The Eighth Tribe, 1977 (4. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1977-05-01 / 5. szám
May, 1977 THE EIGHTH TRIBE Page 7 Book Review: Hungarian Historiography (Várdy, Steven Béla: Modern Hungarian Historiography, East European Quarterly, Boulder, 1976., xii, 333 pages.) Increasingly both the leaders of the Hungarian emigration and the exiled Hungarian press are advocating the publication and dissemination of works dealing with the Hungarian cause and illuminating Hungarian problems in languages other than Hungarian. Yet, when a serious, valuable and scholarly work does appear, it is often totally ignored by these same people. Unfortunately, such works are even openly attacked for supposedly “ideological” reasons. Generally, however, the “ideological” reasons turn out to be caused by language difficulties. In the Middle Ages, monks transcribing handwritten manuscripts solved the problem by writing “Graeca sunt, non leguntur” (it is Greek, I doa’t understand) when they ran across an obscure phrase. If this were the case today, there would be no problem. Yet, today some individuals lash out unknowingly and attack works they have not even read. Despite the difficulties, works dealing with the pertinent issues and problems of the captive nations are being published. One of the primary movers behind this publishing activity is the East European Quarterly, which has published 18 English language volumes in its “East European Monographs” series since 1971. By topical area these include 5 Yugoslavian, 3 Romanian, 2 Slovak, 1 Polish, 1 Lithuanian, 1 Ukrainian and 1 Greek monograph. Other monographs deal with Hungarian topics. One examines the social and intellectual climate of the Hapsburg Empire from the reign of Maria Theresia to World War I, while another, edited by the Hungarian Béla K. Király, scrutinizes the question of freedom of religion in Eastern Europe. Another volume introduces outstanding Jews in modern Hungary (] eivish Nobles and Geniuses in Modern Hungary by William 0. McCagg, Jr.). Dr. Steven Béla Várdy, Professor of History at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pa., is the author of the sixteenth volume in this series. It was published in 1976 and is distributed by Columbia University Press (New York and Guildford, Surrey), one of the most highly respected university publishers. This extraordinarily thorough, extremely precise and detailed, scholarly study is the result of many years of painstaking research work by Professor Várdy. In 1969, he was selected by the American “International Research and Exchanges Board” (IREX) as the most THE MAGYARS IN HISTORY by S. B. Vardy, Ph.D. Professor of History — continued — CHAPTER V THE THEORY OF THE SUMERIAN ORIGINS OF THE MAGYARS (Are the Magyars the Sons of Nimrod?) In the above four chapters we have briefly summarized what today is generally known by scholars about Magyar proto-history, as well as about the history of the Carpathian Basin before the Árpádian conquest of the late ninth century. In a traditional history of Hungary, we would now continue with the discussion of the settlement of the Magyars and their foundation of the medieval Hungarian Kingdom in the Middle Danube area. And more importantly, we would also begin the description of their society, leadership, material and intellectual culture, as well as their way of life at the time of the conquest of their future kingdom. That we do not follow this pattern is due to the current mass popularity of a theory of Magyar origins, which attempts to identify the ancestors of the Magyars as the Sumerians of ancient Mesopotamia. Serious historians do not as yet deal with this question in serious works of history. Yet, because there is a whole legion of mostly selftrained historians, linguists and ethnologists who pour out dozens of hooks and pamphlets, and hundreds of articles on this subject, and because no specialist in Hungarian history can escape being bombarded by questions regarding the alleged Sumerian origins of the Magyars, one can hardly leave this question unmentioned in a popular synthesis of this type. So what is the essence of this theory? It is basically a belief and contention that the Magyars are the direct or almost direct descendants of the Sumerians of Mesopotamia, who in turn are generally regarded as the primary originators of a higher form of human civilization. Because proofs for the direct link between the Sumerians of the fourth and third centuries B.C., and the Magyars of the eighth and ninth centuries A.D. are difficult to come by, the champions of this theory base their arguments largely on linguistic considerations. More specifically, they point to the alleged close affinity between the Sumerian and the 27
