Dinlin problem / L.N. Gumilev - "MTF", 1959
the existence of Caucasoid local population in Central Asia in the period before the 10th century AD
Revision of Grigory Efimovich Grumm-Grzhimailo's hypothesis of the existence of Caucasoid local population in Central Asia in the period before the 10th century AD in the light of new historical and archaeological materials.
This little studied racial difference is another puzzle to be unraveled by historical anthropology. Here we have the review of other written material and its corroboration with anthropological discoveries, a Gumilev specialty. He is a rigorous scientist. These populations also appeared in the book on the Hunnu nation, and some of the passages are direct and repeated quotations.
© Gumilev L.N., 1959 © FTM, 1959
Contents (Page numbers from before translation, not relevant now.)
STATEMENT OF THE HYPOTHESIS 5
VERIFICATION OF THE DINLIN HYPOTHESIS 7
FORTY YEARS LATER 14
CONCLUSIONS 16
LITERATURE 17
Lev Nikolayevich Gumilev: The Dinlin Problem
STATEMENT OF THE HYPOTHESIS
The study of the ancient history of China led G. E. Grumm-Grzhimailo to make several paleoethnographic conclusions.
1. "The blond race, the Dinlins of the Chinese, had an extensive spread in Central Asia at the dawn of Chinese history [5, p. 38].
This assertion is based on a number of observations and several hypotheses. The Chinese chroniclers know the Da, Dal, and Dinlin peoples in the valley of the Huang He River. Apparently, they are variants of the pronunciation of one ethnonym. These people were not Chinese. In ancient times, the Chinese called themselves "black-haired", and the Dinglin were blond and blue-eyed. One of these tribes was called Chadi, i.e., red di. Their type restored on the basis of the summary of the information, "is characterized by the following features: medium height, often tall, solid and strong build, elongated face, white skin color with blush on cheeks, blond hair, prominent forward nose, straight, often eagle-shaped, light eyes" [5-35]. [5, с. 34-35].
Their mental disposition was characterized by militancy and so strongly developed individualism that the Dinlinus never managed to establish their own state. They lived in small communities, hunted and fished, and willingly sold their swords, supplying mercenaries to Chinese princes. The form of marriage was monogamy and religion was the cult of heroes [5, pp. 34-35]. They quite resembled the ancient Celts and Germans, but their language was as if one of Indo-Chinese.
2. "Four ancient peoples of the Central Asia belong to the Dinlin race: Kirgizes in the upper Yenisei, Dinlins in the Lake Baikal, Usuns, whom history catches at Lake Lobnor, but when they moved west - to the northern Tien Shan, and Boma in the Sayan-Altai" [5, p. 5].
"All these four peoples had blue (green) eyes and blond (red) hair. All these peoples were more or less mixed with their neighbors. The Dinlins include the Yenisei Ostyaks-Ketes" [5]. [5, с. 38].
3. "The appearance of the Dinlin tribes in the northern Gobi Desert is associated with the Dinlins losing a thousand year’s war with the Chinese. The Di tribes were recorded in China in the 3rd millennium BC as aborigines" [5, p. 14]. "Over 3,000 years, some of the Dinlins were exterminated, some fled, some mingled with the Chinese.” The mixing occurred in the Zhou era, XII century, and Zhou tribes consisted to a large extent of Di. This explains the presence of the ancient Chinese with high noses and puffy beards". [5, с. 15-16].
4. "Another part of the defeated Dinlins retreated southward into the jungles of Sikan and Yunnan. There they turned into forest tribes; the Mane of the Chinese geographers. Their descendants are Black Polo, with a number of Caucasoid traits, as well as tribes Tszelyans, Yao-miao, Won, Ye-zen, Pute and Moso". [5, с. 28-33].
5. The descendants of Dinlins mixed with Tibetans, Mongols and Chinese are Tanguts in Amdo and around Ganzhou, warlike mountaineers, more similar to the Caucasians than to the Mongols. The Tanguts 1 speak the Tibetan language.
6. "Approaching in language to the peoples of the Indo-Chinese group, the Dinlins in their physical features and mental characteristics belonged to the same blond race, which some anthropologists consider primitive in Europe." [5, с. 38].
1 Self-name of them mi-hou, Tibetan name minyag, Chinese - dansyan, Mongolian-Turkic - tangut (Grumm-Grzhimailo G.E. Western Mongolia and Uryankhaisky Krai. Vol. II. L., 1926, p. 26).
This last conclusion, is the most risky one, it’s based on the following consideration: "Is it possible to admit the existence of two races, different in origin, but endowed with the same physical features and mental characteristics? Of course not. [5, с. 35].
In order to confirm the latter conclusion, one has to resort to the assumption that races change according to natural conditions, and that such a change can be very rapid: within two or three centuries [5, p. 34]. The process of disappearance of the Dinlins from the historical arena, if we accept all the above conclusions as correct, ended at the beginning of the II millennium AD.
At first the Dinlin hypothesis was sharply rejected both because of its novelty and insufficient argumentation. True, at that time there were no more arguments for and against. Forty years have passed, which is a long time. The material has accumulated and many points are already verifiable.
CHECK OF THE DINLINSKY HYPOTHESIS.
1. The Dinlins, a people racially distinct from the Chinese, undoubtedly existed. Di and Dili are really variants of the same ethnonym in phonetic transmission. But a correction is possible: Di are aborigines of the northwest China; they lived in the mountains of the north Sichuan, in the eastern Gansu and in Shaanxi, and in Gansu lived Bei-di, i.e., northern Di [4, p. 13].
One should think that the main mass of Di lived to the south. In fact, in the Wu-hu period (4th-5th centuries) in northern Sichuan it was a Wu-hu princedom inhabited by a branch of Di, a Boma tribe. It is quite probable that this was a fragment of a once numerous people, some of whom were part of the Chinese in the Zhou period (1st millennium BC). The Dili were, apparently, related to the Di, as their second name was Chi-di, i.e., red Di. They were a steppe people, who were nomadic in the Hesi (steppe west of the Ordos) and, perhaps, east of it. But in the historical epoch they no longer existed in Ordos and Yinshan.
We do not know these people in their pure form, but we find them as a dominant component first of all in the Tele (probably a variation of the ethnonym Dili), a tribal group to which the Uighurs belonged, and probably also in the Wusun people and as Jun-di, which I consider the ancestors of the Tanguts. Their relocation to the North is a comparatively late phenomenon: in the 3rd century B.C. they were separated from their tribesmen in Sichuan and driven out to the steppe, and in the 4th century A.D. they moved north to Dzungaria [4, p. 213-214]. However, it is possible that they earlier penetrated to the north. Archaeology records the appearance of the North Chinese element in the Minusinsk Basin during the "Karasuk era" [11, p. 142].
Let us see what modern paleoanthropology and archaeology give us. From deep antiquity to the beginning of the historically known period in Sayan-Altai three cultures replaced each other:
Athanasian (before 2,000 BC), Andronovo (2,000-1,200 BC), and Karasuk (1,200-700 BC). Each of these cultures corresponds to a specific racial type. "The Athanasians had a "sharply" protruding nose, a relatively low face, low eye sockets, and a wide forehead - all signs that suggest they belonged to the European trunk. However, the Athanasians differ from modern Europeans by their much broader face. In this respect they are similar to the Upper Paleolithic skulls of Western Europe, i.e. to the "Cro-Magnon" type in the broad sense of the term [10, p. 65].
The successors of the Afanasyans were the tribes of the "Tagar" culture [11, p. 128], which survived until the 3rd century BC, after which they absorbed several Mongoloid admixtures and created the "Tashtyk" culture. As for the bearers of these cultures Kyzlasov expressed an original opinion, attributing them to the Ugri, and, moreover, he derives all Ugri in Western Siberia from the Sayan and Yenisei, considering them descendants of the Tagar Dinlins [13, p. 13].
Kyzlasov's hypothesis is reproduced by Smirnov [20, p. 23], but even this author does not consider it necessary to argue this controversial position. One cannot agree with this opinion. Kyzlasov wants to find confirmation of his concept from Debets, but he categorically states that the dolichocephalic skulls of the Ob-Ugric "differ from European and have a peculiar Asian shape" [9, p. 71]. The Ugrian toponyms in Khakassia are easier to explain the arrival there of Ugric rather than vice versa. So, there are all bases to consider Dinlins as a special people of the European, i.e. white.
But their identity with the European peoples is not confirmed. Debets concludes that "this type is an undifferentiated common prototype of the European racial trunk". [10, с. 67]. Finally, Debets' third conclusion is important: "The southern steppe strip (Siberia to Yenisei) was inhabited by Europeans already in the Paleolithic". [10, p. 68]; [17, p. 56]. These conclusions, thoroughly argued by Debets, speak against the assumption of the settlement of southern Siberia by emigrants from the southeast, i.e., against the identification of Dinlins and Di.
The bearers of the "Andronov" culture are close to the "Afanasyevs" - Dinlins, but not identical with them. "The origins of the formation of the "andronovo" subtype were the Kazakh steppes, and in the Minusinsk region the "andronovs" are western aliens". [10, с. 70]. In the west the elements of the "Andronovo" culture survive its Minusinsk variant, and therefore it seems possible to see in the "Andronovs" the ancient Kipchaks - Kyue-she, a people, undoubtedly, of Dinlin origin [5, p. 57-59].
In antiquity the Chinese probably knew very little about this people. They were mentioned among the tribes subdued by the Huns in 205-203 B.C. [4, vol. 1, p. 4]. [4 vol. 1, p. 50]. At the beginning, we meet Kipchaks in Altai, but then, when they mixed with the black-haired people, "Kangly", turned out Kipchaks of the Russian annals, or Kumans of the Venice Chronicles. The very name "Polovtsy" is compared with the color of their hair, i.e., straw-yellow. The concordant information of the Chinese and Muslim authors confirms this characteristic [5, p. 57].
Thus, there is no reason not to consider the "Andronovs" - Kipchaks as a western version of the Dinlin race, moreover the Chinese mention the western Dinlins in the Irtysh basin [27, p. 560-561], which they distinguish from the eastern ones, well known to them [5, p. 50]. Their connection with the Di is not established, while the difference from the European and Asian Aryans is undoubted.
In contrast to the previous ones, the racial type of the Karasuk population is extremely mixed. There is an admixture of the narrow-faced Mongoloid element belonging to the Far Eastern race of the Asian trunk [10, p. 83]. Such races were formed in China during the Yang Shao era. Archaeology confirms the anthropological data: in the Karasuk time in southern Siberia one can find things similar to the North Chinese [11, p. 114-116]. The fact of resettlement from the south raises no doubts now, but it is curious and important that a mixed people moved there. "In the same way, it is not clear what is the origin of this type, as well as its place in the systematics" [30,83]. [30, с. 83].
The question about the Mongoloid type is uncomplicated, but this mysterious brachicranial Europoid element, which came from China, itself begs to be compared with Di, and thus it returns us to the question about the identity of Di and Dinlins. The Chinese considered as homeland of Dinglin the "sandy country Shasai", i.e. Gobi desert [5, p. 11]. If so, then the Dinlins are not aborigines of China, but ancient inhabitants of the Mongolian plain. The Dili were pushed out into the steppe in historical time. So, Dinlins are not Di. It is true that the Chinese often call Dinlins [5, p. 11], but they never call Dinlins Di. Probably the word "dinlin" was polysemantic and had a nominative meaning together with an ethnonymic one. In context it sounds like a metaphor. But along with this, the Dinlins and the Di had some racial similarity. What kind?
The presence of a Europoid element of different types in Siberia and China seems to solve the question this way: the Di and Dinlins are peoples of the European racial trunk, but of different racial types; similar, but not identical.
G.E. Grumm-Grzhimailo quite rightly observes: "The long-headed race that inhabited southern Siberia in the Neolithic epoch hardly had any genetic connection with the Di tribes, i.e., Dinlins (?), who lived, as we know, from time immemorial in the region of the Yellow River basin. Rather, it can be seen as a race whose remains are still preserved in the far east of Asia (Aino)". [5, с. 43].
However, the Chinese considered this long-headed race as Dinlins, and the Sayan Mountains were called Dinlin [4, p. 107]. The Dinlins disappeared from the historical scene in the middle of the second century [5, 167]. [And it must be assumed that the Yenisei Kirgizes were connected with the aborigines of Siberia,] the Din-Lin, and not with the Di that came from the south. The southern branch of the Dinlins, who roamed south of the Sayan Mountains, intermingled with the Xiongnu, and it is no accident that the Chinese considered the Xiongnu to be an outwardly distinctive feature of the Xiongnu. When in 350 AD Shi Min ordered to slaughter all Huns one and all, "many Chinese with high noses died". [5, p. 15]; [31, p. 350].
There is no direct information about the fate of the western Pre-Irtysh branch of the Dinlins, but, based on the course of events, one can guess that they, mingling with the Ugri, formed the Sabir people, which in the 5th century broke into the Caucasus. There Sabirs long traded with the sword, serving now and then the Emperor of Byzantium, now and then the Shahinshah of Iran, until they dissolved among the Caucasian peoples.
Let us pass to the last and most mysterious white-robed people, the northern Boma. The Boma inhabited the northern slopes of the Sayan-Altai [5, p. 51, 59]. The following is known about them, according to the translation of Chavannes: "They lead a nomadic way of life; they prefer to settle among the mountains overgrown with coniferous forests, they plow with horses; all their horses are peaked, hence the name of the country - Boma (the peaked horse). To the north their lands extend as far as the sea. They wage frequent wars with the Haga-simi, whom they resemble very much in face, but their languages are different, and they do not understand each other. The houses are built of wood. The cover of a wooden log cabin is wood bark. They are divided into small clans and do not have a common chief". [26, с. 29].
The translation of Iakinthos has differences: the suit of horses is Savrasaya; the Bomas did not ride, but kept horses only for milk; the Bomas' army is estimated at 30 thousand people. [4, с. 350]. So, this was a large nation by Siberian standards. Fortunately, we have authentic names of this people in the Chinese transmission: Bitse Bike and Oloje [4, p. 350]. Hence, it becomes clear that the Boma are just a nickname, and the comparison of the Siberian Boma with the Gansu ones is unfounded, especially since they are written in different characters [5, p. 13].
Their ethnonyms coincide with Bikin, an ancient tribe mentioned by Rashid ad-Din, and Alakchin, about whom Abul-Gazi writes that "they have all horses that are peggy and the hearths are golden". He places Alakchin country on the Angara [5, pp. 353-354]. Thus, we cannot classify Bom as either Dili or Dinlin.
Having localized the Alakchins, let us turn to the anthropology of Lake Baikal. There, during the Neolithic Era, which probably was very prolonged, three types were outlined:
1) Eskimoid - in the middle course of the Angara River, where the Caucasoid admixture is absent;
2) Paleo-Siberian - in the upper course of the Angara and Lena;
3) Caucasoid, which seeped from the Sayan-Altai and mingled with the Aborigines. The distribution area of this type in the Baikal area is limited to its southern regions adjacent to islands of steppe or chernozem soils, a chain of which stretches from Minusinsk to the Kansk steppe approximately along the line of the present-day railroad [10, pp. 58-61]. A similar picture can be observed in Krasnoyarsk Krai [10, p. 62]. So, the presence of the Northern Bomas, or rather Alachins and Bikins, is confirmed. Their ethnical difference with the Din-Linas, while racially similar, should not surprise us. They were probably distributed very widely, from the Altai to Baikal.
As for the Kets, their Caucasoidness is greatly exaggerated. Debets attributes them to the Yenisei racial type of the Asiatic trunk. He considers the type to be ancient [10, p. 313]. My personal physiognomic observations on the Lower Tunguska confirm this characterization. Most of the Ketas turned out to be Mongoloid, only one old man had an eagle nose and was tall, but he did not resemble a European in any way. Culturally the Ketas fit in with the West Siberian (Ugrian) group, and even if they had a Europoid admixture, there is no sufficient reason to consider them as a fragment of the Dinlins.
Let us pass to the south, to China.
The steppe group of Di included: the Tele, Usuns and the mysterious Bai-di. There is no doubt about the tribal group Tele to which belong, by the way, the Uighurs, because their first name was Chi-di, i.e. red Di [4, vol. I, p. 214], and originally they were coaching in Hesi, from where they spread through Khalkha and Dzungaria. On the Chinese drawing Uigur is depicted as "a man with a thick nose, big eyes and strongly vegetated face and the whole body, and, inter alia, with a beard hanging below the lower lip, with a puffy moustache and bushy eyebrows" [5, I, p. 18]. [5, с. 18]. Nowadays the descendants of the body survived only in Nanshan (province Gansu); they do not have squinting eyes nor facial yellowness [15, p. 96-97].
The Chinese call them Huang-Xifan, i.e. Western Yellow Tanguts [15, p.96-97], emphasizing anthropological, but not linguistic proximity, as the latter does not exist. It is very important that the same similarity was noted by the Chinese and Tibetans, calling some Dinglin tribes. Here we have rather a figurative expression than an ethnonym, as the Chinese never united Uigurs and Kyrgyz, who are close in appearance and even in language. The Usuns are known to us as a people mixed with Saka and Yuezhi. This is confirmed by paleoanthropology. Some of the recovered skulls belong to the Mediterranean, others to the Pamir-Fergana race [10, p. 180]. However, the finds are so few that it is impossible to decide whether they belonged to the Usuns proper or to the Sakas and Yuezhas that merged with them.
The question about Usuns gave rise to a variety of literature [4, p. 13]. One must think that the main mass of the Di lived to the south. In fact, during the Wu-hu period (4th-5th centuries) in northern Sichuan was a Wu-du princedom inhabited by a branch of Di, a Boma tribe. It is likely that this is a fragment of a once numerous people, some of whom were part of the Chinese in the Zhou era (1st millennium BC). The Dili were apparently related to the Di, as their second name was Chi-di, i.e., red Di. They were a steppe people, who were nomadic in the Hesi (steppe west of the Ordos) and, perhaps, to the east. But in the historical epoch they no longer existed in Ordos and Yinshan. We do not know these people in pure form, but we find them as a dominant component primarily in the Tele, (possibly a variation of the ethnonym Dili), a tribal group to which the Uigurs belonged, and possibly in the Wusun people and as Jun-di, which I consider as the ancestors of the Tanguts. Their relocation to the North is a comparatively late phenomenon: in the 3rd century B.C. they were separated from their tribesmen in Sichuan and driven out to the steppe, and in the 4th century A.D. they moved north to Dzungaria [4, p.213-214]. However, it is possible that they earlier penetrated to the north.
Archaeology records the appearance of the North Chinese element in the Minusinsk basin during the "Karasuk era" [1], [2, p. 450-451], [3, p. 96-100], [5, p. 5-9], [21, p. 137], [29, p. 70], [32], but almost all of it refers to the historical period when Usuns occupied Tien Shan. Now, for us is interesting the origin of Usuns and their original territory - "ancient Usun lands" 2. The second century BC traveler Zhang Qian pointed out this territory between Dunhuang, Qilianshan, i.e. Eastern Tien Shan [5, 99]. That confirms Shi Ji, establishing that at the end of the 3rd c. Usuns fled from here under the pressure of Yuezhi [5, p. 99]. This removes the view of Aristov, who considered Usuns to be part of the Yenisei Kyrgyz, who came to Tien Shan from the Middle Mongolia a century and a half BC (by Grumm-Grzhimailo [5, p. 5]). The basis for the comparison of Kyrgyzs and Usuns was the description of the type of the latter: "Usuns look very different from other foreigners of the Western region. Nowadays Turks with blue eyes and red beards, looking like monkeys, are their descendants". [4, vol. 2, p. 190].
However, taking into account the information of Chjan Qian and Shi Ji, it is more fair to see in Usuns a branch of Dili, but not Siberian Dinlins, who had no reason to sneak such a roundabout way to Tian-shan. However, the Europoidness of Usuns is beyond doubt, because the later Chinese scientists deduce Russians from Usuns who moved away to the north [18, p. 224-225]. Therefore, it should be considered that in Ancient China the type of Usuns was beyond doubt.
Finally, Bai-di, i.e. white di. Before 636 BC they lived in Hexi together with red Di, but in that year, they were expelled by the Chinese prince Vyng-gun [4, vol. 1, p. 43]. Later we hear a lot about the Chi-di (red Di), but where did the whites go? They are found, oddly enough, in Pamir, in Ishkashim and on the slopes of Hindu Kush, and here they are called "Badi", which local Persians interpret as "windy," from the word wind. Needless to say, this is a common attempt to make sense of someone else's words.
2 Grumm-Grzhimailo (Grumm-Grzhimailo G.E. Western Mongolia and Uryankhai Krai. Vol. II. L., 1926, p. 168) seeks "the ancient Usun lands in Khangai”, but I cannot agree that the Chinese scientists were so strongly and unanimously wrong. On the contrary, the Yuezhi he places in this area must have come from Jungaria, because they came into contact with the Qin princedom only in the 4th century, which would not have been possible if they had inhabited the ancient Heshi where the Chinese had penetrated as early as the 7th century B.C.
Their capital was later the city of Badian, and among them belonged to the Efta-Lites; apparently, that is why they were called "White Huns" [6]. The appearance of the Badi is quite consistent with the supposed type of the Di: blond hair, thick build, and blue eyes. Badi and their southern neighbors Afridi resemble Celts more than their neighbors Afghans and Tajiks.
The hypothesis suggests that, just as the Chi-Di retreated to the steppe to the northwest, the Bai-Di retreated to the mountains to the southwest. To test this hypothesis, let's turn to the inner China and see what was the place of the red-haired element there in ancient times, and what was its relation to the Jung tribes, from which the red and white Di emerged.
The thesis about the millennial struggle of "black-haired" Chinese with "red devils" - Di in the light of modern ethnographic science looks somewhat different. Grumm-Grzhimailo, on the one hand, suggests that the struggle of red-headed autochthons with the black-haired aliens became decisive only in the Zhou dynasty [5, p. 16], and on the other hand, considers Zhou people as a people mixed of Di and Chinese, and subsequently the role of Di was reduced to participation in internecine wars of Chinese princes as a vanguard [5, p. 16]. There is some discrepancy here. Then he points out that many Chinese emperors had an eagle's profile and a lush beard. Fair enough. In The Three Kingdoms many heroes are described in this way, and one of them, the red-bearded Sun Quan, was even nicknamed "the blue-eyed brat" [14]. [14, с. 369].
But this is the Chinese aristocracy, and when is the aristocracy made up of the defeated? If the struggle took place, then we must assume that the Di were victorious, and this did not happen. Rather it is more likely that the close proximity of the two peoples led to mutual diffusion and mixed marriages. Black hair dominates over blond hair, brown eyes over blue, and short stature over tall stature - over time, the Di type must have given way to the Chinese, Mongoloid type, and there is no need to assume a grandiose war. But in principle Grumm-Grzhimailo is right, but attempts to explain the Caucasoid appearance of the ancient Chinese by albinism are untenable: there must have been too many albinos, and at the same time with high noses and lush facial vegetation.
The Western antique sources, in particular Ptolemy [22, pp. 437-439], shed some light on this tangled question. Ptolemy placed in the territory of modern China two different peoples: Sines and Sulphurs. The Sines are placed to the south of the Sulphurs, and their capital is named - Tina, which lies deep in the port of Kattigara.
Ptolemy's map is so approximate, if not fantastic, that it is extremely difficult to identify the names, but it is not important for our topic. The Sith are undoubtedly the true Chinese of the Qin Empire and are not identified with the Seri, who supplied silk-sericum to Parthia and the Roman Empire. The Sers are mentioned earlier than the Sino and in another connection: the Greco-Bactrian king Eutidemus about 200 B.C. expanded his possessions in the east "to the possessions of the Fauns (Tsyans) and Sers" [23, 25]. [23, с. 253]. Subsequently, when the silk trade along the Great Caravan Road was established, the name "sulfurs" was applied to the silk suppliers in the Tarim basin rather than to the Chinese themselves [22, p. 253]; [34].
The next, even more important message about Sulfur, which Thomson regards as "absurd" [22, p. 427], is based on the story of the Ceylon ambassadors. According to them, the Sulphurs are tall, red-haired and blue-eyed people who live beyond Emod (the Himalayas). This information is denied as improbable by Jul [35, p. 200], but in vain, for Pseudo-Arrian ("Periplus of the Eritrean Sea") mentions the routes from the country of the Grays to Bactria and from there to the Indian harbors [22, p. 428]. Thus, there is nothing surprising in the fact that the Ceylonians met the Seriki. According to Thomson's summary, the territory of the Seriki extends from Kashgar to northern China, north of the "Bauts," i.e., Tibetan Bots [22, p. 431]. This is the territory occupied, as we have seen above, by the Di, whom we are entitled to identify with the Sera as in territorial as well as in somatic features.
So, we see that the Grumm-Grzhimailo theory is confirmed by the additional information, which was not taken into account by him.
But did the spread of the Caucasoid type to the south of the Blue River take place? The book "The Three Kingdoms". Luo Guan-chung notes all the rarities: blue eyes, white hair, etc. The description of the Southern Mani 3, i.e. forest tribes of Sikan and Burma, lacks such indications [14, pp. 336-373]. But rather remarkable is the description of the appearance of a tribal prince.
All Man soldiers, hairy and barefoot, were armed with long spears and bows, swords, axes and shields; the head of them was a prince of the Man tribe named Shamoka. Shamoki's face was the color of blood, and his blue, rolled-up eyes glistened. He was armed with a mace of wild blackthorn, shackled with iron, and two bows hung at his belt. He had an unusually bellicose and menacing appearance". [14, с. 285]. Where did the Fani inhabit? One mention localizes them in Shanxi [5, p. 108], but Shamoka and his warriors came from Sichuan.
The Tanguts living there are called Fang in Chinese [4, vol. 2, p. 118]. So, the above-described appearance, which is quite appropriate for the supposed shape of Di, was that of an ordinary Tangut. Indeed, by their type Tanguts are closer to Europoids than to Mongoloids [5, p. 27]. Przewalski found that they resemble Gypsies [19, p. 221]. Kozlov [12, p.223] and Obruchev [16] stated the same, and "Tanguts are a people formed from a mixture of Dsi and Tsyans (Tibetans)". [5, с. 26-27].
However, the material given by Grumm-Grzhimailo about the Caucasoid element in the south of China is so extensive and diverse that it cannot be ignored. Europeanness is especially pronounced in the Lolo tribe. But this tribe speaks a Tibetan dialect, and therefore may well be attributed to the Tanguts. Grumm-Grzhimailo believes them to be descendants of the Sichuan Boma [5, p. 29], but if so, then there is no contradiction with Lo Guan-chjun, because the Vu-du, Sichuan Di state, among which was the mentioned clan, fell in the 6th century, i.e. after the Three Kingdoms epoch.
To our aid comes folklore, the famous novel about Geser. Gaser is the leader of a gang of daredevils in a tribe living in an extremely primitive way. The tribe was attacked by some foreigners and defeated; Geser's daredevils were also slaughtered, and he himself flees to an unknown destination. Legend has it that he lives underground and waits for the moment to restore social justice.
Tibetans dated Geser by the time of King Totori, i.e. the 4th century [25, p. 14] 4. This corresponds to the time of Toba pressure on the Tangut kingdoms of Lin and Budu. It is possible that the defeated Tanguts partially escaped to southern China and the Black Lolo are their descendants. But this cannot apply to the aborigines of southern China, such as the Miao and Indochinese forest tribes. So, in this part the Grumm-Grzhimailo hypothesis is confirmed, albeit with some reservations.
In connection with all of this, the enigmatic ethnonym Zhuya is revealed. Due to a lapse or inaccurate phrasing of Sima Qian, there were attempts to identify Jungs with Huns [4, vol. 1, p. 39], but we see that everywhere in the sources Jungs appear together with Di [5, p. 45], so that they, probably, correctly Iakinf translates as one people - Jung-di. Moreover, there is a legend, according to which chi-di and jun-jun were of the same origin [5, p. 15]. Juns and Di apparently differed so little from each other that the Chinese referred to some genera of the Di as Western Juns.
3 Man is not an ethnonym, but a common name for all forest dwellers that lived south from the Chinese (see Grumm-Grzhimailo G.E. Western Mongolia and Uryankhai territory. Vol. II. L., 1926, p. 27).
4 Maybe even the beginning of the 5th century, as Totori-nyantszan lived 120 years (Schiaginlweit E. Die Konige von Tibet. Munchen, 1860, pp. 45-46). Nowadays Damdisuren (Damdisuren C. Historical Roots of Geseriad. M., 1957) proposed an identification of Geser with the prince Gosrai, who lived in the XI century, But, besides the dissimilarity of the name, origin and biographies, this concept is refuted by the observation of the Ladaka chronicle before 950, that at that time the descendants of Geser reigned in upper Ladaka (Francke A.N. A History of Western Tibet. London, 1907, p. 47).
From antiquity, up to the 3rd century B.C., the zhun-di were spread throughout northern China, from Lake Kukunor to Yingshan, where they were called shan-juns, i.e., mountain zhuns. The latter, cut off from the main masses of their people, merged partially with the eastern Mongols Dun-hu [5, p. 85], partially with the Huns, which, apparently, gave grounds for identifying the two latter peoples. No less intensively they merged with the Chinese and in the West with the Tibetans. In the latter case they turned into a historical people, the Tanguts. Thus, the mysterious white race in China is revealed: the Tanguts in ancient times were much more widespread than now, when they survived as a small island near Lake Kukunor.
This view is at odds with that of European and American historians. In particular, McGovern considers the Juns and Di-Huns [31, p. 87], wondering only that their ethnographic features do not coincide. Lattimore [30, pp. 340-349] provides a detailed and detailed analysis of this problem, and he comes to the conclusion that Jungs and Di inhabited the inner China, and were mountaineers, not nomads, i.e., not Huns, but he says nothing about their racial belonging.
Cheboksarov completely ignores the Zhun problem [23, pp. 30-70], but in vain, because this creates a gap in the task he set: ethnogenesis of the Chinese. Complete certainty is brought by the quote from Jin-shu (Ch. 97), informing that Huns in the west border on the six Jung tribes [3, p. 219], indicating that they are different peoples.
However, all authors find it difficult to determine the distinction between the Jung-di from the Chinese inside China and from the Huns outside China, while from the course of history it is clear that this distinction was obvious to the contemporaries. The Grumm-Grzhimailo point of view is entirely decisive here, since the racial distinction, on the one hand, is obvious, while, on the other hand, it defies formulation in the absence of a scientific anthropology, which did not exist in ancient China.
FORTY YEARS LATER
Since Grumm-Grzhimailo raised the question of the identity of the "Dinling" and "Northern" races, much time has passed, and our views on anthropology have changed radically and quite legitimately. First of all, the problem of raceogenesis is much more complex and darker than our predecessors knew 50 years ago. We know the convergence of traits, and genetically different ethnic groups can develop similar situations, similar combinations of traits. We see the traits themselves differently: physical traits depending on the environment (e.g., height is a function of nutrition and can vary, while hair and eye color are hereditary and change mutationally); mental traits stand in relation to the lifestyle and level of development of a people. For example, the "strongly developed sense of individuality" of the Dinlins, which prevented them from forming their own State, does not apply to the ancient Europeans, who created several different types of States, such as polis, tribal unions, barbarian kingdoms, etc.
Even the Celts, who seemed most similar to the Dinlins [5, p. 70], had the despotic power of the Druidic Church, which suppressed the secular aristocracy and united Gaul and Britain. On the contrary, the character of the Dinlins resembles that of the Algonquin tribes of North America, the Bedouins of pre-Islamic Arabia and the black-haired Iberians of ancient Spain. They were also bellicose, sword-wielding, did not tolerate despotism, and moved easily from country to country. But it is clear that the resemblance is only superficial.
The same is true of the physical type. The Oriental Aryans, both dolichocephals (Turkmens) and brachycephals (Sogdians), are black-haired and in no way similar to the Dinlins. When the Dinlins met Rus' Aryans, which happened in 1056 near Kiev, these latter, despite their superficial similarity, took the appearance of the Kipchaks as an arrival of an alien people; but at the same time not only the redheaded Scandinavians, but also the black-headed Greeks were seen by the Russians as a people close to themselves. Darwin correctly points out that physiognomy plays a major role in determining the race [8, pp. 275-303], and the differences between Dinlins and Aryans were so great that it did not even occur to his contemporaries to consider the Cumans as a people related to the Europeans. One must believe that along with the similarity of the Asiatic and European blond races, there were also differences deep enough not to mix up the races.
This appears to me to be the case. There were two races, the Dinlins in Siberia and the Di in China, the latter to be called Tangut for the sake of clarity, although the ethnonyms Di and Dansyan-Tangut do not cover each other. Both races had many similarities, which gave the Chinese the basis for the figurative designation of Bai-di as Dinlins. Both the Tanguts and the Dinlins belong to the Northern European race, as do the Semites of Arabia or the Tuaregs (Hamits) of the Sahara, who also undoubtedly belong to the white race, but not to the Scandinavian type.
This point of view is supported by paleoanthropology. Debitz considers the dolichocephalic South Siberian type, i.e. the Dinlins, to be proto-European, "close to the Cro-Magnon type" [10, p. 83], and explains its similarity to the "northern" type by convergence [10, p. 128]. Indeed, this type goes back to the antiquity, preceding the formation of the Aryan language unity (mid-3rd millennium). At the same time, he notes the Europoid brachycranial type mixed with the Mongoloid narrow-faced type, and this mixture came to Siberia from China around the 17th century BC ("Karasukians"). At this time, Chinese history records the deportation from China to the north of the supporters of the deposed Xia Dynasty. In 1764 BC the prince Shun Wei and his companions settled with the nomads and adopted their way of life [4, vol. 1, p. 40].
The legend is confirmed by archaeology, but they both confirm the Grumm-Grzhimailo hypothesis. Obviously, the brachicranial Europoid type were carried from China by the Di. Another variety of Di, Usuns, was also short-lived [10, p. 180]. Thus, it can be stated that the "Dinlin hypothesis", having passed forty years of verification, has been confirmed, although with important reservations and amendments. Now it is already a "theory". It is quite unfortunate that Grumm-Grzhimailo's views met with an unreasonably distrustful attitude and were sometimes ignored [24]. This gap needs to be filled. Among the numerous discoveries of Grumm-Grzhimailo, the formulation and elaboration of the Dinlin problem is enough to deserve the gratitude of posterity.
CONCLUSIONS
1. Grigoriy Efimovich Grumm-Grzhimailo's hypothesis about the existence of Caucasoid local population in Central Asia in the period before the 10th century A.D. was confirmed both by archaeology in the territory of the USSR and by new historical information concerning the territory of China. An ancient white race did exist in Central Asia. The South Siberian dolichocephalic (Dinlins) and North Chinese brachycephalic (Di) referred to each other as second-order races of the European racial trunk.
2. The Dinlins had no direct connection with the Europeans, being a branch that diverged as far back as the Paleolithic. The successors of the Dinlins, the Yenisei Kyrgyz in the 2nd millennium AD were absorbed by Mongols from the south and by Ugri from the north.
3. The descendants of the Jun-di were partially incorporated into the ancient Chinese in the 1st millennium AD, partially assimilated by the eastern Tibetans, forming the Tangut tribes when they mixed.
4. The steppe Dinlins became part of the Huns, giving them some Caucasoid traits (high noses, puffed beards), and the steppe Di - Usuns and Tele - were assimilated by the Mongolian tribes in the IX-XII centuries (after the defeat of the Uigur Khanate in 840).
5. The history and ethnogenesis of the peoples of Central Asia can neither be understood nor advanced beyond the studies of Grumm-Grzhimailo.
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