76 PRINCE— TATAR MATERIAL IN OLD RUSSIAN. 



or Cumanians is the " Codex Cumanicus,"'^ edited by the Hungarian 

 Count Geza Kuun, and, in spite of many errors, a most vakiable 

 record of the speech of the Cumanians, giving a sketch of the gram- 

 mar, word-lists, and texts with late Latin-Persian-Cumanian in the 

 first part, and Cumanian-Old-German in the second part/ Besides 

 this, mention should be made of the brief " Interpreter of the Lan- 

 guage of the Polovtsy," found in a Russian manuscript of the six- 

 teenth century,^ which gives a small number of so-called Polovtsian 

 words with Russian translation. As to the term " Polovtsy " itself, 

 it would seem to be a cognate with the race-term " Palocz," found 

 in the Hungarian Chronicle, lised interchangeably with Kun=Hun 

 = Kuman.® In the Chronicle of Nestor, the word Polovtsy was 



^ Comes Geza Kuun, " Codex Cumanicus Bibliothecae ad Templum Divi 

 Venetiarum," Budapest, 1880; " Additamenta ad Codicem Cumanicum, Nova 

 Series," Budapest, 1883; W. Radloff, "Das tiirkische Sprachmaterial des 

 Codex Cumanicus," St. Petersburg, 1887 (Academie Imperiale des Sciences), 

 criticized by W. Bang in the following works : " Beitrage zur Erklarung des 

 Komanischen Hymnus," in Nachrichten der kon. Ges. der JVisscnsch. su 

 Gottingen, philologisch-historische Klasse, 1910, pp. 61-78; Uber einen 

 komanischen Kommunionshymnus," in Academie royale de Belgique, 

 Bruxelles, 1910, pp. 1-12; "Zur Kritik des Codex Cumanicus, Librairie uni- 

 versitaire des trois rois." Louvain, 1910, pp. 1-17; "Beitrage zur Kritik des 

 Codex Cumanicus," in Academie royale de Belgique, Bruxelles, 191 1, pp. 

 13-40. 



'''As Bang has pointed out ("Beitrage," pp. 32 ff.), the first part of the 

 "Codex" was probably written by Italians and the second half by Germans, 

 both parts having been composed under Franciscan influence, as is evident 

 from the prominence accorded to St. Francis. The scope of the work was 

 undoubtedly missionary and not commercial, as the chief stress in the 

 vocabulary and texts is laid on religious material. The " Codex " in both parts 

 belonged to the library of the poet Petrarch, 1350-1370. Before that date, 

 the documents were in the possession of one Antonius de Finale ("Codex," 

 p. 218). Both parts were probably brought from the Black Sea missions to 

 Italy, where the manuscript was compiled and edited by Genoese and Vene- 

 tians. It seems clear that this " Codex " had nothing to do with the Cu- 

 manians settled in Hungary, who kept their idiom as late as 1744. 



8 P. K. Simoni in Proceedings of the Department of the Russian Lan- 

 guage and Literature of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, 8, 17^191 ; 185- 

 197, St. Petersburg, 1909. 



* See Friedrich Hirth, " Die historisch-g^eographischen Beweise der 

 Hiung-nu =: Hun Identitat," Budapest, 1910, and cf. also his " Ancient His- 

 tory of China," pp. 31-35, New York, 1908. 



