The origins of Hunnish Runic Writing (15) The academic historical-geographical preconception

 

The academic historical-geographical preconception

 

The very existence of Hungarian runic script casts doubt on the widely accepted theory of the northern homeland, and the controversies about its origin emphasize this doubt. One of these contradictions is that despite the “victory” of the theory of Ugrian origin in the war between Ugrian and Turkish linguists in the last century, academic research insists on Turkish origin, because Székely runic script could not have developed in the taiga, where there was no literacy at all.

According to the most widespread view, the need for literacy appears as a state is founded, and the Hungarians also started using writing when the Hungarian State was founded. That is one of the reasons why runic characters could not have been developed in the Northern Obi-Ugrian areas, where natural-economic conditions to this day do not make it possible to organize an independent state.

As linguistic-based theories set narrow limits in space and time to ancient Hungarian history and statehood (and to this day the consideration of similarities beyond those limits is labeled as unscientific), “scientists” were restricted to choose from the scripts that were used within these limits. (It was Kornél Bakay who called attention to these irrational prohibitions, 1997/41). That was how Turkish scripts became highlighted and until recently Szekely runes had to be derived from Turkish scripts, in accordance with academic preconceptions. Turkish scripts, however, did not meet these high expectations (pp 11-15), since Székely script cannot be derived from them.

Similar writing technology, the small number of similarities in character shape and the undoubted linguistic, historical and cultural connections seemed to support this theory of origin, but only if great differences between Székely and Turkish, and Székely' similarities to other scripts were swept under the carpet.

Academic research chose Turkish-Glagolitic origin because it seemed to be in accordance with the preconceptions about primitive Hungarians who became organized under Turkish influence and were further civilized by Slavic influence. These false preconceptions always served to support the claims to cultural superiority by the various occupiers of Hungary.

But when  the Székely runes were supposedly adopted (in the centuries before the conquest of the Carpathian basin by the Hungarians), there was not much to be learned from the Turks, who had an equestrian culture, and a military democracy of tribal confederations, similar to those of the Hungarians.

Hungarians could remain independent in the sea of alien equestrian peoples only thanks to a cultural aptitude equal to theirs, and a long-term ability to form a state. The Hungarians did not became Turkish (either in language or writing) despite the fact that for three millennia they lived together with Turks in the steppe, where cultural assimilation was encouraged but where the special  economic conditions also preserved traditions.[1]

The case of Slavic village communities was different. Their subsistence agriculture implied a much lower economic and intellectual standard than the animal husbandry of the Hungarians. In the division of labor that developed, equestrian nomads preferred to leave the less productive agriculture to Slavs. They may have adopted some Slavic words referring to agriculture, but not Slavic script as such  a thing had not existed before the first Slavic states appeared.

The conception that Hungarians borrowed one part of their alphabet from Turks around 750, the other part from “a Slavic missionary monk” around 890 is nonsense, because our predecessors could not wait for centuries to put writing into use. Designing missing character shapes is not so difficult a task as to require waiting for a monk. Today any schoolchild can create a useful alphabet in half an hour if he needs one for his secret correspondence, because he already knows a pattern of writing.

The key to creating a new script is therefore the existence of a pattern. (This idea helps solve the origin of character systems related to Székely script.) If you are familiar with the general idea of writing, you can create a seemingly new writing system based on similar ideas but its own character forms. That is how character systems and scripts started to multiply in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages. When looking for the origins of Székely script, we should concentrate on the parallels of the writing system. At the same time, however, we should give up the vain hope of finding the transitory scripts. We are not likely to find more than a series of similar characters sets and theoretically close writing systems.

 

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[1] Steppe conditions mainly facilitated husbandry of large-bodied animals and - as a result of mobility conferred by the horse and the camel - long-distance trade (cf. Silk Road).

Contents

Preface to the English edition	7.
Preface	9.
History of the scientific views on the origins of Székely runic script	10.
Principles of deriving the origins of Székely script	26.
The development of writing	28.
The shapes of runes and the objects they represent	29.
The mythology, names, and sound values of runes	32.
Rituals and runic script	35.
Types and number of characters	37.
Order of characters	39.
Direction of reading and characters	48.
Syllabic signs	52.
The regular use of syllable and vowel signs	55.
The birth of letter scripts	58.
Comparing of writing systems	61.
The academic historical-geographical preconception	68.
The Turkish connection	70.
What the historical sources say	71.
Székely script of the Huns	73.
The age of the development of Székely character forms	79.
The age of unification of Székely character sets	82.
Hungarian vocabulary connected to writing	87.
Ligatures that survived millennia	92.
Migrations of peoples	97.
Summary	101.
Bibliography	109.

Varga Géza

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