Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/161

 145 SLAVS A CCORDING to the tables published by Boudilovich X_ in connexion with the admirable ethnological map of Mirkovich (St Petersburg, 1875), the Slavs may be grouped geographically as follows : Geogra- I. SOUTH-EASTERN DIVISION. 1. Russians. The Great Rus- phical sians ( Velikorousskie}, who occupy the governments round Moscow distribu- and extend as far north as Novgorod and Vologda, south to Kieff and tion. Voronezh, east to Penza, Simbirsk, and Vyatka, and west to the Baltic provinces and Poland ; they number about 40,000,000. (b) The Little Russians (Malorossiane), who include the Rousines or Rousniaks in Galicia and the Boiki and Gouzouli in Bukovina ; they number 16,370,000. Drawing a straight line from Sandec near Cracow to the Asiatic frontier of Russia, we shall find their language the dominant tongue of Galicia and all the southern parts of Russia till we come to the Caucasus. It is also spoken in a strip of territory in the north of Hungary, (c) The White Russians, inhabiting the western governments ; they number 4,000,000. 2. Bulgarians, including those in Russia, Austria, Roumania, Bulgaria, eastern Roumelia, and those under Turkish government in Macedonia ; their total number is 5,123,592. 3. Servo - Croats, including those of Servia, Montenegro, the southern part of Hungary, and a few in the south of Russia ; they are returned as numbering 5,940,539. Here also maybe placed the Slovenes, including those in Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola, amounting to 1,287,000. II. WESTERN DIVISION. 1. Poles, divided between Russia, Austria, and Prussia ; they number 9,492,162 ; under this head may be included the Kashoubes near Dantzic, numbering 111,416. 2. Chekhts 1 and Moravians, 4,815,154 in number ; here also may be included the Slovaks, numbering 2,223,820. 3. Lusatian Wends or Sorbs, Upper and Lower, partly in Saxony and partly in Prussia. The Upper Wends number 96,000, the Lower 40,000. Total number of Slavs in both divisions 89,499,683. Originally the Slavs were spread over a great part of northern Germany, extending as far as Utrecht, which was anciently called Wiltaburg and was a city of the Wilzen. Thus Slavonic was certainly spoken in Pomerania, Mecklen- burg, Brandenburg, Saxony, west Bohemia, Lower Austria, the greater part of Upper Austria, north Styria and north Carinthia, a large part of what is now Hungary, and in the localities now occupied by Kiel, Liibeck, Magdeburg, Halle, Leipsic ( = Lipsk, the city of lime-trees), Baireuth, Linz, Salzburg, Gratz ( = Gradetz, Gorodetz), and Vienna. The names of the old Slavonic tribes originally settled in these parts of Germany are given in Schafarik's Slawische Alterthumer, to which work the reader desiring further information must be referred. They are mentioned fre- quently in such writers as Helmold, Dietmar, Arnold, Wittekind, and others. We hear of a commercial city of importance, which some writers have rather fantasti- cally termed the Slavonic Amsterdam, called Wolin, on an island of the same name, which was known as Winetha to the Germans and as Julin to the Danes. Schafarik even wished to see the Slavonic tribe of the Wilzen in English Wiltshire. This, however, cannot be accepted; the original name is Wilssetas and that of the town Wil- tun, the town on the river Wily. It has long been a generally received opinion that the modern Greeks have a large Slavonic admixture. This opinion was boldly asserted some years ago by Fallmerayer and has not been upset even by the labours of M. Sathas. He dwells much upon the form 2^Aa/3^vot as distinct from ~2,i<X.a/3r)vot, ; but this corruption seems to be owing to some such false analogy as cr#Aos. Miklosich, in his Etymologisches Worterbuch der slavischen Sprachen (1886), considers the two forms to be identical. In like fashion Procopius connects Serbi with STTO/DOI and Constantine Porphyro- genitus turns Svatopluk into 2(evSo7rAoKos. Mediaeval Greece, especially the Peloponnesus, abounded with Slavonic 1 This spelling has been adopted as best calculated to show the pronunciation of the name Czech, in the same way as the French write the word Tcheque. names, which are now being replaced by others drawn from classical sources. Kollar and Wolanski wished to find a Slavonic population in Italy ; but their opinions are con- sidered the wild dreams of unscientific patriots, though these views found their way into such works as the Var- ronianus of Dr Donaldson. Equally unfounded appears to be the belief that a Slavonic element may be traced in Spain and Asia Minor. If the Slavs have lost in the west of Europe, they have gained in the east considerably, as Russia has encroached upon the Ugro-Finnish tribes of the northern and eastern portions of its empire, and many of these races are now in various stages of Russification. As to the original home of the Slavonic race there are Original three leading opinions: (1) the Slavs settled in Europe h, ome of at a period contemporaneous with or shortly after the avs ' arrival of the Teutonic and other Indo-European families ; (2) they first made their appearance in Europe with the Huns, Avars, and other Asiatic barbarians in the 3d cen- tury after Christ ; (3) they originated in Europe, as did the so-called Indo-European race altogether. This last below). The first of these views has been supported by Scha- Scha- farik. He considers that the Slavs left Asia in very early f^rik's times for the following reasons : (a) the fact that the V11 Slavonic languages are more closely connected with Euro- pean tongues than with those of Asia, even granting the many affinities of Slavonic with Zend or (as has been recently shown by Hubschmann) with Armenian ; (>) the similarity of the manners and customs of the Slavs to those of the Celts, Germans, and other European popu- lations ; (c) the occurrence of many mountains, rivers, and towns having Slavonic names which are mentioned long before the Slavs themselves are found in history ; (c?) the fact that the Slavs are always spoken of by the earlier writers in terms which show that these writers considered them to be an ancient European nation, and were struck with the large area over which their populations extended. Moreover, the arrival at a comparatively late period of such large hordes would have made a great impression upon the surrounding nations at the time, and this would certainly have found an echo in their historians and chroniclers. Schafarik believes that the Slavs or Wends (as they were called by their Teutonic neighbours) were settled at a very early period on the southern coast of the Baltic. The word " Wend " he connects with a Slavonic (voda) and Lithuanian (ivandu) root meaning "water"; thus it would signify the people dwelling about the water. He appears to include under the Slavs all people bearing the name Wends, notably the Veneti on the Adriatic. Other writers, however, consider that the word was applied generally to any maritime people ; and this view appears probable. The name also occurs in Switzerland. The Wends then, according to Schafarik, were the earliest inhabitants of the Baltic coast ; but they were expelled by the Goths in the 4th century B.C. Nestor makes other tribes of Slavs to have been established at an early period on the Danube and to have been driven thence by the Vlachs, a people whom scholars are inclined to identify with the Latin colonists from whom in a great measure the modern Roumans are descended. We find other tribes settled in the neighbour- hood of the Carpathians. The first historian who relates Classical anything about the Slavs is probably Herodotus, whose accounts, account of the north of Europe is very vague. Among the Scythian tribes mentioned by him two have been - Origines Ariacse, Vienna, 1883. 3 Sprachveryleichung und Urgeschichte, 1885. XXII. 19
 * 'iew has been maintained by Penka 2 and Schrader 3 (see