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Dsakhchin (West-Mongolian) folksongs with Buddhist content

Author(s): Ágnes Birtalan / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2008

The Hungarian — Mongolian Joint Expedition aiming to investigate the languages and folk culture of West-and North-Mongolian ethnic groups started its research in 1991. Taking part in the activity of the expedition I had the opportunity to observe the renewed activity of the monks’ communities that became possible due to the political changes in 1990. In this article I will present a few folksongs with Buddhist content recorded from old Dsakhchin monks. This noteworthy new source material substantially contributes to the study of the Buddhist culture among the Mongols. A short description of genre analysis will be attached to each song.

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Mythologie und Religiöse Einflüsse in den Mongolischen und Tibetischen Geser-Epos-Versionen

Author(s): Katalin Uray-Kőhalmi / Language(s): German Issue: 4/2008

Im Rahmen einer größeren Arbeit soll der kulturelle Hintergrund von tibetischen und mongolischen Geser-Versionen einer vergleichenden Analyse unterworfen werden. Die ins Auge gefassten Versionen sind die von R. A. Stein (1956) publizierte „Lamaistische oder gLing-Version“, die von M. Hermanns (1965), herausgegebene „Amdo-Version“, eine der ladakischen Versionen von S. Herrmann (1991), die von I. J. Schmidt ins deutsche übersetzte mongolische Druckversion von 1716 samt seinen Ergänzungen (Schmidt 1936; Heissig 1983), dann die ostburjätische Version von M. N. Hangalov (1969) und die westburjätische von M. Imegenov (1995). In allen Versionen bildet der innerasiatische Seelenglaube die Grundlage, die aber in der Mythologie recht große Unterschiede zulässt. Von den großen Religionen ist der Buddhismus — in verschiedenem Maße — am stärksten vertreten, aber auch andere Ideologien haben ihre Spuren hinterlassen.

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Abode of the soul of humans, animals and objects in Mongolian folk belief

Author(s): Alice Sárközi / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2008

The soul of man resides in different parts of the body on each day of the month. The concerned body part should be handled with care, as if it is hurt, it causes extreme harm. The yurt, just like animals, also has a soul. The paper presents five small hand-books — from the collection of the Oriental Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, from the St. Petersburg Oriental Collection of the Russian Academy and from private possession — indicating the abode of the soul in humans, the yurt and animals.

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La Lumiere et les Tenebres dans L’œuvre d’Ibn al-Muqaffa (Mort vers 757 apres J.-C.)

Author(s): ISTVÁN T. KRISTÓ-NAGY / Language(s): French Issue: 3/2008

This article is the first of a series, and the precursor of a monograph on Ibn al-Muqaffa c ’s work. I give here a short description of the period of his times, those times of ferment in which Arabo-Islamic civilisation was first formed, and then continue with a more detailed analysis of what is probably the most controversial work attributed to him. I set out to prove that this “Manichean Apology” — which is in fact a “Rationalist Critique of Islam” — is very probably authentic, and gives an insight into the ontological foundations of Ibn al-Muqaffa c ’s ethical and political system. The article concludes with a summary of his philosophy as it can be reconstructed from his works.

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Yakut names for animals in Pallas’s Zoographia

Author(s): László Károly / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2008

In the investigation of the prehistory of the Yakut language only few and not very reliable sources are at our disposal. Although these sources are very important, some are not available for the researchers, or not prepared to meet modern linguistic/philological requirements. The main aim of this paper is to present the Yakut material of Zoographia Rosso-Asiatica , a famous work of P. S. Pallas published in 1811, for further research. In addition, etymological notes and remarks on the naming conventions of Yakuts are also included. In the appendix all the Yakut materials of the Zoographia , 135 different items altogether, are presented in a systematic way, with the comparison of data from the corresponding works of D. G. Messerschmidt and J. G. Gmelin.

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Die Buddhistischen Sogdischen Texte in der Berliner Turfansammlung und die Herkunft des Buddhistischen Sogdischen Wortes für Bodhisattva

Author(s): Yutaka Yoshida / Language(s): German Issue: 3/2008

In the present article some unpublished Buddhist Sogdian texts belonging to the German Turfan collection are studied. Apart from a small fragment from the Sogdian version of the Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā-mahā-prajñāpāramitā-sūtra , I selected those texts which belong to categories unknown or not well represented among the Buddhist Sogdian texts published so far. Thus, specimens of the vinaya literature, Zen Buddhism and apocryphal texts are cited. One group of fragments contains Tocharian loanwords and is likely to have been translated from Tocharian, while another group is unique in that it is provided with a colophon in the Uighur language. Finally, various forms denoting “bodhisattva” are collected and in light of their distribution and number of occurrences among the texts I challenge the generally accepted view that they came into Sogdian via Parthian, and that the Uighur form bodisavt had its origin in Sogdian.

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Abschied vom Alttürkischen Witwenkleid

Author(s): Peter Zieme / Language(s): German Issue: 3/2008

This article discusses the mysterious Old Turkic word tulton in the Manichaean story of a drunken man who had sexual intercourse in a tomb with the dead corpse of a woman. This hapax was interpreted as a compound of tul “widow” and ton “dress”. The new interpretation of another Manichaean text in which the same word appears clearly shows that the word in question has to be read tultun or toltun with the meaning “grove”.

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The Tatar ruling houses in Russian genealogical sources

Author(s): István Vásáry / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2008

The “Genealogy of the Tatar Sovereigns” ( Rodoslovnaia tatarskikh tsarei ) preserved in various (official and private) genealogical books of the 16th–17th centuries is a unique and precious monument of both Tatar and Russian history. This text owes its existence to the lively interest of the Russian state in the inner relations of the declining Tatar states towards the middle of the 16th century. Its genesis cannot be disconnected from the Russian conquests of Kazan and Astrakhan. The bulk of the genealogies was compiled in the 1550s and based on Tatar sources. A critical analysis of these genealogies, comparing every piece of data with other contemporary (Russian and Oriental) sources, is a task yet to be accomplished, but the significance of these texts is beyond doubt. What I tried to do in this paper was to emphasise and analyse a few noteworthy aspects of this group of monuments.

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Farewell to Árpád Berta (1951–2008)

Author(s): András Róna-Tas / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2008

We bid farewell to Árpád Berta, a man of scholarship, a person of international reputation, a teacher and a friend. A marvellous career has ended prematurely. Árpád began his studies at the University of Szeged in German and Slavic studies. His original plan was to become a Slavist. In 1974, when he learnt about the new program of Altaic comparative linguistics, he began to attend my lectures. In 1975 he passed the state exams for German and Russian teachers and taught in the Gábor Bethlen Secondary Grammar School at Hódmezővásárhely, his native city. At the same time he continued his studies at the Department of Altaic Studies. In 1978 he became a student at the University of Kazan, where he widened his knowledge of the Kazan Tatar language. In 1979 he got his second MA in Altaic studies.

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Professor Gyula Káldy-Nagy

Author(s): Géza Dávid / Language(s): English Issue: 1-2/2008

Gyula Káldy-Nagy was born at Nagydém, a village in Veszprém County, Hungary on July 14, 1927. He finished a prominent secondary school in Sopron, a significant town in Western Hungary. After two years at the Faculty of Law, Péter Pázmány University in Budapest, he started Turkology at the Faculty of Arts of the same university renamed after Loránd Eötvös in 1950. His masters were Professors Gyula Németh and Lajos Fekete, both excelling in their own fields: Németh in Turkology with its linguistic-philological aspects and Fekete in Ottoman-Turkish palaeography and the history of the Ottoman Empire. This latter field attracted Káldy-Nagy’s attention so much that he dedicated his whole life to the investigation of the past of this world empire, and within this mainly the Ottoman rule in Hungary.

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Bibliography of professor Gyula Káldy-Nagy

Author(s): Nándor Erik Kovács / Language(s): English Issue: 1-2/2008

Bibliography of professor Gyula Káldy-Nagy

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The image of the Ottomans in Hungarian historiography

Author(s): Gábor Ágoston / Language(s): English Issue: 1-2/2008

This short essay overviews the changing image of the Ottomans in Hungarian historiography from the late 19th century to the 1990s. It maintains that whereas the Ottoman Empire had received a generally negative treatment from the nationalist historiographies of the empire’s successor states in the Balkans and the Middle East, Hungarian historiography has been more divided and has offered a more diverse view with regard to the country’s Ottoman centuries. As in the case of the biased treatment of the new nation-states of the Balkans and the Middle East, the more balanced Hungarian attitude has its political and cultural-historiographical background, which is briefly addressed in the paper.

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A small region in Transdanubia under Ottoman rule: Bonyhád and its surroundings in the 16th century

Author(s): Géza Dávid / Language(s): English Issue: 1-2/2008

The Ottomans occupied Bonyhád and its surroundings probably during the imperial campaign of 1543. The first survey of the region was made in 1546, followed by three additional ones during the 16th century (1552, 1570 and 1579). The territory under investigation first belonged to the sancak of Mohács, later to that of Pécs. Nearly all studied settlements could be found in all four defters . Thus some 20 places were categorised according to various criteria. It turned out that as far as population, the amount of taxes paid and wine-production are concerned, the market town ( oppidum ) Nádasd was the most significant. Though only a village at the time, Bonyhád also ranked among the first in several respects. The examination of settlements with mills, fairs and markets and of the number of priests yielded new results, modifying in part our knowledge of the Middle Ages.

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The Ottoman empire, Byzantium and Western Christianity the implications of the siege of Belgrade, 1456

Author(s): Pál Fodor / Language(s): English Issue: 1-2/2008

The siege of Nándorfehérvár/Belgrade, the key stronghold of the southern defence system of mediaeval Hungary, was not an “ordinary” battle between the Ottomans and Hungarians; rather, it was a decisive clash which essentially influenced the subsequent history of Europe and Islam. As such, it can be seen as a symbolic point of contact and impact of three “civilisations”: the Ottoman/Islamic, the Byzantine (which by then had been largely incorporated into the former) and the Latin common-wealths. The importance of the Ottoman threat notwithstanding, only the remains of the Latin respublica christiana attempted to halt the conquerors’ intent of devouring the entire respublica . By their victory, the defenders rendered enormous service to the entire Latin world by allowing it to pursue its history by its own inner logic rather than by the logic of compulsions and threats such as those that governed Hungary.

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Types of oriental pottery in archaeological finds from the 16th and 17th centuries in Hungary

Author(s): Ibolya Gerelyes / Language(s): English Issue: 1-2/2008

In the 1940s it was noticed that archaeological materials from the Ottoman period in Hungary contained faience from Anatolia. However, Iznik and Kütahya ware, Persian faience, Chinese porcelain and celadon also occur, the last two principally in the vilayet centres of Buda and Eger. Most Oriental ceramics pieces from the Ottoman period are artefacts of modest quality for everyday use. The Kütahya ware, the Persian faience and the Chinese porcelain all served one purpose: coffee drinking. However, material from earlier times includes ornamental vessels and can be linked to the royal court and ecclesiastical circles.

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The financial position of the Vilayets in Hungary in the 16th–17th centuries

Author(s): Klára Hegyi / Language(s): English Issue: 1-2/2008

In the 16th century, there were two vilayets in Hungary; their number increased to four at the turn of the 17th century and to six after 1660. The largest of them, the vilayet of Buda, was loss-making throughout the period, with the exception of a few years. The Buda vilayet received financial support from the central treasury during the 16th century and from the campaign treasury during the Long War at the turn of the 17th century. Subsequently, in the 17th century, roughly 70 per cent of its military expenditure was covered by state revenues from the Balkan Peninsula. In the latter decades of the 16th century, the Temeşvar vilayet produced a financial surplus. It suffered financial woes during the war at the turn of the century but recovered thereafter. In the early 17th century, the Eger vilayet used its own revenue to pay for more than half of its costs, but the losses of the Kanija vilayet resembled those of Buda. The Varad vilayet in the east of the country was financially self-sufficient, while the Uyvar vilayet , established in the approaches to Vienna, was funded entirely by the central treasury. To sum up: in the stricken western vilayets , which were devastated by the military campaigns, local revenues met no more than one third of military costs; meanwhile, the three eastern vilayets , which were less affected by conflict, were for the most part self-sufficient.

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From manual to literature: Two texts on the Ottoman timar system

Author(s): Douglas A. Howard / Language(s): English Issue: 1-2/2008

Close comparison of the text erroneously attributed to Ali Çavuş of Sofia and the Kavanin-i Al-i Osman of Ayn Ali shows that the two are related, having common content and a similar structure. A direct genetic relationship cannot be demonstrated. Rather, Ayn Ali used the other text as a literary model, transforming what was essentially a scribal manual into a literary work in the advice for kings genre.

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The cultivation of wasteland in Hanafī and Ottoman law

Author(s): Colin Imber / Language(s): English Issue: 1-2/2008

In Hanafī law, a person who cultivates wasteland, provided he meets certain conditions, becomes the owner of the land. In Ottoman law, this rule could not apply, since land, outside a few mülk properties, was at the disposal of the sultan and not subject to ownership. Instead, cultivators gained title to the land by virtue of the payment of an entry fee to the prebend-holder. It is nonetheless clear that people who cleared wasteland believed that they had an unconditional right, if not of outright ownership, then at least of unconditional occupancy. By contrast, Ottoman law-books of the 16th century give cultivators of wasteland very few rights beyond those enjoyed by ordinary peasant cultivators. Furthermore, these rights were restricted further during the 17th century. In practice, therefore, Hanafī law had no influence over Ottoman law in this area. That Ottoman legislators were, however, aware of the Hanafī rules is clear from a decree granting fiscal privileges to Janissaries who clear wasteland, which mimics the sharī’a .

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Bektaşi monasteries in Ottoman Hungary (16th–17th centuries)

Author(s): Balázs Sudár / Language(s): English Issue: 1-2/2008

In the 16th–17th centuries the Ottoman conquerors of the occupied territories of Hungary gradually established their own intitutions. Together with the military, dervishes also appeared and generally settled outside the defended city walls. Owing to the sparsity of source material, the lives and activities of these dervishes and their monasteries are less known. The present study attempts to collect and present all the data concerning the Bektaşi convents in Ottoman Hungary. Five monasteries are known to have existed that undoubtedly belonged to the Bektaşi order: two in Buda, one in Eger, another one in Székesfehérvár and one in Lippa. It is most likely that the convent of Yağmur Baba in Hatvan, that of Muhtar Baba in Buda, and perhaps that in Szolnok also had Bektaşi affiliations. This relatively small number may probably be augmented in the future, since many more Babas had monasteries and shrines in Ottoman Hungary, whose biographies and affiliations still await further research. Obviously, the political elite in Ottoman Hungary considered it important to support the Bektaşi dervishes; they fostered the building of convents and provided them with endowments. Thus, in addition to the pronounced presence of the Bektaşis in literary monuments, and the reputation of Gül Baba preserved throughout the centuries, the presence of Bektaşi convents in Hungary also testifies to the significant role played by this dervish order in the cultural life of Ottoman Hungary.

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Vérité et Demi-Vérité dans Le Nüzhetü-l-Esrâri-l-Aẖbâr der Sefer-İ Sigetvâr de Ferîdûn

Author(s): Nicolas Vatin / Language(s): French Issue: 1-2/2008

La première moitié du Nüzhetü-l-esrâri-l-aẖbâr der sefer-i Sigetvâr de Ferîdûn se présente à première vue comme un récit de la dernière campagne de Soliman le Magnifique, au cours de laquelle ce sultan décéda en 1566 devant la forteresse de Szigetvár. En fait, l’étude de ce texte minutieusement composé et de la façon dont l’auteur joue avec la vérité historique sans jamais la trahir tout à fait montre qu’il s’agit d’une œuvre à la gloire de Sokollu Mehmed Paşa, grand vizir et patron de Ferîdûn. Il semble bien que la première moitié de cette chronique rédigée dans les mois qui suivirent les événements ait eu pour but de convainere le nouveau sultan, Selîm II, des compétences et plus encore de l’honnêteté et de la fidélité de Sokollu Mehmed.

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