bulgars and bulgarians prof. dr. plamen s. tzvetkov, new. bulgarian university

7/30/2019 Bulgars And Bulgarians PROF. DR. PLAMEN S. TZVETKOV, NEW. BULGARIAN UNIVERSITY

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Bulgars And Bulgarians

PROF. DR. PLAMEN S. TZVETKOV NEW. BULGARIAN UNIVERSITY

THE TURKS, SLAVS AND THE ORIGIN OF THE BULGARIANS

The TurksVol 1, p 562-567, Ankara, 2002, ISBN 975-6782-55-2, 975-6782-56-0

Linkshttp://www.yeniturkiye.com/display.asp?c=6012&page=562#x

Posting introduction

Terminology: In the course of reinventing history, both Russian and Bulgarian scientists and

scientologists had to invent a language suitable for their perch, which is confusing for anybody else.Here it goes: Bulgars are renamed Proto-Bulgars, which means that the Türkic Bulgars are Türkic, butwithout saying it, maybe you would not guess. The modern Bulgars are named Bulgarians, or inRussian Bolgars. Thus made a distinction between the Türkic-speaking Bulgars and Slavic-speaking

Bulgars. Dr. P.Tzvetkov follows the accepted nomenclature, but since ”Proto-Bulgars” does not makesense, he dubs it with the real term, Bulgars, like in Great Bulgaria, which seems to be never

rechristened to Great Proto-Bulgaria.

The bottom line of the article is that Bulgars were, and remain now, Bulgars, a people with ancientand rich history. Bulgarian is a Ural-Altaic language under strong Indo-European influence, whereasthe Slavic languages are Indo-European languages under strong Ural-Aliaic influence. The analysis of the history of the Bulgar people may be applicable to other ”Slavic” peoples, in particular the Croats

and Bosnians, who are directly connected with the history of the Türkic peoples, Croatia with theBesenyo (Badjanak, Pecheneg) tribe Charaboi, and the Bosnians with the Besenyos (Badjanaks,Pechenegs). This analysis is applicable to the Rus and Russian state, where institutions, dynasties,

language, folklore, even a czar were deeply rooted in the Türkic people. The Balto-Slavic concept on

the origin of Slavs needs to be studied without prejudice. As should have been expected, Dr.P.Tzvetkov position and argumentation incited a burning reaction, in iron silence and in exaltedopposition.

The posting's notes and explanations, added to the text of the author and not noted specially, areshown in parentheses in (blue italics) or blue boxes.

Prof. Dr. Plamen S. Tzvetkov

THE TURKS, SLAVS AND THE ORIGIN OF THE BULGARIANS

562

Most scholars accept as an axiomatic truth that the Bulgars or Bulgarians, mentioned in Chinese,Byzantine, Arabic, and Western European sources from the first to the tenth centuries A.D., have littlein common with those Bulgarians who are today the majority of the population in Balkan or Danubian

Bulgaria. Even in widespread language dictionaries, such as the ”Random House Webster's CollegeDictionary”, the Bulgars are defined as a ”Turkic people who formed a state in the Southern Balkans in



the late 7lh century A.D.” and who were, ”by c.900, largely assimilated by the local Slavicpopulation”. Meanwhile the Bulgarians are, according to the same dictionary, natives or inhabitants of

Bulgaria who speak a ”South Slavic language”. 1

However, everything seems to indicate that the deeply rooted myth about the Slavic origin of theBulgarians is motivated mainly, if not exclusively, by political considerations. Up to 1601 A.D., when

the Ragusian Mauro Orbini published his ”Kingdom of the Slavs”, practically everyone made a cleardistinction between the Bulgarians and the Slavs. Eager to see the emergence of a great and unified

Slavic empire, Mauro Orbini assigned a Slavic descent to a number of definitely non-Slavic peoples,such as the Goths, the Khazars, and even the Etruscans. Naturally enough, the Bulgarians were alsoincluded in the Slavic family, it should be noted in this regard that Mauro Orbini denied the veryexistence of separate Slavic ethnicities and considered that the Russians, the Poles, the Czechs, the

Slovaks, the Slovenes, the Croats, and the Serbs were just ''tribes” of one and the same nation. 2

At a later stage the idea about the Slavic origin of the Romanians and of the Bulgarians was stronglysupported by Russia for the simple reason that these two nations lay on the road of Russia's expansion

toward Constantinople and the Straits.

In a 1769 manifesto the Russian empress Catherine II (1762-1796) claimed that the ”Slavs” of Moldova, Wallachia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Albania had come to the

Balkans from Russia. Hence they had to rise against the Turks in support of the Russian armies that

were about to attack the Ottoman Empire. 3

Looking for foreign support against the Ottoman rule many Bulgarian national leaders turned out tobe quite susceptible to the propaganda of Russian Pan-Slavism. Even the father of the Bulgariannational revival Paissi of Chilandar, who didn't like the Russians and the Serbs at all, readily acceptedOrbini's theories about the Slavic origin of: the Bulgarians. As a matter of fact, he dreamed about the

restoration of the ancient Bulgarian Tsardom and any hint at a possible kinship with the Turks was out

of the question. For this reason he deliberately distorted a popular legend of his time, according towhich the Bulgarians were relatives both to the Slavs, to the Russians, and to the Turks: in his

”Slavobulgarian History” Paissi simply omitted the relationship with the Turks. 4

Up to 1601 all written sources make a clear distinction between the Bulgarians and the Slavs who

are considered as entirely alien and often hostile to each other. 5 For instance, a late eleventh centuryBulgarian author is obviously convinced that the Bulgarians are just ”the third part of the Cumans”. Inhis eyes the only difference between the Bulgarians and the Cumans was that the Bulgarians were

Christians, while the Cumans were still pagans. 6

The issue of linguistic differences between Kumans and Kipchaks still has no answer.The highest achievement was to determine that Kumans were actually ethnically differentfrom the Kipchaks, leaving plenty of room for further research.

Even in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when there were already considerable differencesbetween the separate Slavic peoples, foreign observers duly noticed that the Slavs had no directrelationship either with the Bulgarians or with the Wallachians.563

Thus the Venetian Andrea Dandolo wrote about Dahnaria as the country of the Southern Slavs,

while Bulgaria was the country of the Bulgarians and Wallachia was the country of the Wallachians,even though there was no single southern Slavic, Bulgarian, or Wallachian state at that time. The Serbs

were split among several principalities, while the Croats were under the supremacy of the Hungarians.The Bulgarians lived, in their turn, in at least ten different kingdoms and principalities and there were

no less than two Romanian or Wallachian states. 7



Scholars often refer to such phrases as ”Slavs or Bulgarians”, ”Slavs from Bulgaria” or ”Slavs,called Bulgarians”, which are found in a number of primary sources, as an evidence of the Slavic

character of the Bulgarians. However, the meaning is quite clear: the people mentioned in these sourceswere not Bulgarians, but Slavs who were called Bulgarians because they had either spent some timeunder Bulgarian rule or emigrated from Bulgaria. As Imre Boba points out, the Slavs of Pannonia,Upper Moesia, and the Carpathian foothills were often referred to as ”Sclavi ex Bulgariae” since back

in the ninth and tenth centuries these areas were part of the Bulgarian Empire. 8

The theory about the Slavic origin of the present-day Bulgarians does not seem to be confirmed bythe archaeological data either. Many attempts have been made to find in the three historical provincesof Moesia, Thrace and Macedonia some Slavic pottery, Slavic settlements, or even isolated Slavicdwellings, but the results are so far highly doubtful. Some scholars hastened to proclaim that the

primitive, nonprofessional pottery, found in many Balkan areas, is the product of Slavs. However, suchpottery was characteristic of the ancient Thracians as well, and the Romanian archaeologists appear

right in their belief that this pottery belongs to the local ”Dridu” culture. 9

As a matter of fact, it is impossible to judge about a particular ethnicity by the nonprofessionalpottery since it is nothing more than a local domestic product of a quite primitive technology. The same

by no means applies to the professional pottery and in this regard the professional pottery found in thelands of today's Bulgaria and Macedonia is definitely similar, it not identical with the professional

pottery of the Volga Bulgaria. 10 Moreover, the architecture of medieval cities like Pliska and Preslavhas nothing to do with the Slavs, but it is related to the architecture of the cities, whose ruins lie

basically in the lands once inhabited by the Bulgarians or ”Bulgars” in their long way from Asia to

Europe. 11

Bulgar city in Caucasus, 10th c.

Practically none of the human skulls and skeletons that are found in Bulgaria or Macedonia have

any Slavic features whatsoever. The same applies to the present-day Bulgarians who, according tomost experts, belong to a local Mediterranean race, differing from the remaining southern Europeansbut identical with the racial characteristics of the medieval Bulgarians. On the other hand, the southernEuropean racial type is completely absent from the eastern and western Slavs. There are no southern

European elements in the skulls, found in the medieval Slavic graveyards.

The southern Slavs, namely the Serbs and the Croats, belong in their turn to the so-called ”Dinaric”type of the southern European subrace. This ”Dinaric” type is less pronounced in the plains, while the

skulls of the medieval Slavic graveyards of Serbia and Croatia have all the features, proper to the Slavic



sub-race which is totally absent from Bulgaria and Macedonia. In other words, in the case of the Serbsand the Croats one may talk about a mixture between Slavic and significant native elements, while the

Bulgarian sub-race is entirely different from the Slavic racial type. It goes without saying that theBulgarians were and, of course, are far from being a ”pure race” but everything seems to indicate thatthe Bulgarian sub-race is by no means a mixture between Slavic and non-Slavic elements: it is a

mixture between Iranoids, Balkan natives, and a limited amount of Mongoloids. 12

Dinaric

Iranoids: In the nomenclature of Carleton S. Coon, apparently used by Dr. P.Tzvetkov,”Iranoids” aka ” Iranid race” is short for Irano-Afghans; anthropologist C.S.Coon describedIranoids as long-faced, high-headed and nose-hooked ( C.S.Coon, ” The Races of Europe”,

1939). Different scholars applied the same term ”Iranoid” to taxonomically different andopposing morphologies, which indicates that a definable category may not exist at all.Nowadays that is confirmed by the genetic testing, which results in severely spotty and

clashing pictures. Though the terminology may be faulty, the underlying analysis of Dr.P.Tzvetkov remains unaffected in respect to the osteological results.

Within his definition, C.S.Coon stated”If we are correct in identifying the Corded people with the introduction of Altaic speech

into Europe, then the further identification of the Corded racial type with (a) the non-Mongoloid modern Turks and (b) the Afganian racial type of the Irano-Afgan plateau,makes it seem possible that there was, in remote food producing times, an ancestral bloc of

peoples living on that plateau who spoke languages ancestral to Altaic, and perhapsremotely related to Uralic, Sumerian, or both. Some of the peoples who formed that blocpresumably moved northward onto the central Asiatic grasslands (Anav Culture?). Thischange of scene on the part of these early agriculturalists may have had two effects: the

introduction of agriculture into the oases of Turkestan and into Mongolia, and the

development of pastoral nomadism by some of the immigrants, with the subsequent rise of the horse culture.

This step in our speculative structure leads logically to the question of the origin of theTurks. Having placed Ural-Altaic-speaking white men, of a special Mediterranean type stillfound in Iran and Afghanistan, in Turkestan and Mongolia, it is not difficult to suppose thatMongoloid peoples, originally hunters, were attracted to the plains from their forests and

rivers by the advantages of the new economy, and that they assimilated, in adopting it,those of the white immigrants with whom they were in immediate contact.” (pp. 237-238).

C.S.Coon's ”Iranoid” position is corroborated by the spread of A1a Y-DNA gene.



C.S.Coon's Ural-Altaic/Mongoloid position is corroborated by the linguistical studies(Johanson L. Altaic Linguistic family), which in turn are corroborated by genetical results.

Altaic Paleoasiatic DNA ca 1500AD

MongolianBuryat, Mongol, and Tungus

(Evenk) DNA ca 1500 AD

As can be readily seen, genetically the Paleoasiatic and Mongolic peoples are

totally incongruous, pointing to independent genesis and consequently

independent languages - Translator's Note

The Slavic theory about the origin of the Bulgarians is based mainly on the argument that today theBulgarians speak a Slavic language. Indeed, most philologists claim that about 80 per cent of the

Bulgarian words have more or less identical Slavic counterparts. However, a closer look at these wordsleads to the discovery that too many words, existing both in Bulgarian and in all the Slavic languages,have a Ural-Altaic rather than an Indo-European origin, even though the Slavic idioms belong, nodoubt, to the Indo-European family. For instance, for a long time it has been established, that such

words as ”tovar” (”load”, ”cattle”), ”kniga” (”book”), ”zhupan” (”governor”) and ”otets” (”father”) areprobably early Altaic loanwords in the Slavic languages. In the same vein the Bulgarian word ”dyado”and Slavic ”ded” (”grandfather”) may be related to Turkish ”dede”, while Bulgarian ”vrukh” andSlavic ”verkh” (”summit”) are apparently of the same origin as Chuvash ”vur”, Mongolian ”oroi”, and

Hungarian ”orr”. The Bulgarian and Slavic word for ”waler”-”voda” is clearly related to the German”Wasser”, but it is even closer to the Mordvinian ”ved”'.564

The same applies to ”olovo” (Bulgarian and Slavic for ”lead” as metal, which is ”olom” in



Hungarian), to ”med” (Bulgarian and Slavic for ”honey”, which is ”med”' in Mordvinian and ”mez” inHungarian), ”beg” or ”byag” (Bulgarian and Slavic for ”run, rush, flight”, which is ”beige” In Kirgiz,

”paige” in Eastern Turkic, and ”poktem”, ”potta” and ”fut” in a number of Finno-Ugric languages), to”pol” or ”polovina” (Bulgarian and Slavic for ”half”, which is ”pele” in Mordvinian), to ”slovo”(Bulgarian and Slavic for ”word”, which is ”szo” in Hungarian and ”söz” in modern Turkish), to”tsvet” or ”tsvyat” (Bulgarian and partly Slavic for ”color” or ”flower”, which is ”chechek” in Chuvash

and ”chichek” in Turkish), to ”sveti” (Bulgarian and Slavic for ”to shine”, which is ”süt” inHungarian), to ”tegne” or ”tezhi” (Bulgarian and Slavic for ”to weigh”, which may be associated with

”takmak” in Turkish, as well as with the ”Bulgar” or ”Protobulgarian” word ”tagrogi”), to ”koza”(Bulgarian and Slavic for ”goat”, which may be associated with the Chuvash word ”kachaga” andTurkish ”kechi”), to ”vodi” (Bulgarian and Slavic for ”to lead”, which is ”ved” in Mordvinian), to”dee” or ”dyava” (Bulgarian and Slavic for ”to do”, which is ”tei” in Mordvinian), to ”pishe”(Bulgarian and Slavic for ”to write”, which is ”pit” in Eastern Turkic and ”bichi” in Mongolian), to

”meri” (Bulgarian and Slavic for ”to measure”, which is ”mer” in Hungarian), to ”pali” (Bulgarian andSlavic for ”to light” or ”to kindle”, which is ”pal” in Mordvinian).

Even a numeral like ”edin” (Bulgarian and Slavic for ”one”) may be associated with the Hungarian

word ”egy”, while ”devet” (Bulgarian and Slavic for ”nine”) has no certain Indo-European parallels,

but it might be of the same origin as ”tovir”. which is presumably the ”Bulgar” or ”Protobulgarian”word for ”nine”.

All these words, as well as many others, should be considered early Ural-Altaic, if not Bulgarianloanwords in the Slavic languages rather than Slavic words in modern Bulgarian. This assumptionseems to be confirmed by the existence of a considerable number of Bulgarian words, which are totallyabsent from the Slavic and Indo-European languages and which have at the same time clear Altaic or-

Finno-Ugric counterparts, such as ”biser” (”pearl”), ”beleg” (”mark, sign”), ”belchug” (”bracelet;handcuffs”), ”bubrek” (”kidney”), ”pashenog” (”brother-in-law”), ”toyaga” (”stick”), ”kapishche”(”temple”), ”kumir” (”idol”), ”kushta” (”house”), ”kani” (”to invite”), etc.

On the other hand, though, both modern Bulgarian and ”Bulgar” or ”Protobulgarian” aredistinguished by a great number of Indo-Iranian words. Thus, for instance, the word ”Bog” (”God”)has parallels in all the Slavic languages, but it seems to be related to an Indo-Iranian word. ”Bulgar” or”Protobulgarian” words like ”bogatur” or ”bagain” (aristocratic titles in medieval Bulgaria) apparently

derive from ”Bog”. On the other hand, such words as ”san” (”rank”), ”delva” (”large earthen jar”),”stopan” (”owner, proprietor, master, husband, landlord”), ”Asparukh” (the name of the first ruler of Danubian Bulgaria) and many others originate from Indo-Iranian radicals but they are absent from the

Slavic languages.

Words go easily from one language to another but the same by no means applies to phonetics and

morphology. In this regard modern Bulgarian is clearly different from the Slavic languages and at thesame time, there is an obvious kinship of modern Bulgarian both with the Ural-Altaic languages and

with ”Bulgar” or ”Proto-bulgarian”. On the other hand, both modern Bulgarian and ”Protobulgarian”appear to be a peculiar mixture of Ural-Altaic and Indo-Iranian features.

The division of modern Bulgarian into two groups of dialects according to the pronunciation of the

old ”ae” sound is also unknown to the Slavic languages. For instance the word ”byag” (”run, rush,flight”) is pronounced as ”beg” in today's Western Bulgaria and Macedonia. This division seems tocorrespond to the areas, once colonized by the Bulgarians under Asparukh on one hand, and by the

Pannonian Bulgarians on the other. The presence of the ”ae” sound in ”Bulgar” or ”Protobulgarian”appears to be corroborated by such forms as ”belyazvam” and ”beleja” (”to mark”), whose”Protobulgarian” character is a well established fact.

Similarly to Turkish, modern Bulgarian differs from the Slavic languages by the accentuated form of

the ”eu” sound, pronounced like ”i” in ”bird”. Some of these sounds come from the ”o(n)” nasal,which existed in the Cyrillo-Macedonian version of Old Slavonic and which still exists in Polish.



However, the same nasal was surely typical of ”Bulgar” or ”Protobulgarian” as well, which is provenby such ”Protobulgarian” words as ”to(n)gan” (”falcon”). Probably under Turkish influence, this word

has changed in modern Bulgarian into ”dogan”.

Unlike the Ural-Altaic languages both modern Bulgarian and ”Bulgar” or ”Protobulgarian” have novocal harmony. As far as ”Protobulgarian” is concerned, this seems to be corroborated by such words

as ”dilom” (”snake”), 13 ”shegor” (”cattle”) 14 ”tovir” (”nine”), etc. Nevertheless, according to somescholars there are remnants of vocal harmony in at least one or two modern Bulgarian dialects. For

instance, words like ”shapka” (”hat”), ”zhaba” (”frog”), and ”chasha” (”cup”) change in these dialects

into ”shepki”, ”cheshi”, and ”zhebi”. 15

Modern Bulgarian differs substantially from the Slavic languages also by the absence of soft and

hard forms of the letters ”l”, ”n” and ”r”, but both Bulgarian and the Slavic idioms are different fromthe Indo-European languages by the correspondence of ”ch”, ”sh” and ”j” to the Indo-European ”k”,”x”, ”g” and ”k”, ”s”, ”z”. In a paper to the Sixth International Congress of South-East EuropeanStudies in Sofia in 1939 the Austrian philologist Gallon pointed out that these ”Slavic” sounds are in

fact of Ural-Altaic origin.565

An undoubtedly Indo-European feature of modern Bulgarian is the existence of three genders. Bothin modern Bulgarian and in the Slavic languages masculine nouns, for instance, end usually in a

consonant, feminine nouns usually end in ”a”, while most neutral nouns end in ”o” or' ”e”. It is difficultto say whether genders existed in ”Bulgar” or ”Protobulgarian” as well. However, such endings arefound also in well established ”Protobulgarian” words, such as ”beleg” (masculine?), ”toyaga”(feminine?), and ”kupe” (neuter?), which means ”chain amour” and which has been probably

preserved in some modern Bulgarian dialects as ”kepe” (”shepherdscloak”).

The plural of nouns and adjectives is formed in modern Bulgarian in a great variety of ways.However, ”kucheta” (”dogs”) from ”kuche” (”dog”) may be compared to the Finnish word ”talot”

(”houses”) from ”talo” (”house”), while ”kushti” (”houses”) from ”kushta” (”house”) may beassociated with the Hungarian form ”könyveim” (”my books”) from ”konyv” (”book”). It should bealso noted that the particular possessive form of the Ural-Altaic languages like Samoyed ”tubkami”(”my ax”) from ”tubka” (”ax”) or Turkish ”odam” (”my room”) from ”oda” (”room”) have their exact

counterparts both in ”Protobulgarian” and in modern Bulgarian: e.g.”bashta mi” (”my father”) from”bashta” (”father”) or ”alkhasi” (”his or her ring”) from ”alkha” (”ring”). This way of indicatingpossession is unknown to the Slavic languages.

As a rule, unlike the Slavic languages there are no cases of declension in literary Bulgarian. ModernBulgarian has preserved some case inflections of pronouns in its literary version and both of pronouns

and nouns in a number of dialects, as well as in folk songs. However, unlike the Slavic and Indo-European languages and similarly to the Ural-Altaic languages the Bulgarian case inflections do notchange according to gender or number and there is no difference between the case inflections of nounsand adjectives.

Not less important is the fact that the Bulgarian case inflections are not more similar to the Slavic

than to the Ural-Altaic ones, but they are almost identical with the Moksha-Mordvinian case inflections.Thus the ”kogo” (”'whom”) interrogative pronoun seems to be identical with its Slavic counterpart.However', Bulgarian ”kogo” comes from ”koi” (”who”), which is obviously different from the Slavic

forms ”kto”, ”tko”, and ”ko”, but it is almost identical with Finno-Ugric forms such as Chantian ”koii”.Moreover, the ”go” suffix for genitive is absent from the Indo-European languages but it may beassociated with the Mordvinian ”ka” suffix for translative. The same suffix may be found in a well

established ”Protobulgarian” form, namely ”ichirgo” from ”*ichir”. 16

In the same vein modern Bulgarian ”komu” (”whom”) from ”koi” (”who”) may be identical with its



Slavic counterparts, but it may have been formed by an epenthetic ”m”. 17 The ”u” suffix for dative is

widespread both in the Indo-European and Ural-Altaic languages, and it may be associated with theMordvinian ”u” suffix for illative or directive importative, e.g. ”oshu” (”into the city”) from ”osh”(”city”).

In some western Bulgarian and Macedonian dialects there is a special genitive-dative case that iscompletely absent from the Slavic and Indo-European languages, for instance ”taieta” (”fathers”) from”tate” (”father”). The ”ta” suffix is almost identical with the Moksha-Mordvinian ”ta” and ”da” for

ablative.

Some Bulgarian dialects have preserved the ”a”, ”eu” or ”u” endings for accusative. All the threesuffixes probably come from a more ancient ”o(n)”, which may be associated with the Moksha-Mordvinian ”ny” for genitive.

Forms like ”noshtem” (”during the night”) from ”nosht” (”night”) are absolutely impossible for theSlavic languages, since ”nosht” is a feminine noun. The ”in”, ”om”, ”em” and ”am” suffixes may berelated to the Moksha-Mordvinian form ”ama” in ”ftama” for extractive. Completely alien to the Slavic

languages are also Bulgarian forms like ”dobre” for locative-dative from ”dobur” (”good”). The “e”

and especially the ”i” suffix may be also found in a ”Protobulgarian” form like ”Bigi” from ”Big” 18 inthe phrase ”kanasubigi” which is at the beginning of a number of the 9th century Bulgarian stone

inscriptions. The ”i” suffix might be related to the Moksha-Mordvinian ”i”, which is a parallel form fordirective importative.

Vocative is still widely used in modern Bulgarian. Its ”e” suffix may have existed in

”Protobulgarian” as well. In any case, a number of the 9th century Bulgarian stone inscriptions beginwith the word ”kane” which might be a vocative form from ”kan” (”king”).

A substantial difference between the Bulgarian and Slavic languages is the use of postpositive

definite articles both in modern Bulgarian and in ”Bulgar”” or ”Protobulgarian”, for instance ”kushtata”(”the house”) from ”kushta” (”house”). The word ”kana” in the above-mentioned phrase obviouslycomes from ”kan” by adding an ”a”, which is probably a postpositive definite article. Such articles arecompletely absent from the Slavic languages. They may be found in a number of Indo-European

languages such as Armenian, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Romanian and Albanian, but in theselanguages postpositive definitive articles are used simultaneously with prepositive ones. Indeed,postpositions in general are a typical feature of the Ural-Altaic languages and, for instance, there are

postpositive definite articles in the Mordvinian languages as well. From such a viewpoint the Bulgarianform ”kushtata” may be considered as almost identical with Mordvinian ”kudos'” (”the house”) from”kudo” (”house”).

The Bulgarian personal pronouns are also very different from the Slavic ones but at the same timethey seem to be again a peculiar mixture of Ural-Altaic and Indo-European elements. Thus ”az” (”I”),which corresponds to Slavic ”ya”, and ”me” (”we”), which corresponds to Slavic ”mi” or ”my”, areobviously of Indo-European origin, together with ”vie” (”you” in nominative), which differs from its

Slavic counterpart ”vi” or ”vy” by its two syllables instead of one. Moreover, the Bulgarian forms”tebe” (”thee”), ”nas” (”us”), ”vas” (”you” in accusative) are almost identical not only with their Slavic,but also with their Tocharian (i.e. Indo-Iranian) counterparts. On the other hand, the Bulgarian personalpronouns ”men” (”me”), ”on” (”he”) and ”nego” (”him”) are almost identical with their Slavic

counterparts, but they have much closer parallels in the Ural-Altaic than in the Indo-Europeanlanguages. Finally, the ”toi” (”he”), ”to” (”it”), ”tya” (”she”), and ”te” (”they”) personal pronouns have

no exact Slavic or Indo-European parallels, but they can be easily associated with such Finno-Ugricforms as Komi ”sia” and Chantian ”tow”.

It should be also noted that negative pronouns are formed in Bulgarian in a way quite similar to theChuvash one. For instance, Bulgarian ”nikoi” (”no one”) from ”koi” (”who”) corresponds to Chuvash



”nikam” (”no one”) from ”kam” (”who”).

Another prominent Bulgarian ethnological feature connected with negation is causing jokes among her neighbors, who say that Bulgars got their gesticulation wrong: on yes theyshake their heads sidewise, on no they shake the heads up and down. This popular mythdistorts the fact, and betrays the ignorance of their carriers, since the undiluted Türkic

gesticulation is to raise the chin up on no, and tilt it down on yes. That gesticulationunmistakably points to the one's Türkic roots, whatever is the type of the vernacular.

566

Last, but by no means least, the whole Bulgarian system of tenses and moods is completely differentfrom the Slavic verbal system, but its structure is almost identical with the Turkish one. This applies,among many other things, to the re-narrative mood, used for describing unwitnessed actions.

Renarrative is entirely alien not only to the Slavic, but also to the Indo-European languages. Forinstance, Bulgarian ”chel sum” and ”chel” correspond to Turkish ”okumusum” - ”(I was told that) Ihave read” and ”okumus,”-”he read (once)”.

Although limited in number, the ”Bulgar” or ”Proto-Bulgarian” texts, terms and phrases, preservedin written sources until nowadays, are enough to suggest that the difference between ”Protobulgarian”and modern Bulgarian is hardly greater than that between ancient and modern Greek.

Bulgarian and the Slavic languages are both substantially different and obviously similar to eachother. This leads us to the conjecture that Bulgarian is a Ural-Altaic language under strong Indo-European influence, whereas the Slavic idioms are Indo-European languages under strong Ural-Aliaicinfluence. The closest Ural-Allaic languages to Bulgarian are, no doubt, Chuvash (an Altaic idiom) and

Mordvinian (a Uralic idiom) and this corroborates a series of ethnographical data, indicating a kinshipof these two peoples to the Bulgarians. In other words, the general belief that the Bulgarians are Slavsbecause they speak a Slavic language appears to be a wrong answer to a wrongly put question: instead

of asking why Bulgarian is so close to the Slavic languages one should ask why the Slavic languages

are so close to Bulgarian. 19

According to some theories the Slavs existed as a separate ethnicity as far back as the year 2000

B.C. but everything seems to indicate that up to the fourth and fifth centuries A.D. there was virtuallyno difference between the Slavs or, rather, the Protoslavs and the Balts, who are the ancestors of thepresent-day Lithuanians and Latvians. Up to the invasion of the Huns in the second half of the fourth

century A.D., the inhabitants of today's Poland, western Ukraine, western Belarus, Lithuania andLatvia apparently belonged to one and the same ethnicity that may be called Balto-Slavs. Theyworshipped the same gods and their culture, including the pottery and the dwellings, remained

practically unchanged until the fourth century A.D. It was only after the conquest of the whole of Europe to the north of the Danube and to the west of the Rhine by the Huns that the Balto-Slavs, livingin the areas of today's Poland, western Ukraine and western Belarus, came under strong Ural-Altaicand Indo-Iranian influence. In other words, the Huns invaded these parts of Europe but they did notsucceed in penetrating further to the north, and the lands of today's Lithuania and Latvia were not

touched by their invasion. The close similarity, if not the identity of the Ural-Altaic and Indo-Iraniansounds and words in the Slavic languages with their Bulgarian counterparts seems to reveal that theSlavs emerged as a separate ethnicity as a result of the merger of a great part of the Balto-Slavs with the

Bulgarians or, at least, with some people that was very close to the Bulgarians. 20

The Protobulgarian and the modern Bulgarian vocabulary, phonetics, morphology and syntax seemto indicate that the ”Bulgars” or the Bulgarians emerged as a separate ethnicity in a contact zonebetween Protoaltaic, Protouralic, and Indo-European elements. One such zone may have been the areaincluded between the sources of the Huanghe and Changjiang rivers and the Balkhash Lake, i.e.today's northwestern China and parts of what was formerly Soviet Central Asia. In was precisely in this



region that Protoaltaic tribes lived together with, or in the immediate neighborhood of an Indo-

European people, namely the Tocharians. 21

Under Tocharians Dr. P. Tsvetkov apparently means the Yuezhi of the ancient Chinese

nomenclature, who in popular science are listed as Indo-Europeans, and in extreme caseseven Indo-Iranians, but are showing signs of Türkic ethnological type without anyadmixture of a settled population. Without questioning the correctness of the Dr. P.Tsvetkov analysis, and recognizing non-applicability of the term "Tocharians" to the

ancient and medieval sedentary population of Middle and Central Asia, the definition of thecontact zone, and the product of the contact zone may require more detailed studies.

As far back as the 6th century B.C. Chinese sources mention the people of Bo-Jiong (Bo-Jiong,

= Jung), where ”Jiong” means a foreigner or an alien, while ”Bo” might have been the Chinese way of

pronouncing ”Bulgar”. However, a more reliable testimony about the presence of the Bulgarians in theabove-mentioned lands may be found in more recent Chinese chronicles, according to which in the 2ndcentury B.C. the people of Po-le was in charge of the western wing of the Hsiung-nu Empire. ”Po-le”

was apparently another Chinese way of pronouncing ”Bulgar” 22

567

The Hsumg-nu Empire was a federation of a great variety of peoples and tribes, which included theBulgarians, the ancient Turks, and at a later stage the ancient Magyars or Hungarians, as well as an

Indo-Iranian people like the Alans. The whole territory of the federation was divided into three parts:center, left, and right. The center belonged to the ruling tribe that maintained its dominating position bymarrying its ruler's children (usually his sons) to the children (usually the daughters) of the other tribalrulers. Everything seems to indicate, therefore, that the Chinese word ”Hsiung-nu”, the Latin word

”Hun” and the word ”Ouar”, as the Huns called themselves, were not ethnonyms but a designation forall the members of the federation, who enjoyed full rights. The ethnic origin did-not matter, the

important thing was to have dynastic relations with the ruling tribe. 23

Indo-Iranism of the Alans was invented at the end of the 19th c., and developed in the

first half of the 20th c. using fake Zelenchuk Inscription and fake Scythian Lexicon.Archeological studies uncovered that the nomadic and settled Massagets/Masguts, akaAlans, were a mix of two Kurgan Culture Timber Grave descendents separated by eons of centuries and continental-wide distance, who reassembled together in the Caspian-Middle

Asia interfluvial when the climate and Amu Darya became favorable after the 10th c. BC.The eastern Kurgan Culture Timber Grave component from the eastern steppes, thatsurvived into the present as ethnographically Türkic people, brought along into the mixturea tint of Mongoloidness that was documented by anthropologists and by the Classical

sources. During the period from the 10th c. BC to the 3rd c. AD, the population of theCaspian-Middle Asia interfluvial intermingled with many other migrants of differentethnicities, including a good dosage of the Bactrian agricultural migrants, and obtained that

flavor that Biruni defined as a mixture of nomadic Kipchak-speaking Badjanaks and oasis-dwelling Sogdian-speaking Chorasmians. A component of the Massagets/Masguts/Alanswere those parts of the Tocharian tribes, Ch.Yuezhi, and their dynastic tribe of Ases, whoremained behind in the 2nd-1st cc. BC when the majority of them moved into Bactria,

future Tocharistan. The linguistic attribution of the Tochars is still disputed, butethnographically they were Türkic people, and a third component of their alliance, theSuvars, were undoubtedly Türkic.

The area between the Caspian and lake Balkhash appear to be the homeland of theBulgars before their westward extension headed by the Huns, that is the area where theycoagulated into their anthropologically distinct form, where was developed their language,a primarily Ogur language with Uralic, Oguz, and Indo-Iranian admixture, and where



formed their unique version of the Kurgan culture. In the Caucasus, they were known asAlans and Masguts, and their neighbors call their Balkar descendents Alans to this day,

including the innocent Caucasian Ossettes. So far for the "Indo-Iranian people like theAlans". Excluding Indo-Iranian traits inherent to the Balto-Slavs prior to the the 4th c. AD(of which we can't know), the Indo-Iranian traits brought over to the Balto-Slavs in the 4thc. AD originated, like the Türkic and Uralic loanwords into the Balto-Slavic language, in

the Bulgaro-Slavic symbiosis, and are a living testimony to the Alan language of theBulgars. No wonder that all attempts to archeologically discern Alans from Bulgars ended

in failures, all attempts to read Alan runiform inscriptions in Indo-Iranian lexicon ended infailures, and all attempts to discern them osteologically ended in failures. The genetical

unity of the Alans and Bulgars does not mean a political unity, or a religious unity,politically they were as separate as for example became Ostrogoths and Visigoths. Withtime, the divergence became more pronounced, as the Alans joined in symbiotic

relationship with the Caucasian Goths, while the Bulgars joined in a symbiotic relationshipwith a number of Türkic tribes and first with the Balto-Slavs and later Slavs. A search forthe Indo-European and Slavic roots blissfully brought forth the modern Türkology from itsinfant state.

A useful genetic experiment was staged by Marcus Aurelius in 175 AD, when hesettled 5,500 "Sarmatian" Alans in Northern Britain at Ribchester south of Lancaster. In the20th c., the population along the Hadrian Wall has elevated level of group B blood, 16%

vs ambient 8%, allowing a peek into Alanian blood group, and thus providing acorroborating confirmation of their genesis.

The early history of the Bulgarians was closely linked with the history of the Huns. Naturally

enough, they participated in the invasion of Europe which took place from 372-375 A.D. on.According to some authors, the Bulgarians started to settle permanently in the Balkan lands at quite anearly stage. Thus at the end of the fourth century A.D., the Roman emperor Theodosius the Great (379-

395) gave permission to two groups of Bulgarians to move into the lands of today's Dobruja, as well asinto Moesia. For his part, Theodosius II (402-450) allowed another group of Bulgarians to settle in the

same area. 24

Alter Attila's death in 453, the Bulgarians founded a realm of their own, stretching from Pannonia tothe northern coast of the Black Sea. According to a fourteenth century Bulgarian chronicle, at the timeof the Eastern Roman emperor Anastasius I (491-518), a great number of Bulgarians crossed the

Danube at Vidin and settled in Macedonia. 25

The disastrous epidemic of bubonic plague that spread since 542 no doubt facilitated the Bulgarian

colonization of Moesia, Thrace and Macedonia since that disease affected mostly the native sedentary

population. The Eastern Roman emperor Justinian I (527-565) succeeded in throwing the Kutrigur andUtigur Bulgarians against each other, but at the same time he gave refuge to some 2,000 Kutrigurs who

settled somewhere in Thrace. 26



Kutrigurs and Utigurs are not Bulgarian tribes, but eastern and western halves of theBulgarian state, the very names stipulate a state organization:

Ogur Ethnicons Oguz Ethnicons

Utrafront, opposite half, wing,

ulus

Utragur >

UturgurTolis

eastern (left)

half, wing, ulusTolis

Köturibehind, westward, western

half, wing, ulus

Köturgur >

KutrigurTardush

western (right)

half, wing, ulus

Tardush,

Tardu-Khan

Otra middle half, wing, ulus Otragur >Uturgur

Otra middle, center Urta, orda> horde

Since the beginning of the 6th century, the Balkans also began to attract the Slavs. The EasternRoman emperor Heraclius I (610-641) gave permission to the Slavs to settle in the province of Illyria,

which corresponds roughly to the present-day territories of Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia.The Slavs were not allowed, therefore, to move into Moesia, Thrace and Macedonia, and until thevictory of Asparukh against the Romans or the Byzantines in 680-681, there were hardly more thanabout 250.000 to 300,000 Slavs in the whole area between the Danube, the Black Sea, the

Mediterranean and today's border of Bulgaria and (apparently, Greek Macedonia) with Yugoslavia.On the other hand, only those Bulgarians who came under Asparukh must have been about 600.000 to

800,000 people. 27

As it is well known, the disintegration of Great Bulgaria after Kubrat's death in 665 resulted in thefounding of two Bulgarian realms: Danubian Bulgaria and Volga Bulgaria, while Kubrat's eldest sonBatbayan remained in the lands between the Black Sea and the Caspian. As a matter of fact, though,

there seems to have been a constant migration of Volga Bulgarians toward the Balkans because of thegrowing pressure of the ancient Turks and of the Ruses. Finally, in 970 the Danubian Bulgarians were

joined by a large group of their Volga brethren under Bilu, Boksu and Hesen. 28 The Bulgarianmigration to the Balkans apparently ended with those Bulgarians who were lead once by Batbayan andwho came to Danubian Bulgaria and Hungary together with the Cumans in several successive waves

from the end of the eleventh to the middle of the thirteenth centuries. 29

The Bulgarians were pushed to Moesia, Thrace and Macedonia by a thirst for land and the fate of the population they met there was the same as that of the native inhabitants of North America at the

time of the European colonization. Both the Slavs and the descendants of the Thracians and Romanswere simply massacred or deported to the lands to the north of the Danube. Asparukh sent at leastseven Slavic tribes to the frontier with the Avars at the southern foothills of the Carpathians. In 760-763some 208.000 Slavs fled from Bulgaria to Byzantium and were allowed to settle in Asia Minor.

According to the Byzantine writer and emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (912-959), therewere two mass migrations of Slavs from the north to the Greek lands, including the Peloponnesus: the

first one took place at the end of the seventh century, while the second one happened in the ninthcentury, when the Bulgarians conquered the whole of Thrace and Macedonia. 30

Apparently, the same event drove other Slavs northeast, to the Middle Dnieper area, thememories of the Kyiv Slavs' residing in the Danube area were recorded in the oldest Rusannals. A century before that, at around 678, Asparukh drove his Slav subjects from theDnieper area to the Dobrija.

Each ethnicity changes in the course of the centuries, but everything seems to indicate that thedifference between the Bulgars and the present-day Bulgarians is considerably less significant than the

difference between the Hellenes of Aristotle's times and the Greeks of today. There is no need,therefore, to make a distinction between the ”Bulgars” and ”Bulgarians”.

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04/04/2010

”эЭ

Bronze place wich fantastic animal figures. Early Bulgar periodTi;r«ir.h Bulgar cii>\ in Die Caucasus

Name list of U>c Bulgar Kagans (S-8”'ccmurics)Architectural embossment with animal figure. Proto BolgarsAgoMen pbie with BuigarBurkhan or Jain sculpture. Proto-Bulgar

Kemala-Razgrad (6-8th centuries)

bulgars and bulgarians prof. dr. plamen s. tzvetkov, new. bulgarian university

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