[458] Herod. iv, 17. We may illustrate this statement of Herodotus by an extract from Heber’s journal as cited in Dr. Clarke’s Travels, ch. xv, p. 337: “The Nagay Tartars begin to the west of Marinopol: they cultivate a good deal of corn, yet they dislike bread as an article of food.”
[459] Niebuhr (Dissertat. ut sup. p. 360), Boeckh (Introd. Inscrip. ut sup. p. 110), and Ritter (Vorhalle der Geschichte, p. 316) advance this opinion. But we ought not on this occasion to depart from the authority of Herodotus, whose information respecting the people of Scythia, collected by himself on the spot, is one of the most instructive and precious portions of his whole work. He is very careful to distinguish what is Scythian from what is not: and these tribes, which Niebuhr (contrary to the sentiment of Herodotus) imagines not to be Scythian, were the tribes nearest and best known to him; probably he had personally visited them, since we know that he went up the river Hypanis (Bog) as high as the Exampæus, four days’ journey from the sea (iv, 52-81).
That some portions of the same ἔθνος should be ἀροτῆρες, and other portions νόμαδες, is far from being without parallel; such was the case with the Persians, for example (Herodot. i, 126), and with the Iberians between the Euxine and the Caspian (Strabo, xi, p. 500).
The Pontic Greeks confounded Agathyrsus, Gelônus, and Scythês in the same genealogy, as being three brethren, sons of Hêraklês by the μιξοπάρθενος Ἔχιδνα of the Hylæa (iv, 7-10). Herodotus is more precise: he distinguishes both the Agathyrsi and Gelôni from Scythians.
[460] Both Niebuhr and Boeckh account the ancient Scythians to be of Mongolian race (Niebuhr in the Dissertation above mentioned, Untersuchungen über die Geschichte der Skythen, Geten, und Sarmaten, among the Kleine Historische Schriften, p. 362; Boeckh, Corpus Inscriptt. Græcarum, Introductio ad Inscriptt. Sarmatic. part xi, p. 81). Paul Joseph Schafarik, in his elaborate examination of the ethnography of the ancient people described as inhabiting northern Europe and Asia, arrives at the same result (Slavische Alterthümer, Prag. 1843, vol. i, xiii, 6, p. 279).
A striking illustration of this analogy of race is noticed by Alexander von Humboldt, in speaking of the burial-place and the funeral obsequies of the Tartar Tchinghiz Khan:—
“Les cruautés lors de la pompe funèbre des grands-khans ressemblent entièrement à celles que nous trouvons décrites par Hérodote (iv, 71) environ 1700 ans avant la mort de Tchinghiz, et 65° de longitude plus à l’ouest, chez les Scythes du Gerrhus et du Borysthène.” (Humboldt, Asie Centrale, vol. i, p. 244.)
Nevertheless, M. Humboldt dissents from the opinion of Niebuhr and Boeckh, and considers the Scythians of Herodotus to be of Indo-Germanic, not of Mongolian race: Klaproth seems to adopt the same view (see Humboldt, Asie Centrale, vol. i, p. 401, and his valuable work, Kosmos, p. 491, note 383). He assumes it as a certain fact, upon what evidence I do not distinctly see, that no tribe of Turk or Mongol race migrated westward out of Central Asia until considerably later than the time of Herodotus. To make out such a negative, seems to me impossible: and the marks of ethnographical analogy, so far as they go, decidedly favor the opinion of Niebuhr. Ukert also (Skythien, pp. 266-280) controverts the opinion of Niebuhr.
At the same time it must be granted that these marks are not very conclusive, and that many nomadic hordes, whom no one would refer to the same race, may yet have exhibited an analogy of manners and characteristics equal to that between the Scythians and Mongols.
The principle upon which the Indo-European family of the human race is defined and parted off, appears to me inapplicable to any particular case wherein the language of the people is unknown to us. The nations constituting that family have no other point of affinity except in the roots and structure of their language; on every other point there is the widest difference. To enable us to affirm that the Massagetæ, or the Scythians, or the Alani, belonged to the Indo-European family, it would be requisite that we should know something of their language. But the Scythian language may be said to be wholly unknown; and the very few words which are brought to our knowledge do not tend to aid the Indo-European hypothesis.