EurasianStudies_0110..

January-March 2010 JOURNAL OF EURASIAN STUDIES Volume II., Issue 1.
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Chinese as yuli-wang. She found it as guli, kokli, luli and other transcriptions, but the sign has not only
“gu” but “yu” phonetics, as well. 49
The title has parallels among steppe society, the Hungarian gyula, or the Hephthalite gula (or gollas in
Byzantine sources) 50 , which remained in Mihiragula’s name. Its parallel can be found in the Jula personal
name in the Mongolian Jangar epos, or the Mongolian expression “joloo”, which means rein. 51 As
previously Gyula Németh showed, the Hungarian gyula has connection with the Old Turkic “yula”, or
Khitan clan name, Yila. 52 This title appeared earlier as the Turkic Empire was established. The title was
known not only by those people, who arrived to Europe, but among those ones, who remained in Asia as
well.
In the steppe history the choban or shoban title occurred many times among Huns and their
descendants. For the first time the ancient Chinese sources recorded it as zhai-wang, etc., 53 which exhibits
similarities with the above mentioned ones. The Han dynasty, which has Southern-Hunnic origins, used
the expression zhao-wang as title and ruling epoch, 54 the same one, or supan, appeared among the
Persians. Later, through the Middle Ages we find the word Choban in the Persian and Caucasus region.
Some Hungarian scholars thought that those ones were analogous to the Hungarian choban, 55 moreover
Géza Fehér pointed to Attila’s third son’s name, Chaba, a variant of the choban. The antiquity of the title
choban confirms the tribe name of the Pechenegs, Choban. Some Hungarian scholars have drawn the
attention to other information that nobody used it as evidence. Gyula Moravchik published two variants,
choban or chaban from the 6 th century. 56 Later, Louis Ligeti recorded, that an Onogur prince was named
Chupan, but nobody used that important data, 57 despite the Hunnic origin of the title. Recently, the
Hungarian historian Jenő Darko drew the attention to similarities between the personal names Chaba
from the Hungarian historical chronicles and tradition and the title choban. The above mentioned
scholar referred to the story of Bahram Chobin, Persian king, who fought with Byzantine in the forefront
of the Caucasus.
49 We can find other data in Bernhard Karlgren’s Grammata Serica work: “sense of part of name”, so it must be a record of a
name. In Mathews’ dictionary after the sign of gu, there is an expression of yu phonetics in the followig way: “name of a branch
of the Hsien pei”.
50 Moravcsik, 1942. II. 108.
51 Szentkatolnai, 1877. 23
52 He, Abaoqi, was the founder of the Lioa-dynaty, who belonged to the Khitay Yila tribe, who ruled in the 10 th century. (Mote,
1999. 37)
53 Obrusánszky, 2007. 133.
54 Thanks to Csornai Katalin for the information.
55 In the Bolgarian etymological dictionary, the word choban and Chobanin has Persian origin. Georgijev, 1971. 627.
56 Moravcsik, 1942. II. 121.
57 Ligeti, 1986. 140.
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