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ANTHROPOLOGICAL MISCELLANEA.

THE AVARES, OR EASTERN HUNS.

THE Avares bear a name very familiar to the readers of Gibbon and of the history of Charlemagne. Byzantium and the Frankish empire of the west equally felt their arms. From the Don to the Rhine, from the Alps to the Baltic, their warriors ravaged and overran every corner of Europe. They effectually subdued the Slaves; and it was apparently under their leadership that these latter people overwhelmed Bohemia and Mecklenburg, occupying the old seats of the Marcomanni and the Vandals. They settled in Hungary and Austria, and probably gave to the language of the descendants of Theodoric's Goths those peculiarities we differentiate when we speak of High German or High Dutch, in distinction to Low German or Low Dutch. The Avares are, therefore, an important ingredient among the European races; and it is a subject of interest to the historian no less than the ethnologist to define their race-connections and to trace out their origin. The materials for such an examination are abundant, but they have not been critically used. In the following paper I shall offer a theory on the subject, which I believe to be, in a great degree, new, and which, I believe, explains much that is difficult in the ethnography of Western Asia in the sixth century.

Latham and others, who have been followed in the notes to Smith's edition of Gibbon and his "Dictionary of Ancient Geography", decide that the Avares were Turks mainly because their leader was styled khan. As if khan was not a title used by the Russians (Const, Porphyr, etc.), by the Khazars, by the Mongols, and by the early Kirguises, none of whom were Turks-a title unknown to the more savage and unmixed Turks, such as the Jakuts, Barabinski, etc.—a title which is neither more nor less than the Chinese han, a dignity. conferred on the greater vassals of the empire among the barbarians, and which is the surest test we have in early times that the race whose leader bore it was subordinate and subject to, or had intercourse with, China. Besides the use of the term khan, I know of no other good evidence for making the Avares Turks. Of the value of this the above facts are conclusive.

Vivien St. Martin and others have decided that the Avares, with the Khazars, Bulgars, Huns, etc., were all Ugrian or Finnish tribes, descended from a common nest at the foot of the Urals, and related

most closely to the Voguls of the present day.

This view is more

In fact,

reasonable than the last, and much more generally held. it has been supposed that, if we exclude the Turks, we must decide in favour of the Ugrians as the parent stock of all these tribes. In a former paper on the Khazars, I have tried to show that the alternative is not confined to Turks and Ugrians, and that, as far as the Khazars are concerned at least, the overwhelming evidence goes to show they were the ancestors of the Circassians. How about the Avares? who were they?

Theophylactus Simonocatta, who wrote a history of the Emperor Maurice (A.D. 582—602), has left us more valuable materials than all the other Greek writers for the elucidation of the question. I will quote his words at length. He says that, "having conquered the Ephthalitæ, and joined their country to his own, the Turkish khan also conquered the nation of the Abari. Those on the Ister have falsely taken this name......... The Turks then conquered the nation Ogor, a very numerous race, well skilled in arms.

It dwelt in the

east, on the river Til (i.e., the Itil or Volga), which the Turks call black. Its most ancient princes were called Var and Chunni. A portion of these fled from the main stock into Europe, and adopted the name and distinction of the Avares. The Sarselt Unnuguri and Sabiri, on the arrival of the fugitives, were seized with great fear, as they suspected them to be Avares. The Var and Chunni, seeing this, gave themselves the name of Abares, for the Abares among the nations of Asia are held in highest esteem. Of these pseud-Abares some were Var and some Chunni."

Menander Protector reports that the ambassadors of Dizabulus, the Turkish khan, in answer to certain questions, said that a portion of the Avares were still subject to him, and that the number of those who had fled westward was about twenty thousand. Zemarchus, the Byzantine ambassador, on his return from Asia, the same writer tells us, crossed first the Hich, then the Daich (the Jaik, or Ural), and then, after passing some marshes, came to Attila (the Atel or Itil, the Volga); thence to the Ougouri, who warned the Romans of an ambush the Persians had prepared for them. The leader of the Ou

gouroi was subject to Dizabulus. Dizabulus was succeeded by Turxanth, who jeered the Roman ambassadors for their hollow friendship, inasmuch as he said, "Ye have made treaties with our slaves the Varchonita (by whom, as the original in Menander says, he meant the Avares), who were our subjects."

These extracts have been bones of contention among ethnologists, and quite a load of lore has been accumulated about them. Several facts seem to me to stand out clearly. First, the Ougouri of Menander and the Ogors of Theophylactus are the same folk, a great and warlike people living on the Volga. These, again, can be no others than the Jougrians, so celebrated in the middle ages; the Youras of the Arabs; and Yourahs and Yugri of the Russians. Yugri is probably derived from Yukh, Ostiak, wood (Lehrberg). Their present country is filled with thick woods; it lies between the river Ob and

the Ural mountains, as far as the Nadym and the Agasin, and between 56 deg. and 67 deg. North latitude. We have shown in a previous paper that they were the same as the Ougres, or Hungarians. If Avar and Ogor are convertible terms, then assuredly the Avares were typical Ugrians, and own brothers to the Voguls and the Mordvins, as the Hungarians were. But this is improbable.

In the case of the Avares we may distinguish two distinct peoples. Theophylactus tells us, of the Ogor some were Var and some Chunni; again, the ancient princes of the Ogor were called Var and Chunni ; lastly, Paulus Diaconus tells us the Avares were formerly called Huns, but from the names of their princes they took that of Avares. These extracts seem to show that it was the princely caste among the Ogors—the dominant race, in fact-which alone was entitled to the name of Avares. This is confirmed in other ways. The Turkish khan does not complain of the flight of the Ogors, but of the Varchonitæ. The Ogors are found by Zemarchus, under their own chief, on the Volga; while the Varchonites, of whom Turxanth complains, had fled towards the Danube: shewing clearly there was a distinction between them. The number of fugitives was placed by the Turks at 20,000, a small fraction only, assuredly, of those Avares who were the terror of Western Europe for so long. This fact and the rest are explainable only on the hypothesis that the Var and Chunni―i.e., the Avares-were only the nucleus-" the head of the spear"—of the Avarian armies, the rest being formed of precisely the same materials as the armies of the later Hungarians; namely, of Ougres. That the Avares proper were the dominant nation of Central Asia before the Turks is stated by the ambassadors of Dizabulus. That as such they dominated over the Ogors is most probable (thus the chiefs of the latter acquired the names of Var and Chunni); and that, when beaten by the Turks, a portion of the Avares should fly to the Ogors, and with the latter invade the west, is equally probable; and this I take to be the real story. And, if it be so, we ought to find corroborating testimony in the pages of the Chinese writers, and to them we must now turn.

Before doing so, I will dispose of two or three other questions. Dr. Latham throws out a suggestion that "Abaris the Scythian", mentioned by Herodotus, may have given the name to the Avares-a farfetched notion, showing only too clearly how apt a mere name is to run away with our ethnological reasoning; that a Scyth of the sixth century B.C., should have given a name to those who, in the sixth century A.D., Priscus tells us," were formerly called Huns, now Avares", argues a more tenacious memory in a race for their primitive name than is consistent with probability.

The curious story of Theophylactus about the real Avares and the pseud-Avares has received many explanations. I think that of the elder St. Martin, the historian of the Armenians, is the most probable. If the Avares were the dominating race of Central Asia, they must have been too well known to the inhabitants of the northern shores of the Caspian for them to mistake an entirely different

people for them. The explanation of the story, no doubt, is, that they mistook the broken fragment flying before the Turks for the main army of the old invincible race.

Let us now leave the Byzantine and examine the Chinese authorities. Here I shall depend entirely on the authority of De Guignes, who wrote a most exhaustive article on the Avares, in the twentyeighth volume of the "Transactions" of the French Academy, some years after the completion of his great work on the Huns.

Before the supremacy of the Turks, the western writers tell us, the Avares were the dominant race in Central Asia. The same position is filled in the Chinese accounts by the Geougen, or Jouan Jouan. Theophylactus tells us the Turkish khan killed three thousand Ogors, with their khan. Exactly the same story is told of the destruction of the Geougen by the Chinese writers. The last khan of the Ogors is called Colch by Theophylactus. The Chinese, who disfigure all foreign names, call the last khan of the Geougen Gau-lo-chin. In 551 the Geougen were defeated by the Turks; and in 555 the Turkish khan put to death three thousand of them with their leader. The fugitive Avares first appeared on the frontiers of the Roman empire in the thirty-first year of Justinian-i.e., in 557-coming from the very country of the Geougen; thus the time of the arrival of the Avares exactly agrees with the time of the expulsion of the Geougen.

These facts make it most probable that the race of the Avares, whose great fame had reached Europe, was neither more nor less than the Geougen of the Chinese.

The Geougen are placed by Chinese writers about the river Tula, and we are told their country extended as far as the Baschkirs. Matouan-li, the great Chinese historian, places them, during the dynasties of the Huns, to the north of the Yue-tchi. These notices only vaguely define the area of the Geougen. We shall not be far wrong, however, if we assign to them the country now occupied by the Great and Middle Hordes of the Khirgises and the province of Tobolsk, the area, in fact, formerly known to the Arabs as Ibir Sebir. We shall have more to say about this when we come to the Bulgarians.

The Chinese do not assist us at all in defining the race affinities of the Geougen. Some make them Tungus, others Mongols. (Remusat, "Langues Tartares", p. 326.). Ma-touan-lin makes them descend from the Hiong-nu—that is, makes them Turks. These contradictory accounts probably only prove that the Chinese had some difficulty in assigning them to any of the well-known races of Northern Asia.

I believe I have discovered a clue which explains the difficulty, and also solves it. Vivien St. Martin and others have remarked that the name read Geougen by De Guignes is really formed by a repetition of the same character, and ought to be read Jouan Jouan, or perhaps Jén Jén. Now Strahlenberg relates that a surname in use among the Azincian Tartars was Gugui (p. 66). This seems more than a mere resemblance of name. Who were the Azincian Tartars of Strahlenberg? The question lands us in the midst of a very

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