Vassil has recently informed me that the Protobulgarian
inscriptions are available on his website. This saves me a lot of
pains with scanning and sending images.
The inscriptions in the language of the Protobulgarians in Greek
letters are available here:
http://members.tripod.com/~Groznijat/pb_lang/suppl1.html
I assume, the translations offered are those of Dobrev, since
they are about the only translations that we have. If Iranists ot
Turkologists on the list would like to express an opinion, that will
be highly appreciated.
The inscriptions in Cyrillic letters in a mixture of Slavic-
Protobulgarian are to be found here:
http://members.tripod.com/~Groznijat/pb_lang/suppl2.html
The runic inscriptions are to be found here:
http://members.tripod.com/~Groznijat/pb_lang/suppl3.html
Material found on the territory of former Kubrat Bulgaria are
available here:
http://members.tripod.com/~Groznijat/pb_lang/suppl5.html
The comments of Dobrev on the Preslav Inscription (see No 8 in
suppl1) are to be read here:
http://members.tripod.com/~Groznijat/pb_lang/pbl_1_2.html
This is not offered as a final version, just FYI.
An analysis of archeological evidence, confirming a
Protobulgarian migration from Central Asia towards the
Caucasus (in translation) is to be read here:
http://members.tripod.com/~Groznijat/p_bulgar/p_bulg2a.htm
More from the same book by D. Dimitrov:
http://members.tripod.com/~Groznijat/p_bulgar/index.htm
Pictures of archeological material described in the supplements
above are to be seen here (source is V. Beshevliev, No 8 in
suppl1 is No 24 here):
http://kroraina.topcities.com/beshev/index.html
I hope this works as a start. I will look in Beshevliev's
"Parvobalgarski nadpisi" to see if there is other important
information to post, especially on No. 8/24 (it is 52 in the book I
have, if I am not mistaken). A quote from J. Deny, one of the two
scholars who attempted a translation. His suggestion was we
are "probably dealing with an unknown language which has
separate Turkic elements." The comment was connected with
the difficulty in finding meaningful Turkic parallels for the words
in the inscriptions (excat quote in Beshevliev).
Omeljan Pritsak, 1955, expressed a similar opinion on the
language of the Protobulgarians, while analysing the
Fürstenliste. He suggested some differentiation between Turkic/
Altaic (which is not clear to me) should be kept in mind, if the
Protobulgarian words are to be correctly understood. I have not
read the book till the end and I am not offering his opinion as
something I consider final or something that I agree with. I was
just wondering if a differentiation Turkic/Altaic really exists and if
it would have any meaning for the translation in question.
Eva