NOMADS OF EURASIA
Vladimir N. Basilov, ed.
Seattle: University of Washington Press: 1989
208 pp., $39.95
"When a Scythian kills his first man, he drinks his blood;
of all those he kills in battle he carries the heads to the
king. When he has brought in a head, he takes a share of
whatever loot they have obtains, but without bringing a
head he has none.
--Herodotus (fifth century, B.C.)
It is their [the Huns'] custom to herd their flocks in
times of peace and make their living by hunting, but in
periods of crisis they take up arms and go off on
plundering and marauding expeditions. This seems to be
their inborn nature… Their only concern is self-advantage,
and they know nothing of propriety or righteousness.
--Ssu-ma Ch'ien (mid-second to early first century B.C)
The Huns "all have compact, strong limbs and thick necks
and are so monstrously ugly and misshapen, that one might
take them for two-legged beasts…But, although they have
the form of men, however ugly, they are so hardy in their
mode of life that they have no need of fire nor of savory
food, but eat the roots of wild plants and the half-raw
flesh of any kind of animal."
Ammianus Marcellinus (fourth century A.D.)
"The Ghuz have arrogant faces and are quarrelsome,
malicious, and malevolent. Both in summer and winter they
wander along the pasture-lands and grazing-grounds. Their
wealth is in horses, cows, sheep, arms and game in small
qualities. Among them merchants are very numerous".
Hudud al-'Alam (Tenth century A.D.)
Our first and often most abiding impressions of the nomads of Eurasia have been based, quite naturally, on the descriptions of their activities by representatives of the literate, sedentary societies at the southern periphery of the steppe. These societies, with a few notable exceptions, provide the only literary evidence available to us. Moreover, although distant in time and place, these observers were not unlike us, people of sedentary, largely urban and lettered cultures. In this world of the sown
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