2021. április 10., szombat

The origins of Hunnish Runic Writing (21) Hungarian vocabulary connected to writing

 

Hungarian vocabulary connected to writing

 

The Hungarian language bears uncontrovertible evidence for millennia-long knowledge  and use of various - but usually scored or engraved - writing systems that also had a religious-philosophical significance as well. That implies that the Hungarian script is not an invention of scientists, but the result of natural development. It is the creation of the Hungarian people, who came into contact with other writing systems throughout their long history. With the analysis of Hungarian words we can prove that the Hungarian writing system does not fit the pigeonhole into which academic “science” tries to force it. It is not an isolated phenomenon, but an organic part of, and important participant in, the development of writing.

The Hungarian word könyv (book) is one of the most important words in the history of writing; a tool and a witness of the development of writing in the course of millennia.  It originated in the language of “prehistoric” states that pioneered the use of writing. Its relatives are the Korean word kwen (book), the Chinese küen and Uigur küin (scroll), Armenian knik (tablet), Sumerian kunukku (seal), and Assyrian kuniku (tablet, certificate).

 According to Du Yaxiong, the Chinese word kuin means “to roll up; a scroll; a book.” This sign was read as kiuan before the Han dynasty (221 BC-220 AD), which was changed to kui between 220 and 589. In the first Chinese dictionary (around 100) it meant “to bend the knee” and represented a sitting figure. From this Professor Du concludes, that the word is of Chinese origin. Before the invention of paper, the Chinese wrote on strips of bamboo or wood (djien) or on silk (chien).  Paper with writing on it and rolled up is called djuen, which has changed to mean the noun “scroll.” The present pronunciation of the Uigur word is kon and means “tanned hide” (Du/1997).

The Czuczor-Fogarasi Dictionary already relates the Hungarian word “könyv” to the verbs köngyöl, göngyöl (to roll up). The Hungarian words göngyöl (to roll up), kunkori (curly, curvy), kampó (hook) and their widely distributed derivatives in other languages, as well as Professor Du's data warn us, that the stem must be of great age, and its origins cannot be discovered without wide-ranging comparative analysis.

The Latin word cuneus (wedge) refers to the essence of Sumerian and Assyrian words, the cuneiform script. Therefore the Chinese küen is in all probability the adoption of a steppe (Haral, Andronovo, Hunnish?) word meaning “book,” since cuneiform script was not used in China (but a script with a method of scoring or engraving was used, and the word’s earlier form may refer to that). As the stems kan, kány (cf. cickány = shrew, patkány = rat, párkány = edge, sill, sárkány = dragon) originally meaning “wedge, protrusion” belong to the word-family of the Hungarian word könyv (könyû, könyõ in old times), könyv seems to reveal a connection between our ancestors and cuneiform script. We may assume the use or knowledge of cuneiform technology, but a linguistic relation is also possible. The Mesopotamian word for cuneiform clay tablet was used in other languages, and was preserved in Hungarian as well.

A relative of the Hungarian word betû is bitig (writing) of the Uigur Turks (descendants of Huns). From a similar stem has developed the Turkish bic (cut) and bicaq (knife), and the Hungarian bicsak and bicska (pocket-knife). In Old-Osmanic biti, bitig (letter, written text) have cultic meaning (what is written, God's will etc.). Petü, the current Chuvash word for amulet, suggests that they borrowed this word from Hungarian when a small group of Hungarians was assimilated. The French-Portuguese fétis “fetish, blindly respected object or person” also refers to the age when letters represent gods. These words illustrate the general principle of b-p-f sound mutation, by which the Hungarian words fiú (son) and fej (head) developed from the name of the god Bél. Aczél (1926/49) compares it with the Greek tüpos “engraved image, stamp.” It is a compound word similar to the Chuvash petü, but in a reverse sequence of components. According to Du Yaxiong “writing, text” means pytic in Uigur, which developed from the Chinese bit (writing, document) through the Turkish bitig.

The Hungarian word betû is a compound for “Bél atya” (father Bél, the son-god in the divine triad, the progenitor of Hungarians) and is genetically connected to the Greek béta and the Semitic béth. The interpretation of the Semitic béth as “house” seems to be a subsequent etymological explanation.

According to Kézai's chronicle, the Hungarian word ispán (steward) meant “captain” in Hunnish, i.e. a leader whose daily routines could have involved reading and writing. This word still exists in Chinese in the form of tsuispaan meaning “publisher” (Szõcs/1997/12).

Among the relatives of the Hungarian word ír (write) there is the Ostiak ierita “to draw a line, to write,” the Vogul ter “medicine,” the Chuvash-Turk sjyr “to write” Siberian-Turkish ir “to carve, engrave into wood,” irk “prediction,” irük “gap, crack,” the Manchurian niru, the Mongolian jiru “draw or paint a line,” etc. Szabédi László compares it to the Latin word iuro “take an oath” and argues that “writing was originally a sacral activity, the most efficient form of an oath” (Szabédi/1974/329).The Latin equivalent of the Hungarian word írás is iuris “law” referring to the earliest laws of divine origin.

The Hungarian word írdal means “to make surface cuts in meat,” irdatlan means “awfully big.” Megírás (writing) of a wooden object means decorating it with delicate engraving. The nagyírásos (“big writing”) embroidery of Kalotaszeg represents symbols that can be related to runes (Fig. 10). The words képíró “painter of peasant furniture,” tojásírás “egg-painting” and íróka “potter's drawing tool” have a bearing on depicting world models by means of the prototypes of runes (Figs. 8, 14, 15), while (gyógy)ír “balm” is connected to the magic symbols drawn by medicine-men.

The word-family of ír (write) is fairly ancient containing írt (to eradicate), arat (to harvest), írtás (clearing), árok (ditch), ér (vein) erezet (network of veins) among others. Kenyér írje is “a doughy, unraised layer in bread”; iralo means “medicine man.” Etymologically ír is connected to the Hungarian úr (uru)[1] attribute of God and the stem of Hermes’s name who is said to have invented writing.

The Finnish word jalki “trace,” the Lapp jalo “light sign in the sky,” the Latin ales “prediction sign” are all related to the Hungarian word jel “sign,” just like the Hungarian él “edge,” éles “sharp” (referring to the connection between edge and the mark it can cause), the Hungarian élõ attribute of God (jel “sign” = jó él “good edge”), and Helios's name. The word structure jeles nap “marked day, feast, holiday” seems to refer to the connection between signs and feasts, the symbols used in rituals. It can be connected to the Hungarian word jegy “feature” originally meaning jó ég “good sky,” bélyeg, bilog “stamp, mark, brand,” Bél ég and the Greek phileg, pleg “burn, scorch, roast” (perhaps a reference to bilog, the brand burned into the hide of animals?).

The Hungarian word levél can mean “letter, leaf, page, written document, newspaper, paste rolled out thin.” It originates in times when messages were written on leaves. Words referring to the usual movement of leaves belong to the same word family with lebeg (drift), levegõ (air), lobog (flame), lobban (flare). Its relatives are the Finnish leve “small leaf, small card,” Vogul lapta “page, leaf.” According to TESz the basic ancient word originates in Ugrian or Finno-Ugrian times. The word meaning plant leaf was first used as a sign of “page, written letter” in Old-Greek and Latin. These two languages provided a pattern for other European languages to use the word originally meaning leaf as a polysemic expression.

The fact that ancient Latin was influenced by Hungarian in “the Ugrian, or perhaps Finno-Ugrian” period is proved by the Latin words liber “book” and folium “leaf, page,” which are similar to the Hungarian words libeg (drift) and falevél (leaf) (the first syllable of folium could be equivalent with the Hungarian word fa “tree” on the basis of fascis “bundle of sticks, fasces”).

Szabédi László assumes that the Old-Latin-Finno-Ugrian unity broke up in the 18th century BC somewhere between the Alps and the Northern coast of the Black Sea (Szabédi/1974/72).That was an era of transition, when the first waves of Hungarians have already reached the steppe, and the latest time when the Hungarian words of Székely script were adopted by the neighboring countries.

The Hungarian word rajz (drawing) is related to the Greek graphó and the Latin graphis. The first originally meant “score, scratch, bruise, engrave,” but later its meaning changed to “draw, paint, write.” It is related to the English word carve and to the German word reissen “prune, cut, score, scratch.” This latter is phonetically the closest to the Hungarian word and has so little in common with the above Indo-European forms that it is likely to be of Hunnish origin.

The Hungarian word rovás belongs to the same word family with (cut, incise), ródal (chop, hack with an axe), rév (ferry crossing across a river - i.e. across a cut), révül (connected to dipping in the river), rovatal (a structure built - összerótt - of wood, a  catafalque), and rovátka (score-mark, small cut). Rovás can mean runic numbers, runic script, and for example in the Székelys’ usage it even means “marking sheep-ear with a cut.” Three different meanings are given by the Czuczor-Fogarasi dictionary: carving words or numbers into wood; chopping wood (in the Székelys’ usage); taking account of, imposing, paying off, working off taxes, debt, or a serf’s labor-obligation.

Therefore rovás, ravás can mean either a tally-stick or tax; rovó, ravó, or rolló means a person writing runic script, or may also mean a tax-collector.

Rovás has become an international term. The Croatians, Slovaks, Slovenes and Vends use the same form. It is called rovas in Old-Check, rabus in Bulgarian, ravas in Russian, rebus, ravas in Vlach, rábisch, rábusch, rasch in Southern German, and the German runa may come from this word as well. In Modern Greek its equivalent is ravas, meaning “character.” Finnish rako “split, gap, slot,” Estonian ragu and Cheremis ru- “cut down” leave no doubt that rovás (runic numbers or characters), are original, unaffected products of Hungarian culture, brought from the east to a new homeland, where it had not been known before.

The Hungarian word szám “number” is connected to the stem of the following words: száz (hundred), szõke (blond), szent (saint), Solt, szultán (sultan) (cf. Obi-Ugrian sanki “great god”).[2] The Sumerian words sid “number, sum” and sad, sat “totality” are also related.

Hungarian linguists consider szám as a word of Chuvash origin on the basis of Chuvash sum, Turkish san and Uigur san meaning “number” (TESz/3/667). On the other hand, they make no mention  of words like the Latin summa “principal place, priority, sum, totality” and sum “is, exists, lives,” Summanus “the god of night,” which all support the above mythological connections of the word szám and the role of the Hungarian language as a medium of transmission. The Greek word thameyos “numerous” is another piece of evidence (Aczél/1996/36). Its stem can be identified as the Hattic god Taru, Saru (Lord Ta, Sa).

It is not obligatory any more to derive Hungarian terminology for writing from Turkish, and not only because the latest researches seem to agree, that our runic script is not of Turkish origin. Indo-European, Ural-Altay and Chinese parallels lead to the conclusion, that these languages borrowed a great part of their terminology of writing from the ancestor of the Hungarian language, at the time when the signs still possessed magic, sacral properties, and were engraved in wood. It is more than a mere supposition, as it is supported by two existing relics: the sign montages meaning “Usten” and “Jima,” which are also illustrate the more important migrations and the distribution of writing.

 

Fig. 30 Parallels of the Énlaka ligature “egy Isten” (only God)

(Hittite rock drawing; rock drawing from ancient Khwarism; Hunnish strap-end; Mongolian rock drawing; a part of the Nagyszentmiklós treasure; the representation of Saint Stephen on the Coronation Robe; general layout of pictures on the Coronation Robe; Énlaka ligature)



[1] Urhida was first mentioned as Hurhida.

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