EurasianStudies_0110..

January-March 2010 JOURNAL OF EURASIAN STUDIES Volume II., Issue 1.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
language there is no such word or root as “logad” or “lo”; it must be a foreign Scythian or Hunnic word.
It would be interesting to investigate the parallel with the Hun descendant Székelys (Siculus), who had
the following title as “lófő” (head of horses); they had the same role as logades or dachen in the course of
the Middle Ages in the Hungarian Kingdom.
Administration
The analysis of the Hunnic administration was not a popular topic in the literature. In the past few
years Eastern researchers (Russian, Japanese, Korean, etc.) analysed very deeply that question. They
used their own traditions and written sources from various periods, and brought to light new results.
They began to analyse this question form the earliest times, and according to them the bow stretching
state came into existence in the time of the Huns. The heads of the Hun state as well as their descendants
divided territories into three parts (Mongolian: gar, Turkic and Hungarian: kar). The Chinese sources
give the exact places of the locations of the gars or wings; according to that, the eastern wing stretched
from Ordos to Korea, the right one united people from the right bank of the Yellow River to the yue-zhi
land (present-day Chinese Xinjiang). 36 The main wing – in the opinion of most scholars – was situated in
present day Northern China, it is most likely that that was the Ordos plateau, and sometimes they chose
as centre the surroundings of the Yin-shan Mountain. The main wing was managed by the Hunnic
emperor, whose title in Chinese sources is shanyu/danhu 37 ; his court being the capital of the empire; the
name of the center was called ordu or hordu. As the Inner Mongolian linguist, Uchiraltu, expressed,
Chinese recorded the word as yutu, which is the equivalent of the above mentioned ordu. 38 The name
ordu can be found later, Turkic, period, with the meaning of tribal or principal court. Later it became the
mean military camp both in Mongolians and Osman Turkic. The Turkic word orta as center is similar to
that, where the word refers to the main position of the emperor’s court. 39 The Russian gorod, or town,
center belongs to that group; its ancient form was “ghordos”, which derived from the word
ordu/hordu. 40 It is doubtful that the city suffix grad in the Carpathian Basin was the heritage of Slavs,
because thousand years before them the bow stretching people had ruled the Eastern-European steppe
and the Carpathian Basin as well.
We can summarise from the above mentioned information that the Huns and their descendants held
parliament (kurultay) in the main court or ordu and it functioned as administrative center of the empire.
36 Shi Ji. 110.
37 Regarding the Hunnic title for king, lots of researchers investigated, and tried to reconstruct that. Pulleyblank found
connection with the Turkic tarkhan. (Csornai, 2007. 363.) Banzarov and Uchiraltu think it was the title of Tengri Khan, with the
meaning of “burden people gathering khan”. In Chinese sources the translation of the danhu/shanyu is tian wang or tengri.
Boodberg agreed Bazarov’s theory on shanyu title and he recorded that the word Chingis derived from that. The Mongolian
Ishjamts and Kürsat-Ahlers agreed with Boodberg’s theory. In: Christian, 1998. 206.
38 Clauson, 1972. 203.
39 Clauson, 1972. 204.
40 The dictionary gives the root of the word as the form of *gher, which is similar to Mongolian ger or rounded tent. The
explanation of gorod is the following: circular settlement, which was cultural and administrative center. The rethinking of that
word is necessary for clarifying the Eastern-European and Hungarian history, because settlements there with the final word
’grad’ are not Slavic, but steppe originated. Csernih, 1993. 206.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
© Copyright Mikes International 2001-2010 62