Magyar News, 1992. szeptember-1993. augusztus (3. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

1993-01-01 / 5. szám

According to the popular tradition, as the conquest of the plains was completed, the leaders of the seven tribes reconfirmed their oath of allegiance to Árpád, the common leader of the federation, and since Árpád’s clan came from the Magyar (or Megyer) tribe, the name of the ruler’s tribe was adapted, according to the custom of the steppe peoples, by the other tribes as collec­tive name of the federation. Also the lan­guage spoken by the majority of the tribes, the “magyar,” an idiom consisting partly of Ugrian, partly of Tiircic vocabulary, and in the subsequent centuries enriched with Latin, Slavic and Germanic loan-words, gradually became the language of the new nation. At the same time as the seven tribes, joined with the Kabars, coalesced into a single nation of the Magyars, the outside world, in first place their western neigh­bors, Germans, Italians, started to call them by a different name: Hungarus. Hungari in Latin, Ungar (Hungar) in German. Since the Western people had not much informa­tion about the earlier contacts of the Magyars with the Onogurs, the name Hungarus sug­gested their identification of the Hungar­ians with the Huns. This was supported by the fact that the Hungarians, after complet­ing the conquest of the entire Carpatho- Danubian basin, including the former Ro­man province of Pannónia, started their marauding expeditions to Western Europe, usually by one or two tribes, while the main body of the nation remained in their newly won settlements, participating in the loot. Although almost 500 years were passed since Attila with their Huns launched in the mid-fifth century his attacks against the western Roman empire itself, in the process devastating large parts of the bordering territories, the horror caused by the Huns remained vividly in the memory of the western peoples. It is then a small wonder that when the Hungarians, with their Orien­tal features of the steppe peoples, appeared on their swift moving horses, lightly armed but using with success the strategy of the barbarians of the East against the heavy armor of the western knights, the western peoples easily took them for Huns, or a people closely related to the Huns. The resemblance of the Hungarians to the Huns, or even their identity with them was also suggested by the Hungarian chronicles of the 12th -14th centuries and by the unwrit­ten tradition of the people. According to this, after Attila’s death his power-center in the Carpatho-Danubian basin collapsed and his sons perished, with the exception of the youngest son, Csaba. This son brought back the remnants of Attila’s people from the present Hungary to Scythia, the steppe, where the early Hungarian tribes lived al­ready as close neighbors of the Onogurs. Apparently both Hungarians an Onogurs were subjects of Attila’s former empire and as the legend goes, Álmos, Árpád’s father was descendant of Csaba’s family. Thus, when Árpád with the seven tribes entered the Danube basin, he only fulfilled the prophecy that Attila’s son, Csaba, or one of his descendants will reconquer Attila’s heri­tage. While the 19th century Hungarian histo­rians adhered strictly to the Ugor origin of the Hungarian people and their language, and denied any relationship between the Huns and the Hungarians, the recent Hun­garian historiography is willing to give credence to the old Hungarian and foreign chronicles and popular tradition in accept­ing that the Hungarians, at some period of their history, were in contact with the Huns and possibly were also their subjects, to­gether with other tribes of the steppe, be­fore they came under Kazar domination. It is even possible that Hungarian tribes par­ticipated in Attila’s military ventures in Europe. At that time the name Hun covered not only Huns but many other non-Hun- Tiircic tribes. It is therefore possible that the Hungarians of the 9th and 10th centu­ries already had some information about the land which formed the basis of Attila’s short lived empire. At any rate, the modem Hungarian histo­riography sees in the duality of the names Magyar and Hungarian a proof pointing to the two-fold racial and ethnic origins of the present Hungarian people. One component of this origin is undeniably the ancient language of Ugor roots, forming the basic structure of the Hungarian language, and all its elements which make the Hungarian idiom so unique and inaccessible for the non-Hungarians. The other component is the Hungarian ethnic character which is rooted in the long-time contacts of the Hun­garians with the various Tiircic tribes of the southern Russian steppe, Onogurs, Bulgar- Turks, Kazars and possibly also Huns. Here we cannot speak of common racial origin, yet it is their influence and possible inter­marriages which transformed the way of living of the Hungarians, who borrowed form them elements of their social, mili­tary, economic organizations and agricul­tural methods, which made the Hungarians also in their physical appearance similar to the steppe people of Tiircic origin, and essentially different from their Ugor ances­tors. From these components evolved the Hungarian people of the present, obviously absorbing during the centuries of their Eu­ropean presence a great deal of western influence, western institutions, many words of western origin and western way of life, which makes the modem Hungarians Euro­pean distinguishable from other European people of Indo-European origin only by their unique, peerless, inaccessible lan­guage, living memory of a distant past. Many times we are asked why our publi­cation bears the name Magyar News. 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