The tribes of the Obi, to whom the name of Ostiak is now appropriated, inhabit the country lying to the eastward of the Vogouls, and to the southward of the Samoiedes, who are their neighbours along the shores of the Icy Sea. They dwell on the borders of the Obi and all its contributory streams, from the mouth of the Tym to the Synjaja below Beresow and on the shores of the Irtish up to Demianka. Klaproth has given vocabularies of five Ostiak dialects spoken in different districts of the Ostiak country: they belong to the Ostiaks of Beresow, those of the Narym, the Yugan, Lampokol, and Wassyugan. These dialects are very nearly allied. Other specimens were collected by Messerschmidt, and more recently by Erman who has added much to our previous information respecting this people and their language. Pallas has made the following observations on the language of the Ostiaks. "The language of the Ostiaks on the Obi has much affinity with the Finnish or Tschoude language, but it has still more with the Vogoul. Many dialects may be remarked, differing according to the country. Those who live above Berezow and those who border upon the Vogouls speak a very mixed language. The Morduine, among the most distant of the Finnish dialects, is that which has most resemblance with the Ostiak." It is evident, on an inspection of the vocabularies collected by different writers, that the idiom of the Ostiaks belongs to the Ugrian branch of this great family of languages. It is especially much nearer to the Vogoulian than to any other dialect of the same class; out of twenty-two Vogoulian words compared by Erman, twelve are immediately recognised as nearly the same as in the Ostiak. There is no affinity between the Tartar and the Ostiak languages. There is at least not one Tartar word among those collected by Erman. On the other hand, the idiom of these natives of Siberia display traces of some affinity with the languages of the north-eastern regions. Four of the words collected resemble the Kamtschatkan. Many of the Ostiak and Vogoulian words bear in their form and construction a striking resemblance to the languages of the Koluschi and Aztecas in the north-western and central regions of America. The following are specimens:-tick-watl, I will eat; labtuchotl, Sunday; wjätchosachotl, Saturday.* The Ostiaks have in some places the practice of tattowing their bodies, producing blue parallel lines by inserting particles of coal. Erman, who observed this fact, says that in Northern Asia the custom of tattowing belongs to the rarest class of phenomena; except among the Ostiaks, he only noticed it among some families of Tungusians in the remote East.+ Paragraph 3.—Of the Hungarians or Magyars. It has appeared to many persons incredible that a people so full of energy and courage, and so superior generally in physical and intellectual qualities as the Hungarians, should have originated from the same stock as the stupid and feeble Ostiaks and the untamable Laplanders. Yet this opinion has long gained ground, and seems now to have become the general conviction of those who direct their attention to the history of Eastern Europe. The evidence on which it rests is partly historical, and this has been confirmed by philological investigations. That the Magyars originated from Ugria or Jugoria, or from a region bordering on the Uralian mountains, has been always a prevalent tradition in the east of Europe. Herberstein, who resided at the court of Moscow from 1516 to 1526, obtained this account. He mentions “Juharia sive Juhra, ut Rutheni per aspirationem proferunt. Hæc est Juharia, ex quâ olim Hungari progressi Pannoniam occupârunt, Attilaque duce multas Europæ provincias debellârunt. Aiunt Juharos in hanc diem eodem cum Hungaris idiomate uti, quod an verum sit, nescio. Nam etsi diligenter inquisierim, neminem tamen ejus regionis hominem habere potui, quocum famulus meus linguæ Hungaricæ peritus colloqui potuisset." Herberstein evidently confounded the Magyars or Hungarians with the older Hunns, the followers of Attila: the account which * In the language of the Aztecas this singular termination of words in tl is very frequent, as acatl, ochotl; and the consonants are almost entirely palatines and dentals, as in the subjoined specimen of Ostiak words. The same peculiarity prevails to a great extent in the Kolushian and several other languages of tribes on the northwestern coast of America. + Erman's Reise, i. s. 438. he obtained related undoubtedly to the Hungarians, whose descendants, according to this statement, spoke a language still extant in the Uralian country in his time. He terms the inhabitants of the Uralian mountains and of Siberia, Ugritzi, and says, "fluvium Oby Vogulini et Ugritzi gentes accolunt."* The southern part of this country was called in the middle ages Great Hungary, from its original inhabitants. It is likewise termed Pascatir and Bascardia, from the Bashkirs, a Turkish race who are its later occupants, and who have often been confounded and supposed to be of the same race with the Magyars. The Franciscan monk Piano Carpini, who travelled in 1246 to the court of the Great Khan, speaks of Great Bulgaria, the country whence the Bulgarians issued, namely, the kingdom of Bolgari on the Wolga; and he likewise mentions. the land of the Bastarques, erroneously written instead of Bashkurt or Bashkirs-" qui est la Grande Hongrie." The minorite William Ruysbroek or Rubruquis, who was sent by St. Louis, in 1253, on a mission to the Khan of the Mongoles, traversed in his way Bashkiria, which he terms Pascatir. The following passage from his narrative, frequently cited from Bergeron, affords some valuable information to my present. purpose. § "Ayant cheminé environ douze journées depuis le fleuve Ettilia (Wolga), nous trouvâmes un autre grande rivière, nommée Jagag (Jaik), qui vient du septentrion et du pays de Pascatir (Bashkir,) et s'embouche dans cette mer. Le langage de ceux de Pascatir et des Hongrois est le même; ils sont tous pastres, sans aucunes villes, ni bourgades: du coté de l'Occident ils touchent à la Grande Bulgarie," meaning the old Bulgarian kingdom, of which Bolgari was the capital ;—the ruins of this town are seen below Spask, on the left side of the Wolga. "From that country towards the east in this northern side no town is any further to be found. So that Little Bul • Herberstein. Rerum Moscovit. Comment. Basil, 1571. Müller's Ugrische Volkstamm, s. 106. Nestor, ibid. s. 114. Müller's Ugrische Volkstamm. Mith. ii. 770. Abel Remusat, ubi supra, p. 319. § Bergeron, p. 7. "Les Tartares passèrent par le pays des Mordouins-et de là contre les Bileres, qui est la Grande Bulgarie-puis tournant contre Baschart ou Pascatir, qui est la Grande Hongrie." (p. 48.) garia is the last country where towns exist. It is from this country of Pascatir that the Hunns formerly came forth, who were afterwards called Hungarians, and that is properly Great Bulgaria." A remarkable passage containing a reference to the Bashkirs in Great Hungary, that is in Bashkiria, has been cited by M. Frähn, the learned editor of Ibn Foslan. It is an account given by a Mohammedan in Aleppo, of the Bashkirs resorting thither. "Ego vero offendi in urbe Haleb magno numero genus hominum, qui Baschgardi audiebant: crinibus et facie valde rubicundis erant et scientiæ juris sacri juxta ritum Abunanifæ operam dabant. Eorum aliquis quem adieram, de ipsorum patria rebusque percontanti mihi respondit. Terra nostra ultra Constantinopolin jacet in regno alicujus nationis Francicæ, id est Europææ, cui nomen Hungarorum est. Nos, Muhammedis sacra profitentes, eorum regi subditi in tractu regni ejus quodam triginta admodum incolimus pagos, quorum quisque etiamsi parum absit quin oppidulum referat, rex tamen Hungarorum metu, ne ipsius detrectemus imperium ne ullum eorum muris sæpiri vetat."* The most remarkable thing here, and that which is puzzling in the account, is, that the Bashkirs are here said to have red hair, which does not agree with their present characters, whereas it coincides with the description of the Ostiaks and other Ugrian nations, and probably was in the early times a trait of their kinsmen the Hungarians. The confusion has probably arisen from the fact that among the Bashkirs, and in alliance with them, there are two tribes of the Tschudish race. One of these, called the Metschegers, have adopted the Turkish language, and are sometimes reckoned among Tartar races. They were, however, mentioned by Nestor among the tribes of Tschudes subject to the Russian empire, and lived in the time of that writer near the Morduines and Tscheremisses on the Oka. The other tribe, termed Teptjäres, still speak a Tschudish dialect, which resembles those of the Votiaks and Tscheremisses. Different as the modern Hungarians are from the wild Uralian races, the description of the old Magyars at their first • Müller's Ugrische Volkstamm, bd. ii. arrival in the central parts of Europe accords precisely with that of the Vogouls and Ostiaks, their nearest kinsfolk. They are represented as fishermen and hunters skilled in the use of bows and arrows, but unlike the equestrian and nomadic hordes of the Turkish rad race. An old chronicler of the events of the ninth century gives the following description of them and notices of their history: "Ex supra dictis igitur locis. Scythiæ gens memorata Hungarorum ferocissima et omni bellua crudelior, retro ante sæculis ideo inaudita quia nec nominata, a finitimis sibi populis, qui Pecinaci vocantur (namely, the Petschenegars) à propriis sedibus expulsa est, eo quod virtute et numero præstarent, et genitale rus exuberante multitudine non sufficeret ad habitandum. Horum itaque violentiâ effugati *** valedicentes patriæ iter arripiunt. Et primo quidem Pannoniorum et Avarum solitudines pererrantes, venatu ac piscatione victum cottidianum quæritant; deinde Carantanorum, Marahensium et Bulgarum fines irrumpunt, perpaucos gladio, multa millia sagittis interimunt, quas tanta arte ex corneis arcubus dirigunt, ut earum ictus vix præcaveri possit."* It seems on the whole established as an historical fact, that the Magyars are a people of the Ugrian race who inhabited the country on the southern part of the Uralian mountains, whence they were expelled by the Turkish tribes of Petchenegers and Chasars, and that they sought refuge in the plains near the Lower Danube. In this region they first made their appearance in the reign of the Greek emperor Theophilus, between 829 and 842. Their subsequent history has been traced by M. Zeuss in the works of Byzantine historians, particularly in the description of the empire by Constantine Porphyrogenitus, and in the Russian annalists. It seems that their own national appellation is Magyar. By the Russians they were termed Ugri, as originating from Ugria, and this name has been corrupted into Ungri and Hungarians.† * Regino ad ann. 89;-citat apud Zeuss, ubi supra, p. 747. Nestor terms them Ugri; the Bohemian name for them is Uhry, the Polish, Węgry, pronounced like the French Vingry, whence the corrupt Russian Wengri. Then is introduced by the Polish pronunciation. Nestor calls the Magyars "Black Ugri," to distinguish them from the "White Ugri," a name which he gives the Chasars. From the fact that the Russian historian gives to this Turkish tribe the same |