Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/964

 r>n SCYTHIA. X. being Kupposeil to begin with llie wjiter.slied of the Irtish, Obi. and other rivers falling into tlie Arctic Ocean. Within the limits tlnis described we may place the A'or-osbi and JVcir-ossi, on the eastern edge, i. e. in the parts where at the present moment the lakes distinguished by the name Nor occur. It should be added, however, that the syllable is generally final, as in Kuho-nor, &c. Still it is a prominent element in compound names, and indi- cates Jlongol occupancy. The Byltae may be placed in Bulti-stan, i. e. the country of the Baltic Little Tibet, the gloss being Persian. In Ascataucas (tlio Greek spelling is the more convenient ATKa-rdy/f-as), wc have the Turkish -tagh =^ viountaiii ]iit as it actually occurs in num- berless compounds. Karait is a name of common application, chiefly to members of the Mongol family. JIass-agetae is a term full of difficulty. Can it have arisen out of the common name Mtis-tag ? In Scythia extra Imaum, the Casia and Achassa (xiipaO may be made one and identified with the Cesii of Pliny. The most reasonable explanations of these names is to be found in the sugtiestion of jI,ijor Cunningham's valuable work on Ladak (p. 4), where the Achassa Regioz= Ladakh, and the Chatae, and Chauronae Scythae= Chang-thanff and Khor respectively. Roughly speaking, we may say that the country of the Sacae was formed by an irregular tract of land on the head-waters of the Oxus and the water- shed between it and the Jaxartes, a tract which included a portion of the drainage of the Indus. It is only a portion of this that could give the recog- nised conditions of Scythian life, viz. steppes and pasturages. These might be founded on the great table land of Pamer, but not in the mountain dis- tricts. These, however, were necessary for " resi- dences in woods and caves"; at the same time, the population that occupied them might be pastoral rather than agricultural. Still they would not be of the Scythian type. Nor is it likely that the Sacae of Ptolemy were so. They were not, indeed, the Sacae of Herodotus, except in part, i. e. on the desert of the Persian frontier. They were rather the moun- taineers of Kaferistan, Waklian, Shjgnun, Roshan, Astor, Hunz-Nagor, and Little Tibet, partly Per- sian, partly Bhot (or Tibetan), in respect to their ethnology. The Scythians beyond the Imaus. — These nmst be divided between Ladakh, Tibet, Chinese Tartari/, and Hfongolla in respect to their geography. Phy- sically they come within the conditions of a Scythian occupancy; except where they are true mountaineers. Ethnologically they may be distributed between the Mongol, Bhot, and Turk families — the Turks being those of Chinese Tartary. The Turcoman districts of the Oxus, Khiva, the Kirghiz country, Ferghana, Tashkend, with the parts about the Balkash, give us the Scythia vvilhin the Imaus. It coincides chiefly with Inde- pendent Tartary, with the addition of a small por- tion of Mongolia and southern Siberia. Its condi- tions are generally Scythian. In the upper part, however, of the Jaxartes, the districts are agricul- tural at present; nine-tenths of this area is Turk, part of the population being Nomades, part indus- trial and agricultural. The Scythia of the Byzantine Authous. — This means not only Hunns, Avars, Alans, and Sar- niatians, but even Germans, Goths, and Vandals. SCYTHIA. It is used, however, but rarely. It really existed only in books of geography. Every division of the Scythian name was known under its specific desig- nation. Ethnology. — If any name of antiquity be an ethnological, rather than a geographical, term, that name is Scythia. Ptolemy alone applies it to an area, irrespective of the races of its occupants. With every earlier writer it means a number of popula- tions connected by certain ethnological characteris- tics. These were physical and moral — physical, as when Hippocrates describes the Scythian phy- siognomy; moral, as when their nomadic habits, as Haniaxobii and Hippemolgi, are put forward as dis- tinctive. Of language as a test less notice is taken; though (by Herodotus at least) it is by no means overlooked. The division between Scythian and non-Scythian is always kept in view by him. Of the non-Scythic populations, the Sauromatae were one; hence the ethnology of Scythia involves that of Sarmatia, both being here treated together. In respect to them, there is no little discrepancy of opinion amongst modern investigators. The first question respecting them, however, Las been an- swered unanimously. Are they represented by any of the existing divi- sions of mankind, or are they extinct? It is not likely that such vast families as each is .admitted to have been has died out. Assuming, then, the pre- sent existence of the congeners of both the Sar- matae and the Scythae, in what family or class are they to be found? The Scythae were of the Turk, the Sannatae of the Slavono-Lithuanic stock. The evidence of this, along with an exposition of the chief differences of opinion, will now be given, Scythia being dealt with first. Premising that Turk means all the populations whose language is akin to that of the Ottomans of Constantinople, and that it comprises the Turcomans, the Independent Tartars, the Uzbeks, the Turks of Chinese Tartary, and even the Yakuts of the Lena, along with several other tribes of less importance, we may examine the a priori probabilities of the Scythae having been, in this extended sense, Turks. The situs of the nations of South-western Rus- sia, &c., at the beginning of the proper historical period, is a presumption in favour of their being so. Of these the best to begin with are the Cumanians (12th century) of Volhynia. That they were Turk we know from special statements, and from sample* of their language compared with that of the Kirghiz of Independent Tartary. There is no proof of their being new comers, however much the doctrine of their recent emigration may have been gratuitously assumed. The Uzes were what the Cumanians were; and before the Uzes, the Patzinaks (10th century) of Bessarabia and the Danubian Princi- palities were what the Uzes were. Earlier than the Patzinaks, the Chazars ruled in Kherson and Tau- rida (7th and 8th centuries) like the Patzinaks, in the same category with definitely known Cumanians and Uzes. These four populations are all described by writers who knew the true Turks accurately, and, knowing them, may be relied on. This know- ledge, however, dates only from the reign of Jus- tinian [TfijcvKJ. From the reign, then, of Jus. tinian to the lOth century (the date of the break-up of the Cumanians), the Herodotean Scythia was Turk — Turk without evidence of the occupation being recent. TUe Avars precede the Chazars, the Huns the