Re: [tied] Scythian tribal names

From: Alexander Stolbov
Message: 11727
Date: 2001-12-07

Sorry for responding with a delay, George.

It is very interesting, although it's not easy to accept the equation Ulichi
= Polane.
(I read that the root in Polane means "forest", not "field", with the prefix
po- , like in the word Polesie)

Do you have any ideas concerning Tivertsy (plural form) who lived next land
to Ulichi - between S. Bug and Dnestr rivers, in the steppe (steppe-forest)
zone too?

Alexander


----- Original Message -----
From: "george knysh" <gknysh@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2001 11:23 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Scythian tribal names


>
> --- Alexander Stolbov <astolbov@...> wrote:
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "george knysh" <gknysh@...>
> > To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
> > Sent: Tuesday, November 27, 2001 4:53 PM
> > Subject: Re: [tied] Scythian tribal names
> >
> > ...
> > > There is a Hunnic people known as the "ULCH"(ULTZ)
> > and
> > > a post-Attila leader known as Ulchindur.
> > ...
> >
> > On the other hand there was an early (9th-10th
> > cent.) East Slavic tribe
> > Ulichi (Slavic plural form, singular - Ulich) who
> > lived somewhere between
> > the South Bug and Ingulets rivers, i.e. in the
> > steppe zone (quite not
> > typical place to live for early Slavs).
> >
> > I wonder whether these ethnonyms are connected
> > anyhow.
>
> *****GK: I think they are very much connected,
> Alexander. I've written two articles on issues
> relating to this, having been encouraged by an
> excellent linguist (the late Bohdan Struminski) at a
> conference in 1992 (Urbana-Champaign), who confirmed
> that my as yet undeveloped hypothesis of the
> convergence of Hunnic ULCH and Slavic ULICHI (both
> rendered by the Byzantine Greek OULTINES) was correct.
> As my research progressed I discovered that the famous
> Primary Chronicle Kyi Legend was simply a "local"
> adaptation (or "autochtonization") of the 5th-6th c.
> Ulch Foundation Legend as retained by an Armenian
> source of the early 7th c. (Zenob Glak) and stories of
> post-Attila times in Jordanes [Glak and Jordanes
> coinciding on some points; Glak and Nestor/Sylvester
> on others]. My major conclusion was that elements of
> the Ulch Hunnic aristocracy had mixed with local
> Slavic clans, adopted their language, and provided
> them with a ready-made "political history".=== But I
> then went even further and managed to relocate the
> Ulch/Ulichi geographically. There was no problem in
> associating the Late Hunnic Ulch with the Lower Dnipro
> "Scythian ruins" and with the Crimea steppe area. But
> careful analysis of Constantine Porphyrogenitus and
> other sources (incl. an item from the Novgorodian
> Chronicle) convinced me that the Slavic Ulichi were
> located much more to the north, in fact that their
> "capital" Peresichen' was only about 6 kilometers (!)
> south of the center of Old Kyiv. My second major
> conclusion was that the so-called "Polani" and the
> Ulichi were one and the same. The former are unknown
> to sources other than Rus' ones, and both names
> disappear from the Primary Chronicle at the same time.
> The etymology of "polani" as "people of the fields"
> offered by Sylvester was clearly inadequate [the
> Primary Chronicle in a passage written by an earlier
> editor notes that the Khazars found the Polani "on the
> hills of Kyiv in the forests", and only there] except
> as some steppe reminiscence. The Glak version has the
> "three brothers" establishing themselves in "the land
> of Paluni" which is the area of the Scythian cities
> along the Lower Dnipro/Dnepr/ Borysthenes. I think
> that the chroniclers of the late 11th and 12th c. knew
> this historical term, and artificially applied it to
> the population of their time "yazhe nyni zovemaya
> Rus'" ("which today is called the Rus'") as their
> older designation, instead of the proper
> Ulichi.Perhaps there were dynastic issues involved.
> The articles appeared in 1993 and 1997 in The
> Ukrainian Quarterly, a New York journal. The first
> article also had a Ukrainian language version in the
> 1993 "Ukrajins'kyj Istoryk" which is available in
> various depositories in Ukraine (but I don't know
> about St. Petersburg).*****
> >
> > Alexander
> >
> >
>
>
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