The Eighth Tribe, 1977 (4. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1977-03-01 / 3. szám
March, 1977 THE EIGHTH TRIBE Page 5 Book Review: A New History of the Hungarians at Home and Abroad THE MAGYARS IN HISTORY by S. B. Vardy, Ph.D. S. B. Vardy, Ph.D. Ferenc Somogyi and Lél Somogyi: Faith and Fate: A Short Cultural History of the Hungarian People Through a Millennium. Drawings by Nándor Németh. Cleveland: Kárpát Publishing Co. Inc., 1976. Pp. 208. $7.95; paper $5.95. History is a beautiful discipline; and even though most modern men have their doubts, it is also a useful discipline. In addition to making it possible for us to learn from the mistakes and experiences of the past, history also gives us an identity. Nations without history, people without the knowledge of their past are like individuals who are suffering from amnesia, who have lost their memory. They are lost psychologically, for they don’t know who they are, nor where they came from. And even though much is chaotic in modern American society, the recent resurgence of “ethnic pride” has several healthy features. For what is this socalled “ethnic revolution?” It is basically a search for the past by people who suddenly found themselves rootless amidst the crushing impersonality of the modern world. They want to belong somewhere. They want to know who they are. Some of the results of this search for identity by Americans of various ethnic background have already appeared in print; and this is also true for Hungarian-Americans. In fact, we have already pointed out the existence of a number of such works on the pages of The Eighth Tribe. These include L. Könnyu’s Acacias: Hungarians in the Mississippi Valley, J. Széplaki’s Louis Kossuth: The Nations Guest, and L. Eszenyi’s Faithful unto Death, all of which were published by the Bethlen Press, Inc. These works all deal with a slice of the American-Hungarian past. Not so the work under review, which encompasses the whole of Hungarian history, including the chronicle of those who have left the land of their birth, and settled in faraway places. Published under the title Faith and Fate, this newest English language history of the Magyars is one of the results of the federally funded “Ethnic Heritage Studies Development Program” administered by Cleveland State University. Its primary author is Professor Ferenc Somogyi, who is known to us through many of his earlier Professor of History — continued — CHAPTER III FROM PROTO-MAGYARS TO MAGYARS (From the Volga-Kama Region to the Carpathian Basin) As we have seen, according to the traditional version of their origin, the Magyars have emerged into a relatively unitary people in the Volga- Kama area — be it on the left (eastern) or right (western) bank of the Volga River. The left bank area subsequently came to be known as Bashkiria, and it is still inhabited by some Bashkir Turks. It was in Bashkiria where Brother Julian found some Magyar speaking people as late as the 1230’s. It was there where a segment of the Ugor branch of the Finno-Ugric family mixed with numerous peoples from the southern steppes (prairies), including the Iranian speaking Scythians, Sarmatians and Alans, as well as a great number of Turkic tribes. It was in that “original homeland” where the Magyars acquired the way of life, habits and even some of the terminology of the horse nomads. And it was also there where they picked up the name whereby they are known to most of the world to this day. Thus the terms “Hungarus” (Latin), “Hungarian” (English), “Hongrois” (French), “Ungar” (German), “Ungherese” (Italian), “Vengri” (Russian), etc., all come from the word onogur (on-ogur), which simply means “ten tribes” in the Turkic language of that area and period, and which was used to denote a group of Turks who first appeared in Eastern Europe in 463 A.D. The Magyars or proto-Magyars undoubtedly had some contacts with these Turks; mixing with them and perhaps joining with them in a tribal federation. Thus, Professor G. László is correct in saying that “the Magyars in the maternal line are Europeans, but in the paternal line Asiatics.” (Vértes, p. 236). László does not exclude the possibility either that the Onogurs were simply Magyars. But this will be discussed in connection with his theory of the “double conquest.” According to some scholars, most of the Ogur (Onogur) tribes moved down to the Black Sea area, in the vicinity of the Kuban River, as early as the 460’s, where they mixed with the remnants of the Turkic Huns, who have fled to the same area after the death of King Attila and the disintegration of his empire in 453. By the sixth century A.D., this mixture of Ogur (Onogur) and Hunnic tribes came to constitute a relatively homogeneous group. They were ruled by such kings as Gordas 15
