[525] They were judges rather than jurymen of the British type. Their number was twelve, half of whom were chosen by the plaintiff and half by the defendant. See Stubbs’ Constitutional History, chap. xiii.
[526] Other writers give Cherson as the scene of this historic rite. Vladimir wears a halo in monkish legend, and is commonly styled the Saint, or the Great.
[527] According to Ujfalvy, the Mongols were leading a peaceful and patriarchal life round Lake Baikal in the second century before our era. Richthofen thinks that the primitive land of the Turks was not in the Altaï Mountains, as their legends would have it, but rather in the country below the Anan, the Lena, and the Seleuga (Les Aryens (Paris, 1896), p. 25).
[528] Khwārazm, an old Persian word said to mean “eastwards,” comprises the embouchure of the Sir Daryā, and is now known as Khiva.
[529] “Horde” is derived from the Old Turkish Urdu, meaning encampment. Hence Urdu, the lingua franca evolved in the progresses which the Mongolian emperors of India used to make yearly throughout the peninsula. The people of Samarkand still call the citadel Urda, “the encampment.”
[530] A Historical Sketch of Russian Policy in Central Asia, by Professor V. Grigorieff; Schuyler’s Turkestan, App. IV. vol. ii. p. 391.
[531] For further details consult Howorth’s Mongols, pt. ii. div. i. p. 507.
[532] Russia in Central Asia, by Hugo Stumm, pp. 2, 3; En Asie Centrale, by N. Ney, p. 203.
[533] The Cossacks have never been able to shake off the stigma imprinted by this dire necessity. They are still called “Man-eaters” in many parts of Central Asia.
[534] En Asie Centrale, by N. Ney, pp. 203–5.