Hungarian Heritage Review, 1991 (20. évfolyam, 1-11. szám)
1991-01-01 / 1. szám
strongly exposed to Sumerian culture as well since proto-Sumerians too, had inhabited the Turanian Plain until about 3000 B.C. This people then migrated to Mesopotamia, where they built a brilliant civilization, whose most important achievement was the invention of writing. By 1950 B.C. the Sumerian empire was gone, but their cunei form writings endured on the tablets they had used. Famous linguists of the 19th century, including Henry C. Rawlinson, Jules Oppert, Eduard Sayous and Francois Lenormant soon found that knowledge of the Ural-Altaic languages—particularly Magyar—can greatly facilitate the deciphering of Sumerian writings. Cunei form writing was used by the Hungarians long before their arrival in the Carpathian Basin, and afterwards as well. The similarity of the two languages strongly inspired Hungarian orientalists to seek a deeper Sumerian-Hungarian connection. To the present day, however, no indisputable and decisive proof has yet emerged. However, a by-product of orientalist speculations—a "Finno-Ugrian concept in reverse," —is worthy of note. This concept holds that, if the proto- Magyars were neighbors of proto- Sumerians in the Turanian Plain, then the development of the Hungarian language must have been the result of Sumerian rather than Finno-Ugrian (Turkic) influences. In turn, this would mean that, rather than being the recipients of a Finno-Ugrian linguistic heritage, it was the Magyars themselves who must have conveyed their own proto-language, enriched by Sumerian, to the Finns and Estonians, without being ethnically related to them! Adding strength to this theory is the fact that the Magyars have always been numerically stronger than all their distant Finno- Ugrian neighbors combined. It is possible that Finns and Ugors received strong linguistic strains from a Magyar branch which had broken away from the main body on the Turanian Plain, and migrated to West Siberia. The Magyar-Uygur "Connection" Highly interesting in the quest for the ancient Hungarian homeland have been recent efforts to study the Magyar- Uygur connection. The Uygurs are a people with a Caucasion appearance in the Xinjiang province of China. This region still reflects its ancient role as a meeting place of Chinese civilization and Central Asia's nomadic peoples. Here, members of a dozen ethnic groups outnumber the nationally predominant Han Chinese. The largest among them are the Uygurs, 7 million strong, who still hold fast to their Turkic language. The Uygurs inhabit the Tarim Basin and a chain of oases between the forbidding Taklamakan and Gobi deserts. Traversing the region is a 4,000 mile trade route used by caravans traveling from China to the shores of the Mediterranean. "Taklamakan" in the folkore of the Uygurs means "once you get in, you can never get out". Over the centuries the Uygurs have built intricate canal systems for waters originating in the snow-covered mountain ranges to the north. They also dug wells to supply water for growing grains, fruit, vegetables and cotton. At the Uygurs' northern border stretches the Dzungarian Basin, a steppe-like region where dry grain farming is practiced. The very name Dzungaria has a striking similarity to Hungária, the Latin word for Hungary, a word still used in poetic terms in Hungary today. Northeast of Dzungaria lies the Altai Mountain Range, a name used by linguists in defining the Ural-Altaic language group to which Magyar also belongs. Further to the north stretches the Lake Baykal region. It is from here that first the Scythians, then the Huns emerged to conquer the Turanian Plain. The Magyars, Uygurs and the Turks may also have started their migrations from the northeastern part of the Baykal area. Given all these circumstances, it is no wonder that the most famous Hungarian explorer, Sándor Körösi Csorna, pointed toward the land of the Uygurs in his quest, which started in 1819, for the ancient Magyar homeland. Unfortunately, neither he nor Armin Vambery, another Hungarian explorer of international fame, was able to reach the land of the Uygurs, due to forbidding —continued next page JANUARY 1991 HUNGARIAN HERITAGE REVIEW 25
