Magyar News, 2004. szeptember-2005. augusztus (15. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
2005-07-01 / 11-12. szám
1 HUNGARIAN FOOTPRINTS IN MANY PARTS OF THE WORLD Some years ago, sitting with István Kiszely, we were all mesmerized as he talked about his work. He took us into the history of Hungarian, he introduced us into he fantastic research he was doing. Well who is István Kiszely? Dr. Kiszely István, was born in 1932 in Budapest. He was a biologist, historian, and an anthropologist. He used all this knowledge to research the past of the Hungarian people. His many talents already showed when he was graduating from the Bences Highschool in Budapest. By this time he had a diploma from the Music academy for piano and organ. Then in Pannonhalmán he attended 5 years in catholic theology. He was able to study biology and geology at the ELTE university. In 1963 he received his doctorate in soil hydrology. He took on anatomy and worked at the archeology department of the Academy. The research work he got involved in was the human bone, dating and doing genealogy with these. At this time he started researching in ancient Hungarian history. He lead expeditions into Center Asia. He talked about the research work he did in North China, along the Silk Route, He was working with Japanese scientists among the Uigur people who welcomed him as a distant relative. They knew about the Hungarian. Also they in a way looked different to the Chinese population, their culture, their traditions were special. With An Uigur women wearing a robe the Japanese he concluded that the tracing gene were similar at all three people. The note I wrote and the literature he gave me was passed on among my friends, and as it usually happens I have never seen them again. To continue, István Kiszely lectured in many universities, also for a couple of years he vas guest professor in Egypt. He among others received the American Einstein Bronze Medal, in England the Rudolf Martin award was given to him. Besides lecturing and teaching, he worked with the Hungarian TV. One would think that the language of science would take over and one has to be a scientist to understand what he is talking about. Well, not at all. He said everything in a way so everybody understands it. Uigur is spoken principally in China and to a lesser extent in the Soviet Union. In China the Uigurs number some 7 million, most of whom live in a vast area of western China called the Sinkiang Uigur Autonomous Region (capital: Urumchi). In the Soviet Union Uigur speakers number only 180,000, living mainly in the Kazakh and Kirgiz republics, near the Chinese border. Uigur is a Turkic language and thus of the Altaic family. The Uigurs are an ancient people whose history can be traced back to the early centuries of the Christian era. About the middle of the 8th century they established a large and powerful state in eastern Turkestan. When this was overrun a hundred years later, they established a new kingdom in western China that survived until the rise of the Mongol Empire. The ancient Uigurs developed a script of their own, which was written vertically from left to right. It had considerable influence upon writing in Asia even after the dissolution of the Uigur kingdom. In the 13th century the Mongols adopted the Uigur script for writing their own language, and in turn passed it on to the Manchus, who were to rule China for over 250 years. Meanwhile the Uigurs had long since adopted Islam, and with it the Arabic script, but a new Roman-based alphabet introduced in the 1960s is gradually taking hold. In 1947 the Soviet government introduced the Cyrillic alphabet (with 8 additional letters) for use in Uigur. I was lucky to find knowledgeable people in this subject matter. Zoltán Lépő an outstanding artist from Bogyoszló, who studied sculpting in Budapest on one day riding the trolley met a Japanesse girl. This ended up in a mar-Dr. István Kiszely riage and also brought him to Japan for 12 years. Studying the Japan culture with a Hungarian eye, he found many similarities.He connected both people with the Huns. Antal Endrey, now living in Australia, analyzing the Hungarian and Uigur crowns concluded that they have many things in common. The most help came from John Nadler who 10 years ago wrote his book on Kiszely and his work. Here are excerpts from it: “Whether a blessing or a curse, Hungarian have always considered their 1,000-year-old nation of 10.5 million inhabitants an island. Nearly every central European ethnicity - Poles, Czech, Austrian - boasts either Slavic or Germanic roots. With their closest relatives thought to be the faraway Finn and Estonian, the lonesome Hungarian have occupied an eth-An Uigur man in his shop Page 3
