nestor of German historical research, siding with me. He referred to the historical evidence of one Ibn Dasta and Porphyrogenitus, who had declared that the Magyars overrunning Hungary at the close of the ninth century were Turks. In Hungary itself the majority of the public shared my views, and the seven hundred copies of the first edition of my book were sold in three days.
This, of course, was due more to the national and political than to the purely scientific interest of the question, since the Magyars, proud of their Asiatic origin, very much disliked, nay even thought it insulting that their ancestors should have to claim blood-relationship with poor barbarians of high northern regions, living by fishing and hunting, Ostiaks, Vogules, and such like racial fragments. The Hungarian priding himself on his warlike spirit, his valour, and his independence, would rather claim relationship with Huns and Avars, depicted by the mediæval Christian world as terror-spreading, mighty warriors; and the national legend correctedly accepted this view, for as my further researches revealed, and as I tried to prove in my subsequent book, entitled—
14. Growth and Spread of the Magyars,
the present Magyar nation has proceeded from a gradual, scarcely definable settlement of Ural-Altaic elements in the lowlands of Hungary. Originally as warriors and protectors of the Slavs settled in Pannonia, they became afterwards their lords and masters, something like the Franks in Gaul and the Varangians in Russia, with this difference, however, that the latter exchanged their language for that of their subjects, and became lost among the masses of the subjugated people, while the Magyars to this day have preserved their language and their national individuality intact, and in course of time were able to establish a Magyar ethnography. Looking at it from this point of view, not Asia but the middle Danube-basin becomes the birthplace of Magyarism. Its mixed ethnography, formerly known by various appellations, became through its martial proclivities a terror to the Christian West, and compelled Charlemagne to bring a strong Christian coalition against it in the field. This first crusade of the Occident, bent but did not break the power of the Ural-Altaic warriors, who ruled from the Moldau as far as the borders of Upper Austria; for the remnants retiring behind the Theis soon after received reinforcements from a tribe of Turks known as the "Madjars," i.e., Magyars, under the command of Árpád, whose descendants accepted Christianity and established the Hungary of the present day, both politically and ethnically.
Curiously enough this ethnological discussion was not at all agreeable to my so-called paleo-Magyar compatriots. The romantic legend of the invasion of Árpád into Pannonia with his many hundred thousand warriors, sounds more beautiful in the ears of the Magyar patriots, than their prosaic derivation from a confused ethnical group; as if there were any single nation in Europe which is not patched and pieced together from the most diverse elements, and only in later times has presented itself as an undivided whole. In the Hungarians, however, this childish vanity is the more ridiculous since it is much more glorious, as a small national fragment, to play for centuries the rôle of conqueror, and in the strength of its national proclivities to absorb other elements, than to conquer with the sword and then to be absorbed in the conquered element as Franks, Varangians, and others have been. Truly nations, as well as individuals, have to pass through an infant stage, and I am not surprised that this conception of mine, and my solution of the ethnological problem, did not find much favour in Hungary.
Before concluding this review of my scientific-literary activity, I should mention that I also have ventured into the regions of history, a totally unknown field to me, wherein, as is the case with many hazardous expeditions, I betrayed more temerity than forethought. My book on the—
15. History of Bokhara,
in two volumes, published in German, Hungarian, English, and Russian, has done more harm than good to my literary reputation. The motive for writing this book was the purchase of some Oriental manuscripts I discovered in Bokhara, which, I thought, were unknown in Europe. To some extent this was the case, for of Tarikhi Narshakhi, and the history of Seid Rakim Khan both of which furnish rich material for the history of Central Asia, our Orientalists had never heard. But in the main I was working under a delusion, owing to my insufficient literary knowledge; some passages, especially in the ancient history of Central Asia, had already been worked out by learned scholars, and it was only about modern times that I could tell anything new.