80 PRINCE— TATAR MATERIAL IN OLD RUSSIAN. 



and that it was written with Uigur characters. Cumanian was evi- 

 dently a term applicable to Tatar in general, including Uigur. ^^ 

 There can be no doubt that the material of the " Codex Cumanicus " 

 is of great value, therefore, in fixing the philological status of all 

 prse-mediseval and mediaeval Tatar and especially of the Polovtsian 

 idiom, with which it was practically identical. 



I am particularly indebted to Mr. Feliciu Vexler, Assistant in 

 Slavonic in my Department in Columbia University, for his able 

 assistance in collecting most of the following Tatar material, bear- 

 ing directly on the language of the Epic of Igor. 



Tatar Material in Igor.^® 



Bl'van (Igor 112)= modern R. holvan, "block, blockhead, 

 statue, idol" (Berneker, p. 41), C. halahan, " falcon," possibly owing 

 to the statue-like attitude of the bird when perched. In Mag>'ar, 

 hdlvdny = " idol of any sort " ; Rumanian holovan, " cobble- stone," 

 formerly "idol" (Slavonic loanword). There may be two words 

 here, the first referring to a bird of some sort ; cf . Turkish biilbiU, 

 "nightingale" (in CC. rosignolus) ; and the second actually mean- 

 ing " block " or " idol." The word is clearly of Tatar origin. 



Bojan (Igor, passim). For full discussion, cf. "Prince, Troyan 

 and Boyan," in Proc. of the Amer. Philos. Soc, 56, 152-160 and 

 see below, s. v. kur. Vyazemski (Magnus, p. xlvii-xlviii) has already 

 connected this word with Salvonic bajati, bojati " speak, relate." 

 The meaning of bojan may therefore, be "singer"; cf. R. Gypsy 

 bagan,^'' "to sing," and note Slav, bajan, "enchanter," in Dan. 5, ii 

 (OR. version). It is possible, however, that the word may be of 

 Tatar origin (cf. Magnus, p. xlvii). Note that Turkish boj = " per- 

 son"; Mongol &o; = " clever archer" or "person"; Altai pajana = 

 " God " ; Cuvas pojan = " rich " and bajan is a tribal name of the 

 Altai. See below, s. v. bojarin. The word bajan appears also as a 

 proper name, Vajanos (but note the Greek v), son of Kubra. 

 Dubious words of this type are often the result of a compound 



15 Cited Bang, Beitr'dge, p. 2>3- 



16 Arranged in the order of the Russian alphabet. 



1^ Cf. P. Istomin (Patkanoff), "The Gypsy Language (in Russian)," 

 Moscow, 1900. 



