Situation Scythia, The memory of past events cannot long be preserved, and extent of in the frequent and remote emigrations of illiterate Baror Tartary. barians. The modern Tartars are ignorant of the conquests of their ancestors 16; and our knowledge of the history of the Scythians is derived from their intercourse with the learned and civilised nations of the South, the Greeks, the Persians, and the Chinese. The Greeks, who navigated the Euxine, and planted their colonies along the sea-coast, made the gradual and imperfect discovery of Scythia; from the Danube, and the confines of Thrace, as far as the frozen Mæotis, the seat of eternal winter, and Mount Caucasus, which, in the language of poetry, was described as the utmost boundary of the earth. They celebrated, with simple credulity, the virtues of the pastoral life"7: they entertained a more rational apprehension of the strength and numbers of the warlike Barbarians 18, who contemptuously baffled the immense armament of Darius, the son of Hystaspes.19 The Persian monarchs had extended their western conquests to the banks of the Danube, and the limits of European Scythia. The eastern provinces of their empire were exposed to the Scythians of Asia; the wild inhabitants of the plains beyond the Oxus and the Jaxartes, two mighty rivers, which direct their course towards the Caspian Sea. The long and memorable quarrel of Iran and Touran is still the theme of history or romance: the famous, perhaps the fabulous, valour of the Persian heroes, Rustan and Asfendiar, was signalised, in the defence of their country, against the Afrasiabs of the North 20; and the in 16 Abulghasi Khan, in the two first parts of his Genealogical History, relates the miserable fables and traditions of the Uzbek Tartars concerning the times which preceded the reign of Zingis.* 17 In the thirteenth book of the Iliad, Jupiter turns away his eyes from the bloody fields of Troy, to the plains of Thrace and Scythia. He would not, by changing the prospect, behold a more peaceful or innocent scene. 18 Thucydides, 1. ii. c. 97. 19 See the fourth book of Herodotus. When Darius advanced into the Moldavian desert, between the Danube and the Niester, the king of the Scythians sent him a mouse, a frog, a bird, and five arrows; a tremendous allegory! 20 These wars and heroes may be found under their respective titles, in the Bibliothéque Orientale of D'Herbelot. They have been celebrated in an epic poem of sixty thousand rhymed couplets, by Ferdusif, the Homer of Persia. See the history The differences between the various pastoral tribes and nations comprehended by the ancients under the vague name of Scythians, and by Gibbon under that of Tartars, have received some, and still, perhaps, may receive more, light from the comparisons of their dialects and languages by modern scholars. — M. † Ferdusi is yet imperfectly known to European readers. An abstract of the whole poem has been published by Goerres in German, under the title "das Heldenbuch des Iran." In English, an abstract with poetical translations, by Mr. Atkinson, has appeared,under the auspices of the Oriental Fund. But to translate a poet a man must be a poet. The best account of the poem is in an article by Von Hammer in the Vienna Jahrbücher, 1820: or perhaps in a masterly article in Cochrane's vincible spirit of the same Barbarians resisted, on the same ground, the victorious arms of Cyrus and Alexander.21 In the eyes of the Greeks and Persians, the real geography of Scythia was bounded, on the East, by the mountains of Imaus, or Caf; and their distant prospect of the extreme and inaccessible parts of Asia was clouded by ignorance, or perplexed by fiction. But those inaccessible regions are the ancient residence of a powerful and civilised nation 22, which ascends, by a probable tradition, above forty centuries 23; and which is able to verify a series of near two thousand years, by the perpetual testimony of accurate and contemporary historians.24 The annals of China 25 illustrate the state and revolutions of the of Nadir Shah, p. 145. 165. The public must lament, that Mr. Jones has suspended the pursuit of Oriental learning. The Caspian sea, with its rivers, and adjacent tribes, are laboriously illustrated in the Examen Critique des Historiens d'Alexandre, which compares the true geography, and the errors produced by the vanity or ignorance of the Greeks. "The original seat of the nation appears to have been in the North-west of China, in the provinces of Chensi and Chansi. Under the two first dynasties, the principal town was still a moveable camp; the villages were thinly scattered; more land was employed in pasture than in tillage; the exercise of hunting was ordained to clear the country from wild beasts; Petcheli (where Pekin stands) was a desert; and the Southern provinces were peopled with Indian savages. The dynasty of the Hun (before Christ 206) gave the empire its actual form and extent. 23 The æra of the Chinese monarchy has been variously fixed from 2952 to 2132 years before Christ; and the year 2637 has been chosen for the lawful epoch, by the authority of the present emperor. The difference arises from the uncertain duration of the two first dynasties; and the vacant space that lies beyond them, as far as the real, or fabulous, times of Fohi, or Hoangti. Sematsien dates his authentic chronology from the year 841; the thirty-six eclipses of Confucius (thirty-one of which have been verified) were observed between the years 722 and 480 before Christ. The historical period of China does not ascend above the Greek Olympiads. "After several ages of anarchy and despotism, the dynasty of the Han (before Christ 206) was the æra of the revival of learning. The fragments of ancient literature were restored; the characters were improved and fixed; and the future preservation of books was secured by the useful inventions of ink, paper, and the art of printing. Ninety-seven years before Christ, Sematsien published the first history of China. His labours were illustrated, and continued, by a series of one hundred and eighty historians. The substance of their works is still extant; and the most considerable of them are now deposited in the king of France's library. 25 China has been illustrated by the labours of the French; of the missionaries at Pekin, and Messrs. Freret and De Guignes at Paris. The substance of the three preceding notes is extracted from the Chou-king, with the preface and notes of M. de Guignes, Paris, 1770: The Tong-Kien- Kang-Mou, translated by P. de Mailla, under the name of Hist. Générale de la Chine, tom. i. p. xlix.-cc.; the Mémoires sur la Chine, Paris, 1776, &c. tom. i. p. 1–323. tom. ii. p. 5-364.; the Histoire des Huns, tom. i. p. 4-131. tom. v. p. 345-326.; and the Mémoires de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom. x. p. 377-402. tom. xv. p. 495-564. tom. xviii. p. 178–295. tom. xxxvi. p. 164-238. never saw a M. S. containing more than 56,685, including doubtful and spurious passages and episodes. — M. Foreign Quarterly Review, No. 1. 1835. A splendid and critical edition of the whole work has been published by a very learned English Orientalist, Captain Macan, at * The later studies of Sir W. Jones the expense of the king of Oude. As to were more in unison with the wishes of the number of 60,000 couplets, Captain the public, thus expressed by Gibbon.— Macan, (Preface, page 39.), states that he M. pastoral tribes, which may still be distinguished by the vague appellation of Scythians, or Tartars; the vassals, the enemies, and sometimes the conquerors, of a great empire; whose policy has uniformly opposed the blind and impetuous valour of the Barbarians of the North. From the mouth of the Danube to the sea of Japan, the whole longitude of Scythia is about one hundred and ten degrees, which, in that parallel, are equal to more than five thousand miles. The latitude of these extensive deserts cannot be so easily, or so accurately, measured; but, from the fortieth degree, which touches the wall of China, we may securely advance above a thousand miles to the northward, till our progress is stopped by the excessive cold of Siberia. In that dreary climate, instead of the animated picture of a Tartar camp, the smoke that issues from the earth, or rather from the snow, betrays the subterraneous dwellings of the Tongouses, and the Samoides: the want of horses and oxen is imperfectly supplied by the use of rein-deer, and of large dogs; and the conquerors of the earth insensibly degenerate into a race of deformed and diminutive savages, who tremble at the sound of arms.26 Original seat of the The Huns, who under the reign of Valens threatened Huns. the empire of Rome, had been formidable, in a much earlier period, to the empire of China.27 Their ancient, perhaps 20 See the Histoire Générale des Voyages, tom, xviii. and the Genealogical History, vol. ii. p. 620-664. 27 M. de Guignes (tom. ii. p. 1—124.) has given the original history of the ancient Hiong-nou, or Huns.* The Chinese geography of their country (tom. i. part. ii. p. lv.-lxiii. seems to comprise a part of their conquests. * The theory of De Guignes on the early history of the Huns is, in general, rejected by modern writers. De Guignes advanced no valid proof of the identity of the Hioung-nou of the Chinese writers with the Huns, except the similarity of name. Schlozer (Allgemeine Nordische Geschichte, p. 252.), Klaproth (Tableaux Historiques de l'Asie, p. 246.), St. Martin, iv. 61. and A. Remusat (Recherches sur les Langues Tartares, D. P. xlvi. and p. 328.; though in the latter passage he considers the theory of De Guignes not absolutely disproved), concur in considering the Huns as belonging to the Finnish stock, distinct from the Moguls, the Mandscheus, and the Turks. Hiong-nou, according to Klaproth, were Turks. The names of the Hunnish chiefs could not be pronounced by a Turk; and, according to the same author, the Hioungnou, which is explained in Chinese as The detestable slaves, as early as the year 91 J. C., were dispersed by the Chinese and assumed the name of Yue-po or Yue-pan. M. St. Martin does not consider it impossible that the appellation of Hioungnou may have belonged to the Huns. But all agree in considering the Madjar or Magyar of modern Hungary the descendants of the Huns. Their language (compare Gibbon, c. lv. n. 22.) is nearly related to the Lapponian and Vogoul. The noble forms of the modern Hungarians, so strongly contrasted with the hideous pictures which the fears and the hatred of the Romans give of the Huns, M. Klaproth accounts for by the intermingling with other races, Turkish and Slavonian. The present state of the question is thus stated in the last edition of Malte-Brun, and a new and ingenious hypothesis suggested to resolve all the difficulties of the question. Were the Huns Finns? This obscure quests in their original, seat was an extensive, though dry and barren, tract of country, immediately on the north side of the great wall. Their place is at present occupied by the forty-nine Hords or Banners of the Mongous, a pastoral nation, which consists of about two hundred thousand families.28 But the valour of the Huns had extended the narrow limits of their dominions; and their Their conrustic chiefs, who assumed the appellation of Tanjou, Scythia. gradually became the conquerors, and the sovereigns, of a formidable empire. Towards the East, their victorious arms were stopped only by the ocean; and the tribes, which are thinly scattered between the Amoor and the extreme peninsula of Corea, adhered, with reluctance, to the standard of the Huns. On the West, near the head of the Irtish, in the valleys of Imaus, they found a more ample space, and more numerous enemies. One of the lieutenants of the Tanjou subdued, in a single expedition, twenty-six nations; the Igours29, distinguished above the Tartar race by the use of letters, were in the number of his vassals; and, by the strange connection of human events, the flight of one of those vagrant tribes recalled the victorious Parthians from the invasion of Syria.30 On the side of the North, the ocean was assigned as the limit of the power of the Huns. Without enemies to resist their progress, or witnesses to contradict their vanity, they might securely achieve a real, or imaginary, conquest of the frozen regions of Siberia. The Northern Sea was fixed as the remote boundary of their empire. But the name of that sea, on whose shores the patriot Sovou embraced the life of a shepherd and an 28 See in Duhalde (tom. iv. p. 18-65.) a circumstantial description, with a correct map, of the country of the Mongous. The Igours, or Vigours, were divided into three branches; hunters, shepherds, and husbandmen; and the last class was despised by the two former. See Abulghazi, part ii. c. 7.* 30 Mémoires de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xxv. p. 17-33. prehensive view of M. de Guignes has compared these distant events. question has not been debated till very recently; and is yet very far from being decided. We are of opinion that it will be so hereafter in the same manner as that with regard to the Scythians. We shall trace in the portrait of Attila a dominant tribe of Mongols, or Kalmucks, with all the hereditary ugliness of that race; but in the mass of the Hunnish army and nation will be recognized the Chuni and the Ounni of the Greek Geography, the Kuns of the Hungarians, the European Huns, and a race in close relationship with the Finnish stock. The com Malte Brun, vi. p. 94. This theory is more fully and ably developed, p. 743. Whoever has seen the emperor of Austria's Hungarian guard, will not readily admit their descent from the Huns described by Sidonius Apollinaris.-M. * On the Ouigour or Igour characters see the work of M. A. Remusat, Sur les Langues Tartares. He conceives the Ouigour alphabet of sixteen letters to have been formed from the Syriac, and introduced by the Nestorian Christians. Ch. ii.-M. exile, may be transferred, with much more probability, to the Baikal, a capacious bason, above three hundred miles in length, which disdains the modest appellation of a lake 32, and which actually communicates with the seas of the North, by the long course of the Angara, the Tongusha, and the Jenissea. The submission of so many distant nations might flatter the pride of the Tanjou; but the valour of the Huns could be rewarded only by the enjoyment of the wealth and luxury of the empire of the South. In the third century before the Christian æra, a wall of fifteen hundred miles in length was constructed, to defend the frontiers of China against the inroads of the Huns 33; but this stupendous work, which holds a conspicuous place in the map of the world, has never contributed to the safety of un unwarlike people. The cavalry of the Tanjou frequently consisted of two or three hundred thousand men, formidable by the matchless dexterity with which they managed their bows and their horses; by their hardy patience in supporting the inclemency of the weather; and by the incredible speed of their march, which was seldom checked by torrents, or precipices, by the deepest rivers, or by the most lofty mountains. Their wars They spread themselves at once over the face of the Chinese, country; and their rapid impetuosity surprised, astonished, and disconcerted the grave and elaborate tactics of a Chinese army. The emperor Kaoti34, a soldier of fortune, whose personal merit had raised him to the throne, marched against the Huns with those veteran troops which had been trained in the civil wars of China. But he was soon surrounded by the Barbarians; and, after a siege of seven days, the monarch, hopeless of with the Ant. Christ. 201. 31 The fame of Sovou, or So-ou, his merit, and his singular adventures, are still celebrated in China. See the Eloge de Moukden, p. 20. and notes, p. 241-247.; and Memoires sur la Chine, tom. iii. p. 317-360. See Isbrand Ives in Harris's Collection, vol. ii. p. 931.; Bell's Travels, vol. i. p. 247-254.; and Gmelin, in the Hist. Générale des Voyages, tom. xviii. p. 283— 329. They all remark the vulgar opinion, that the holy sea grows angry and tempestuous, if any one presumes to call it a lake. This grammatical nicety often excites a dispute between the absurd superstition of the mariners, and the absurd obstinacy of travellers. 33 The construction of the wall of China is mentioned by Duhalde (tom. ii. p. 45.) and De Guignes (tom. ii. p. 59.). See the life of Lieoupang, or Kaoti, in the Hist. de la Chine, published at Paris, 1777, &c. tom. i. p. 442-522. This voluminous work is the translation (by the P. de Mailla) of the Tong-Kien- Kang-Mou, the celebrated abridgment of the great History of Semakouang (A. D. 1084) and his continuators. It was 244 years before Christ. built by Chi-hoang-ti of the Dynasty Thsin. It is from twenty to twenty-five feet high. Ce monument, aussi gigantesque qu' impuissant, arréterait bien les incursions de quelques Nomades; mais il n'a jamais empêché les invasions des Turcs, des Mongols, et des Mandchous. Abel Remusat, Rech. Asiat, 2d ser. vol. i. p. 58.-M. |