JOURNAL OF EURASIAN STUDIES

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October-December 2009 JOURNAL OF EURASIAN STUDIES Volume I., Issue 4. _____________________________________________________________________________________ the internal scholarly community sketched a realistic image of the Huns from the second half of the eighteenth century until the middle of the nineteenth century; while afterwards, positivists regarded the Huns as a people without history and culture. With positivism, the view that the Asiatic Huns have nothing to do with the European Huns began to dominate. The research in the past century has made clear, however, that there exists a continuity between the Western and Eastern Huns. At present, only a few researchers do not accept the continuity of the Eurasian Huns. From archeological findings, historic sources and ethnographic data, it is unambiguously clear that the Huns established a powerful and uniform world empire that had its maximal geographic extension from the Yellow Sea to Central Asia. This world empire had several centers. Some of these were to be found in Asia. In Europe, the kings of the Huns settled down in the Carpathian Basin. It is interesting that the Huns called their capitals ‘White Castle’ and that these names are still used by the successor peoples of the Huns, like the Mongols. The Hun Empire was the biggest state of late antiquity; in earlier times, the Scythians had established such a state. The Huns probably wanted to create a state of a similar size. German researchers branded traditions of the Magyars, which present the Scythians and the Huns as their ancestors, as fairy tales. These German scholars did not accept the oral traditions of other peoples either. Instead of taking these traditions as the starting point of research, they started to develop theories on the basis of “linguistic” similarities. This determined the European attitude toward the Huns. The pejorative “barbarian” stereotyping of the Huns is still alive in Western international academic circles, although, due to the new scientific results, this expression is used by fewer researchers. The use of the expression “barbarian” can be traced back to the antique attitude that all the people located outside the Greco-Roman world were considered uncivilized. For the most part, this attitude determined the results of research. In the course of the twentieth century, the image of the Huns has been changing gradually, due to the archeological excavations in Russia and Mongolia and due to the fact that many more Western scholars have started to study the Chinese chronicles. This has led to the changing image of the Huns among the historians of the world. The research was extended to other domains and territories, like India, Central Asia and the Caucasus. At the turn of the twentieth century, excavations of the Hun heritage were started in the surroundings of the Baikal Sea. In the century that has passed since then, we have received a great deal of archeological information about the material culture of the Huns. Unfortunately, the recent results are still evaluated in the framework of the old linguistic classification. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the Scythians and the Huns were classified in different language families, although, at that time there were no available coherent linguistic fragments. Hence, the Scythians were accepted as “developed” Indo-Europeans, while the Huns were considered to be Turkic people, speaking a barbarian language. In recent years, however, we can observe changes, and increasing numbers of linguists demonstrate that the basis of the Turkic and Mongolian languages was the language of the Huns. Most of present-day researchers hold the view that the Huns were not wandering nomads but had a sophisticated life-style and always made use of the features of the places in which they settled. Sometimes these were towns; sometimes they lived a nomadic life. In urban settlements the Huns had a different way of organization than settled peoples but the town offered them the same functions: the cities served as commercial centers and centers of handicrafts. The types of settlements that can be found in the Eurasian Steppes are quite similar. From this observation, it follows that they must have been _____________________________________________________________________________________ © Copyright Mikes International 2001-2009 158
October-December 2009 JOURNAL OF EURASIAN STUDIES Volume I., Issue 4. _____________________________________________________________________________________ developed inside one and the same empire. The instruments and artifacts that are found in the excavated graves were made at the spot in the Steppes where big, industrial capacity and suitable handicraft workers were at their disposal. In some cases, the Huns built independent cities for themselves. Such cities are Tongwancheng (White Castle) or Nanxi, in Zhejiang. However, quite often, just like other people, they took earlier buildings into their possession. In this volume, each paper adds a new aspect to the research of the Huns and focuses on important questions that have been neglected in earlier research. Gadzsijev introduces the circumstances of Hun life in the fifth and sixth centuries, on the basis of the enormous defense wall that was built against the Caucasian Huns. Helilov and Nyitray consider the relationship between the Caucasian Huns and the Hungarians. The authors indicate the precise location of the ancient Hungarians on the territory of today’s Dagestan. They are also able to locate the Savardian Hungarians. Osawa summarizes the Buddhist heritage of the Hephtalite Huns that has been almost completely ignored in the literature so far. According to Baykuzu, the Turkish stone sculpture did not develop in the sixth century but belongs to the heritage of the Huns. Izabella Horváth analyses the methodology of historiography of the wellknown Chinese chronicler, Sima Qian, and demonstrates that he has carefully collected the data of the Huns. Miklós Érdy demonstrates, in his analysis of the Siberian rock paintings, that the carvings along the banks of the Yenisey River are connected to the Huns and that these carvings depict ancient rituals. Katalin Csornai discusses the Chinese sources about the Asian Huns. From these sources, we learn what the Chinese thought about their Eastern neighbors. Craig Benjamin has made an excellent summary of the Yuezhi-Hun wars. From this paper, we come to know where the borders between the Huns and the Scythians were. Szaniszló Bérczi has made a mathematical analysis of the elements of the Hun-Scythian ornamental art. Mukeseva discusses, in her paper, the Kazak equivalents of Hungarian fairy tales that originate from an age when both were part of the same empire. This must be the Scythian or the Hun period, when the whole of Eurasia was populated by these people. The Mongolian archeologists, researching the urban centers, argue that the northern Huns, who were considered nomads, also built important steady settlements, which served as centers of handicrafts. Some of the settlements served holy purposes. The studies of Éva Aradi, Sergej Bolatov and Frederic Puskás-Kolozsvári analyze the relationship between the Huns and the Scythians in the Eurasian space and stress the historic continuity of this relationship. Bolatov and Puskás-Kolozsvár present new data on the origin of the Hungarians. In this volume, two linguistic articles have been included. The Inner Mongolian scholar, Ucsiraltu, discusses his method of analyzing Hun linguistic remains. Katalin Czeglédi supports the claims of Ucsiraltu in her contribution, point-by-point. István Erdélyi reports on the archeological excavations of the Huns in Mongolia. Here, some of the most important stirrups were found, dating from the second century A.D. Unfortunately, the discovery of these artifacts did not attract any attention in international scientific circles. These artifacts are connected to the Avars. László Marácz analyzes the stereotypes of the Huns in Western sources. His study explains why the Huns became “barbarians”, while the Roman authors, who stereotyped the Huns, had not even met them personally. The second point Marácz’s study stresses the geopolitical framework, claiming that the two most important territories in the centers of world power are Central Asia and Eastern Europe. These are precisely those territories where the Huns were extremely strong and active in their times. The Dutch ancient historian, René van Royen, demonstrates in his paper the differences among peoples, like the Getians and the Sarmatians that lived _____________________________________________________________________________________ © Copyright Mikes International 2001-2009 159
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