|
The book by the outstanding scholar Tadeusz Sulimirsky
became a de-facto textbook on Sarmats and their constituents. The Sarmatian Chronology table, assembled by T.Sulimirsky
in his '70es book, gives "At a glance"
picture of the spatial and chronological history of the Alanian peoples. Even with the
later finds and developments, it remains an invaluable contribution to the study of the Alanian history.
The table is clearly incomplete because it does not
reflect the extant conditions which the Alans encountered when they were
changing their aerial. In the historical development, this missing part of the table constitutes a significant component.
The Wu-sun, whom T. Sulimirsky lists as Tocharians, are now identified with
Huns, leaving Ases-Tocharians to join the Hunnish and Türkic Kaganates,
conquer Bactria, and join the Alans. The Sarmats and Alans were also classified as
Iranian-speaking, in line with the popular at the time Indo-European theory. In
the T. Sulimirsky concept, in the course of their history the
Iranian Sarmatians were surrounded by the Türkic-speaking peoples,
instead of the multi-ethnic, including Türkic-speaking
Sarmatians, living in the surrounding of the Türkic-speaking
peoples.
T. Sulimirsky also did not note that the Chinese
Yancai, "Steppe", is a literal translation of the Türkic
Alani, "Field, Open Space", while the Chinese A-lan-iao
is a phonetic rendition. Neither was given the transparent Türkic
etymology of the Greek renditions for the Sarmatian tribes, Iazygs - As-yg,
"As-tribe", Roxolani - Uraxy-Alani, "Farming Alans", Siraces - Sary-Ases,
"Yellow Ases", and Sarmats - Sarma-ty, "Carrying Saddlebag". The consistency of
the names throughout the centuries and rendition in the languages as differing
as the Greek and Chinese indicate the endoethnonymic nature of the names. The
emphasis of the secondary dialectal differences was richly exploited for the
distorted demographic picture, when the whole population was presented as
vanishing and replaced by a different population, like Sauromatae replaced by
the later Sarmats, replacing the advances in the development and changes in the
social organization with a notion of perpetual extinction and replacement.
|