One of the presumptions in favour of the view in question has been noticed, viz., the uniformity of the Russian dialects. Another is derived from the fact of both the Lithuanians and Ugrians having suffered from the encroachment of the Russians ever since the beginning of the historical era. The advance has always been on one side. The Russ has pressed northward, westward, and eastward; the Ugrians and Lithuanians have retreated. But, better than mere presumptions there is evidence—historical and internal.
In Herodotus’s account of Scythia, the governments of Kherson, Ekaterinoslav, with parts of Kiev, Poltava, and Kharkhov, are occupied by a nation called the Skoloti. The informants of Herodotus, it is true, called them Scythæ, but Skolotoi was what they called themselves; and Skolotoi is the name that is most conveniently used when we wish to be specific. Their area coincides nearly with that of New Russia; nearly also with the Steppe district, as opposed to the fat black soils of the Middle Dneiper, if we consider it in respect to its physical geography. And this seems to determine the ethnology; since the Skoloti fall in two or more divisions, one nomadic, the other agricultural; the latter lying to the north of the former, just as is the case with the fertile lands as opposed to the bleak Steppes. The Royal Skoloti occupy the Crimea. The names of this family in detail are Alazones, Kallipidæ, Skythæ (Skoloti) Arotêres, Skythæ Georgi, and Skythæ Basileioi. But besides there is in the separate and disconnected population, viz., the Skythæ Apostantes, or the Seceding Skythians.
For the Skoloti a Slavonic origin has been claimed, and there is undoubtedly one decided fact in favour of their being so. But there is certainly no more. On the other hand, their Asiatic origin and their distribution connect them with the great Turk stock of Independent Tartary and a vast portion of Central Asia besides.
Furthermore, their eponymus is Targ-itaus, whose three sons are Leipoxais, Arpoxais, and Koloxais. The tradition concerning these as given by Herodotus is a tradition current among the Kherghis Turks at the present time. Lastly, the only word of the few glosses of the Skolotic language that can be explained by any known tongue in a plain straightforward manner, and without an undue amount of philological manipulation is the word oior=man, which is Turk throughout all the dialects of the Turk stock. The one decided fact in favour of a Sarmatian origin is the statement that certain Sauromatæ beyond the Don spoke the Skythian language. It should be added, however, that they spoke it with solecisms (σολοἱκοντες). Now it will readily be admitted that a Sarmatian population protruded as it were from the Lower Danube to the parts beyond the Donetz (Tanaïs), and thus isolated from its fellows, was just in the position to speak the language of the dominant occupants, and to speak it badly. Isolated, such Sarmatians undoubtedly were.
They were also mixed. The special statement of Herodotus is that they were descended, on one side, from the Skythæ of the country, on the other, from an invading body of Amazons. An explanation of this will be offered when the ethnology of Thrace comes under notice.
A second argument of far less value lies in the names of two Skoloti of rank—Aria-pithes, and Sparga-pithes. They are evidently compounds, whilst the latter name occurs in Persian, and the element -pith- (bed) in Armenian. This is a complication, since it suggests another class of affinities. Valeat quantum. The gloss oior, the descent from Targitaus, the legends of Koloxais, and the Asiatic origin stand against it. Besides which, a little ingenuity will explain away the root -pith. It may have been a title, as it actually is in Armenian, and, if so, a word belonging to the language of Herodotus’s informant, rather than to the Skolotic. Or the same class of Turk intrusions which introduced it into Europe, may have done the same in Persia; and this is not unlikely. It was just as much a proper name amongst the Massagetæ as it was amongst the Skoloti.
Turk invasion is the rule in Russia, and that of the Skoloti is the earliest on record. And it is in the very earliest records that it appears. The reasons for making it Turk have been considered; and it cannot have been Turk without having been comparatively recent. Consequently, there was a displacement of an earlier population, as is shown by the existence of an isolated population of Sauromatæ beyond the Donetz—in the country of the Don Kosaks.
But what are the reasons for supposing the Skolotic area of Herodotus to have been originally either Ugrian or Lithuanic, or, if not either exclusively, divided between the two? In the first place there are Ugrians as far south as the governments of Astrakhan and Simbirsk at the present moment; and that in situ, so to say, or in the position of indigenous occupants of their present localities rather than that of a newly introduced population. In the next place, there is more than one geographical term in the Skythian geography of the early writers which seems to belong to the Ugrian class of tongues; from which we may infer that, even if the informants of Herodotus did not take their geographical terms from the Ugrians themselves, they took them from a population with which the Ugrian area was conterminous.
1. The name Rhox-olani, occurring in Strabo, has long been considered Ugrian. No other class of languages forms the plural in -laine; several of the Ugrians do so.
2. The term Rhipæan, as applied to the Rhipæan Mountains, is Ugrian. Rhip=mountain in Ostiak.