- Újfent a székelyderzsi rovásírásos tégláról -
Antal Csaba wrote an article for academia.edu titled A székelyderzsi tégla rovásfeliratának új szempontok alapján kidolgozott olvasata (The Reading of the Rovas Inscription on the Brick of Székelyderzs Developed Based on New Perspectives). In this, he hands out a few labels, obviously reacting to my article titled A székelyderzsi Dana ten mondatjel és társai (The Dana ten Sentence-Sign of Székelyderzs and its Counterparts). To clarify the picture, I must respond to his suggestions.
For what he wrote about my reading of the Székelyderzs runic inscription—as we shall see—the exact opposite is true. He writes: "According to Varga Géza, the following text can be read on the brick: 'Miklós, Dana ten papp(j)a.' [Nicholas, the priest of Dana ten.] This reading, however, bleeds from multiple wounds. Built on an interpretation lacking source research, purely based on a response given to a question he posed during one of Varga's lectures (1), the blurring together of two names with similar phonetic forms but different etymologies (2), and not least the erroneous decomposition of the elements of the fifth runic character (ligature) from the right, this interpretation is entirely unserious. The fifth runic character from the right certainly does not consist of the word-signs 'dana' and 'ten', and the derivation of the Székely script's runic character with the phonetic value 'd' from a word-sign having a 'dana' meaning does not hold its ground either (3). Varga's interpretation of a 'May Dana strike you!' saying and the determination of the characteristics of the mythological being mentioned in it are erroneous. Namely, the Dana mentioned during execrations was not a benevolent god, nor the god of rivers, but a being transformed into a monster, a demon."
I will respond to his objections in more detail in the footnotes. Although Antal Csaba increases the number of erroneous explanations given about the Székelyderzs runic inscription by one, he has not advanced the state of Székely script research by a single step. He expresses an opinion on the runic monument without managing to become acquainted with or understand the uncovered research results (the identification of our Dana and Ten word-signs).
Notes
(1) Regarding my standpoint, he writes that it is "lacking source research". In his footnote 1, he attempts to support this as follows: "During one of his lectures held in Székelyföld, he asked the audience if they knew the saying 'May Dana strike you!' One of his audience members answered the question in the affirmative." Yet, this very example proves that I researched the original source, the folk tradition, utilizing every possible opportunity.
And besides this, I uncovered a whole group of sources (the word- and sentence-signs of the Székely script, including the Dana ten ligature), but for some reason, this seems to have escaped the gaze of my critic.
I am used to similar incomprehension, because we cannot expect much more from a profession that has undergone Finno-Ugric brainwashing. Regarding the 2009 linguistic monument exhibition held in the National Széchényi Library, which was based on a lie, I had to draw the attention of Hungarian academic "science" to the existence of our linguistic monuments written with runic characters. The use of the adjective "lying" can be justified, since for two years I tried to convince the organizers of the exhibition that linguistic monuments written in runic script also belong in the exhibition, but "of course" without any result. Minister István Hiller, under the influence of my articles, then ordered the "profession" to settle the matter. This was followed by the writing of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA) runic corpus published in 2021, and since then, authors of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Eötvös Loránd University, and the Institute for Hungarian Studies have been willing to speak about linguistic monuments written in runic script. This is a great success, because few can say that they managed to talk academic pseudoscience out of one of its obsessions. Csaba Antal, however, seems to know nothing about this source exploration.
It is not clear from his distribution of labels what he considers source research and what he demands of me. If he misses the listing of mentions of the saying in linguistic literature (these are actually not even sources), then he is mistaken. I had previously read about this in a linguistic study, but did not consider it necessary to mention it in my article if it is an already known and published saying. It was precisely this that gave the idea for verification; that is why I inquired about the familiarity of this saying among the Székelys, because I had already read about it. For example, the Pallas Lexicon also mentions it, which hopefully justifies my procedure. I hardly need to prove that such a saying of ours exists.
The Pallas Great Lexicon mentions the expression as an independent linguistic datum. According to its definition, Dana is a word of unknown origin living in a Székely idiom, which presumably denotes some demonic being, harmful power, or a trouble caused by it.
The lexicon, however, is mistaken. For this saying is the exact equivalent, the original form, of the well-known idiom "Isten verjen meg!" (May God strike you!), in which only the name was replaced with an earlier variant of the name. This interchangeability means that God and Dana could be the same mythological figure. Therefore, Csaba Antal's argument that this Dana is "the name of a harmful being of the old Hungarian belief system" is completely misleading. There is nothing from which one could compulsorily conclude only this. For even a generally benevolent god can have bad moments, and besides, misdeeds ought to be punished by every god. This is expressed by the "Isten verjen meg!" variant as well. And if our Isten cannot be degraded into some kind of harmful demon based on the latter, then there is no real reason for the downgrading of Dana either. Consequently, Csaba Antal's argument is weak.
Since academic "science" did not succeed in clarifying the origin of our word Isten "God" (because they wanted to explain it from foreign languages at all costs), it is understandable that they did not arrive at the solution. From the fact that Isten (ős + ten [ancestor + condition/god]) is a compound formed from Hungarian words, the Hatti/Hettite Estan and the Sumerian istin are also compounds formed from Hungarian words. From the adjectival structure, it also follows that the old name of our God was Ten "life, god". And its deep-vowel variant beginning with "d" is the Dana god-name.
In contrast to the lexicon and my critic, Lajos Bodor (Magyar pogány hitregék, Kolozsvár, 1842) was closer to the solution, who tried to relate the word Dana to the Damasek god-name appearing in István Székely's 1559 chronicle. Although the exact identification is unprovable due to lack of data, his insight that Dana is the God of the pagan Hungarians is correct.
As far as source research is concerned, the situation regarding God is quite the opposite. In my article Isten szavunk eredete (The Origin of Our Word Isten), I present the occurrence of our word Isten from the Amur region around 4000 BC. Csaba Antal did not assess the significance of this source research of mine either. Similarly, he does not seem to know about my article written about the Énlaka bilingual inscription either. From these, it is obvious that our word Isten (ős + ten) is a very old compound. Consequently, the god-name without a modifier was Ten. This is strengthened by the name of the Etruszk chief god Tin and the word tien "god, sky" of the Chinese language as well. From which it is obvious that between Etruria and China, it was once fashionable to mention God by the name Tin/Ten/tien. The word tin, by the way, also records the meaning "life" in Sumerian—recently classified among the Uralic languages by Simo Parpola—just like ten in the roots of the Hungarian words teng [to subsist/vegetate] and tenyész [to breed/thrive]. This geographical area is the one in which the history of the Magyars and their kindred peoples took place.
If we look for parallels for the ten suffix, we rightly remember that the first syllable of the Sumerian word dingir "god" is a relative of the name Dana. We can notice this all the more because among the variants of the Sumerian dingir word-sign, there is also a cross-shaped one, which is exactly identical to the "d" (Dana) sign of the Székely script. Further variants of the Sumerian dingir sign, the multi-pointed and the eight-pointed star, also occur in Hungarian folk sign usage. That is, this Hungarian sign usage is very old and is our own creation from pre-Sumerian times. That is, with some reason, we assume that the suffix of our word isten had and has a variant beginning with "d" as well.
The Dana ten sentence-sign is the most important element of the Székelyderzs runic inscription, because understanding it can move the cart of runic research out of the rut. For about 30 years, the best representatives of the "profession"—András Róna-Tas, Elek Benkő, Klára Sándor, and János Ráduly—have held the opinion regarding the origin of the Székely script that "We do not know, we cannot say anything about it due to lack of data." Yet, data does exist, they are just unwilling to deal with it because it would contradict their preconceptions if they acknowledged the existence of our word-signs. For this means that, ultimately, we did not adopt our script from Semitic peoples, but the thing happened the other way around.
Earlier decipherment attempts of the Székelyderzs inscription also bled out on the Dana ten sentence-sign formed from word-signs. Earlier researchers did not agree on this either. Therefore, it is not worth dealing with their erroneous explanations. Nor with what Csaba Antal is treating us to now. This is because they wanted to read a sentence-sign composed of word-signs as consisting of letters representing a single sound, which could not succeed for them.
That is, contrary to Csaba Antal's assertion, I did perform source research, and on a significant new area at that, with which I uncovered the true sources, the variants and parallels of the Dana ten sentence-sign (Figures 2–4). My critic did not address them because he has obviously never dealt with our word- and sentence-signs and does not understand them. It is simpler for him to deny my work and hand out a few labels than to engage in research work carried out over decades.
The anti-Hungarian and anti-scientific brainwashing with a Finno-Ugric foundation tried to drum into the consciousness of the masses that we adopted the Székely script as a ready-made alphabet from Old Turkic, and ultimately from Semitic scripts. Yet, from the pen of Veit Gailel, we even have a source showing that the Székelys also have word- and sentence-signs. While the Aramaic script has only 18 signs, we can have close to a hundred. Moreover, the Old Turkic script mainly has syllabic signs, and those are not in alphabetical order either. And among our signs that differ from the Semitic, there are dozens of signs that are shared with writing systems predating the birth of Semitic scripts, such as Halaf, Tordos-Vincsa, Sumerian, and the Indus Valley systems, but are missing from Semitic scripts. That is, the Székely script is not of Semitic origin, but our own ingenuity. Based on the readability of Stone Age runic monuments, Hungarian hieroglyphic writing has come down to us from the sign-set of the Stone Age ancient religion. The Székely signs have parallels in essentially every script and sign system from the Pyrenees to America because this was the proto-script, which, thanks to the use of signs in the Stone Age ancient religion, spread to all parts of the world.
Figure 2. The Dana ten "Dana god" sentence-sign (on the left edge of the figure) and its parallels (a piece of jewelry looted from the Avars by Charlemagne, with the reading Dana ten országa [The land of Dana ten], as well as a detail of a Budapest Hun piece of jewelry with the reading Dana ős ten magas köve [The high stone of Dana ancient god])
Figure 3. The Dana ten sentence-sign of Vizsoly
Figure 4. The sentence-sign of Somogyvár (after Kálmán Magyar, left) and Magyarszecsőd (after Nándor Fettich, right) Dana ten, out of the latter only a cross is visible today
Yet, Antal Csaba does not seem to want to know about the above when, without reason and going against the facts, he pastes the "lacking source research" label on my forehead. Still, this counts as source research in an interesting area, which resulted in the recognition of a new group of sources.
Antal Csaba might still miss the listing of those incised names in which our "nt/ten" word-sign was applied. Such are Bálint and Antal in the Bologna Runic Calendar. These, however, illustrate only a corrupted, secondary explanation, an adaptation to the newer spelling method, because they use our ten word-sign merely for recording "nt". The original solution applied over millennia, the phonetic form of the ten word-sign, was preserved by the Énlaka bilingual inscription, where in the description of the word Isten, it obviously and unmistakably records our word ten.
(2) In his footnote number two, Csaba Antal also writes that "According to Varga, the Dana name variant mentioned during the execration is a variant of the 'Danu' name of Stone Age origin, meaning 'river' and 'goddess'." Yet, I wrote no such thing. It would have been better if he understood what appears in my articles. It is characteristic of the fact that his assertions cannot be taken seriously that he nowhere mentions the title of my criticized article in his writing, nor does he quote my assertions accurately. He merely blames me for something that, to my recollection, I have never written down. The Dana god-name has a dual "life, god" meaning, similar to the Ten god-name, which is its variant beginning with "d".
It is certain, of course, that the Dana god-name has a great many variants, relatives, and descendants, and these may include the Danu god-name mentioned by him. And this can be linked etymologically to the meaning "river". Behind the connection between the name and the meaning stand the following linguistic and mythological facts:
The name Danu is generally derived from the hypothesized Proto-Indo-European root *dānu, the original meaning of which is "river", "stream", "flowing water", or "liquid". According to conjectures based on Iranian languages, in the ancient Scythian language, the word danu specifically meant "river". The Scythians, of course, did not speak an Indo-European language, as some assume, but Hungarian, which we can surmise from the name of the sun god Oitoszür "Idő úr" [Sire of Time] as well. The explanation for the Indo-European meaning variant of the Danu god-name is that God was also identified with the Milky Way (the world tree, heavenly river, and the world pillar called high stone). When the listed peoples adopted their concept of god from us, the modifier "river" occasionally stuck with them as a meaning.
God had several modifiers; for example, one appears in the compound Jóisten [Good God], in which jó was once of "river" meaning. This, however, does not mean that Dana or Ten would have been of "river" meaning at any time in Hungarian.
From this ancient Ten/Dana root, originally meaning "life, god", they derive the present names of numerous large European rivers, which may have been named by the Celtic and Scythian peoples living in the area. Such are the Duna (Danube, in Latin Danuvius), the Don, the Dnieper, and the Dniester. According to Herodotus' description, in the pantheon of the Scythian peoples, a divine character was attributed to water and rivers, and they revered rivers as deities. That is, the root of the river names is not of "river", but of "life, god" meaning. The matchability of the Dana god-name and the listed river names attributed to the Scythians provides an opportunity for identifying one of the words of the Hungarian-speaking Scythians purloined by linguists. Why on earth must the name of the Duna and its counterparts be explained from Iranian languages when it can be done from Hungarian as well?
Do I need to recall the scene of the land-taking playing out on the banks of the Duna? When Árpád filled his drinking horn to the brim with Duna water and when he raised it, all the Hungarians present shouted as one: Isten, Isten, Isten! [God, God, God!] What was this, if not the recognition of the identity of the name Duna and the god-name Dana, the river with the god?
Csaba Antal allegedly found an example in one of my articles—which he did not even name—for "the blurring together of two names with similar phonetic forms but different etymologies". He might have thought of the words Dana and Danu, and the river names above. He is obviously mistaken, because no blurring took place. There is no need for such a thing either; only the correlations between them must be uncovered and understood. A serious standpoint cannot be built anyway on the etymologies cited by him, which often express political preconceptions, because their roots do not reach down to the Stone Age. Meanwhile, our hieroglyphic texts are present on the runic monuments of recent millennia. Csaba Antal, however, did not grant these his attention, nor can he speak to them, although they give a host of examples of the application of the Dana and Ten hieroglyphs.
(3) Antal Csaba also writes that "the interpretation built on the erroneous decomposition of the elements of the fifth runic character (ligature) from the right is entirely unserious. The fifth runic character from the right certainly does not consist of the 'dana' and 'ten' word-signs, and the derivation of the Székely script's runic character with the phonetic value 'd' from a word-sign having a 'dana' meaning does not hold its ground either". Here he brings up no professional arguments, although that is what would be needed.
He cannot question the existence of the Dana god-name, and if it exists, why on earth could it not have its own sign? If Ahuramazda had a separate sign in Old Persian cuneiform writing, we could have had similar signs as well. As I published in the volume Magyar hieroglif írás (Hungarian Hieroglyphic Writing) issued in 2017, we did have such word-signs tied to the ancient religion. In the 90s, we performed the reconstruction of acrophony in the case of the Székely script signs. It turned out that almost all of our signs originate from the sign-set of the Stone Age ancient religion; therefore, our signs, almost without exception, record the technical vocabulary of the ancient religion. And the word Dana fits into this scope.
And he is free to accept the existence of our Ten word-sign based on the Énlaka bilingual inscription.
The intelligent human being is capable of recognizing the regular correlations existing among the things of the world.
Literature
Antal Csaba (2026): A székelyderzsi tégla rovásfeliratának új szempontok alapján kidolgozott olvasata, A Reading of the Brick Runic Inscription from Székelyderzs, Developed Based on New Perspectives (academia.edu)
Varga Géza (2017): Magyar hieroglif írás, Hungarian hieroglyphic script, Írástörténeti Kutatóintézet, Budapest
Varga Géza (2018): Az énlakai Egy Isten mondatjel, The "One God" Inscription from Énlaka
Varga Géza (2018): Isten szavunk eredete, The origin of our word Isten "God"
Varga Géza (2019): "Isten" szavunk eredete a magyar hieroglifák alapján, The origin of the word Isten "God" based on Hungarian hieroglyphs
Varga Géza (2019): A székelyderzsi Dana ten mondatjel és társai, Dana Ten’s sentence mark and Its Companions in Székelyderzs
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