--- 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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