'NA TORE 



273 



THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 1919. 



TEE TURKS OF CENTRAL ASIA. 

 The Turks of Central Asia in History and at the 

 Present Day: An Ethnological Inquiry into the 

 Pan-Turanian Problem, and Bibliographical 

 Material relating to the Early Turks and the 

 Present Turks of Central Asia. By M. A. 

 Czaplicka. Pp. 242. (Oxford : At the Claren- 

 don Press, 1918.) Price 15s. net. 

 THIS small and closely packed book deals with 

 a big and intricate subject which can be 

 dealt with satisfactorily only on a much larger 

 scale, and it is to be hoped that its talented 

 and learned author will presently give us a larger 

 monograph in which the earlier history of the 

 Turks, with its dramatic ties with the fortunes 

 of Asia and Europe, will be told in much greater 

 detail. It is opportune that such a book should 

 appear when the greatest and most powerful 

 empire established by the Turkish race is passing 

 away, and when the thoughts of many of us are 

 turning with a good deal of interest to the period 

 in its history when the race emerged from the 

 prehistoric age and began its wider sphere of 

 interest. It is not possible in the space which 

 Nature can spare to do more than give a bare 

 outline of the subject. 



The Nomadic peoples who occupy the great 

 stretch of grassy steppes, barren lands, and 

 stony plateaus of Asia from the River Ural to the 

 Yellow Sea form a group which is closely united 

 by physical ties and by language. Their speech, 

 although mutually unintelligible, has a common 

 grammatical structure and a large number of 

 common words. They are divisible into two main 

 branches, respectively known to the Chinese as the 

 Eastern and Western barbarians. Each of these 

 divisions is again separable into two sections, <^T:e 

 of them including the Mongols properly so-called, 

 and the Tungus, better known in the West from 

 one of their tribes as Manchus, and occupying 

 the eastern part of Central Asia, of which the 

 great desert of Gobi and its borders form the 

 kernel. The other section, comprising the Turks 

 and Finns (each divided into various tribes), occu- 

 pies the country west of Mongolia, and is grouped 

 about the great mountain chains of the Urals and 

 the Altai Mountains, and is often spoken of as 

 the Uralo-Altaic section of the human family. 



At the time when history first notices this group, 

 they were probably nearly as much separated as 

 they are now, the great distinguishing feature 

 which separates these two branches being that, 

 while the Finnish branch were at that time almost 

 entirely hunters and fishermen, the Turks have 

 always been nomad herdsmen, having been 

 occupied chietly with the rearing of cattle, horses, 

 and camels. 



In their early days one section of the Turks 



formed the "frontagers " of the Aryan peoples, 



who lived in the Persian provinces of Khorasan, 



Balkh, and Transoxisia, which they continually 



NO. 2611, VOL. 104] 



worried and attacked. The two lands, that of the 

 nomads and that of the settled people, were re- 

 spectively known to the Persian writers as Turan 

 and Iran. This Western section is generally 

 known as the Western Turks, and was perhaps 

 the only portion of the stock specifically called 

 Turks at that time. 



Another great section occupied the frontiers of 

 China and the greater part of what is now known 

 as Mongolia, and in the earliest Chinese writers 

 are known as Hiong Nu, or Hiun Nu. The 

 Hiong Nu formed a very powerful empire, which 

 fought on equal terms with China, and was a 

 serious menace to the latter empire during the 

 Chinese dynasties of the earlier and later Han. 

 The power of the Hiong Nu was gradually sapped 

 in their struggles with the Chinese, and they were 

 eventually attacked and conquered by their 

 Eastern neighbours, known to the Chinese as 

 Yuan Yuan, who thus became the masters 

 of all Nomadic Tartary, and were probably 

 nearly related to the later Mongols. I argued in 

 former years that they were identical with the 

 Avars of the European writers, who appear in the 

 West at the time when the power of the Hiong Nu 

 was destroyed. 



Presently, in the sixth century, the Yuan 

 Yuan were themselves conquered and replaced by 

 the true Turks, who then appear eo nomine for 

 the first time in the Chinese annals. The Chinese, 

 not having the letter "r" in their alphabet, 

 represented the name "Turk" by that of Thu- 

 kiu. These Turks were, I feel sure, the 

 Western branch of the race above named. 

 They in turn became the masters of all Tartary, 

 and eventually were divided into two sections, a 

 Western branch and an Eastern, the latter being 

 in a large measure the descendants of the Hiong 

 Nu above named. 



It is with the advent of these true Turks into 

 Mongolia that we first meet with signs of a settled 

 community there, marked by many traces of 

 civilisation, which are clearly traceable to the 

 Iranian lands from the borders of which these 

 Turks came. Among these the most notable 

 relics are the remains of towns, and the exist- 

 ence of inscriptions, proving their knowledge of 

 letters. They have left us a number of most 

 interesting inscriptions, which have been studied 

 and illuminated by several notable scholars. The 

 names of the rulers mentioned on these inscrip- 

 tions are also found in the Chinese annals, and 

 are attributed by them to the Thukiu. We can 

 therefore date them with the greatest precision. 

 They are written in the well-known and widely 

 spread Syriac script known as estranghelo, in 

 which the Nestorian inscriptions of China were 

 written, and which was afterwards used by the 

 Uighur Turks and the Mongols for their writings. 

 The capital of these early Turks was in Northern 

 Mongolia, and, as stated above, they have left 

 large traces there of their settlements. 



Presently it would seem that the earlier Turks 

 who lived in the East and had been known as 

 Hiong Nu reasserted themselves and conquered 



N 



