Celebrated Travels and Travellers, Part 3.: The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth CenturyVerne, Jules
History
Celebrated Travels and Travellers, Part 3.: The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century
Verne, Jules
Discoveries in geography; Explorers; Voyages and travels
After this account of his journey, from which we might multiply
extracts, Klaproth sums up all the information he has collected on the
tribes of the Caucasus, dwelling specially on the marked resemblances
which exist between the different Georgian dialects and those of the
Finns and Lapps. This was a new and useful suggestion.
Speaking of the Lesghians, who occupy the eastern Caucasus, known as
Daghestan, or Lezghistan, Klaproth says their name is a misnomer, just
as Scythian or Tartar was used to indicate the natives of Northern
Asia; adding, that they do not form one nation, as is proved by the
number of dialects in use, which, however, would seem to have been
derived from a common source, though time has greatly modified them.
This is a contradiction in terms, implying either that the Lesghians,
speaking one language, form one nation, or that forming one nation the
Lesghians speak various dialects derived from the same source.
According to Klaproth, Lesghian words have a considerable affinity with
the other languages of the Caucasus, and with those of Western Asia,
especially the dialects of the Samoyedes and Siberian Finns.
West and north-west of the Lesghians dwell the Metzdjeghis, or
Tchetchentses, who are probably the most ancient inhabitants of the
Caucasus. This is not, however, the opinion of Pallas, who looks upon
them as a separate tribe of the Alain family. The Tchetchentse language
greatly resembles the Samoyede and other Siberian dialects, as well as
those of the Slavs.
The Tcherkesses, or Circassians, are the Sykhes of the Greeks. They
formerly inhabited the eastern Caucasus and the Crimea. Their language
differs much from other Caucasian idioms, although the Tcherkesses
proceed, with the Wogouls and the Ostiakes--we have just seen that the
Lesghian and Tchetchentse dialects resemble the Siberian--from one
common stock, which at some remote date separated into several
branches, of which the Huns probably formed one. The Tcherkesse dialect
is one of the most difficult to pronounce, some of the consonants being
produced in a manner so loud and guttural that no European has yet been
able to acquire it.
In the Caucasus also dwell the Abazes--who have never left the shores
of the Black Sea, where they have been settled from time
immemorial--and the Ossetes, or As, who belong to the Indo-Germanic
stock. They call their country Ironistan, and themselves the Irons.
Klaproth takes them to be Sarmatic Medes, not only on account of their
name, which resembles Iran, but because of the structure of their
language, which proves more satisfactorily than historical documents,
and in a most conclusive manner, that they spring from the same stock
as the Medes and Persians. This opinion, however, appears to us mere
conjecture, as in the time of Klaproth the interpretation of cuneiform
inscriptions had not been accomplished, and too little was known of the
language of the Medes for any one to judge of its resemblance to the
Ossete idiom.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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