Bulgars And Bulgarians

Terminology: In the course of reinventing history, both Russian and Bulgarian scientists and scientologists had to invent a language suitable for their perch, which is confusing for anybody else. Here it goes: Bulgars are renamed Proto-Bulgars, which means that the Türkic Bulgars are Türkic, but without saying it, maybe you would not guess. The modern Bulgars are named Bulgarians, or in Russian Bolgars. Thus made a distinction between the Türkic-speaking Bulgars and Slavic-speaking Bulgars. Dr. P.Tzvetkov follows the accepted nomenclature, but since ”Proto-Bulgars” does not make sense, he dubs it with the real term, Bulgars, like in Great Bulgaria, which seems to be never rechristened to Great Proto-Bulgaria.

The bottom line of the article is that Bulgars were, and remain now, Bulgars, a people with ancient and rich history. Bulgarian is a Ural-Altaic language under strong Indo-European influence, whereas the Slavic languages are Indo-European languages under strong Ural-Aliaic influence. The analysis of the history of the Bulgar people may be applicable to other ”Slavic” peoples, in particular the Croats and Bosnians, who are directly connected with the history of the Türkic peoples, Croatia with the Besenyo (Badjanak, Pecheneg) tribe Charaboi, and the Bosnians with the Besenyos (Badjanaks, Pechenegs). This analysis is applicable to the Rus and Russian state, where institutions, dynasties, language, folklore, even a czar were deeply rooted in the Türkic people.  The Balto-Slavic concept on the origin of Slavs needs to be studied without prejudice. As should have been expected, Dr. P.Tzvetkov position and argumentation incited a burning reaction, in iron silence and in exalted opposition.

The posting's notes and explanations, added to the text of the author and not noted specially, are shown in parentheses in (blue italics) or blue boxes.

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Most scholars accept as an axiomatic truth that the Bulgars or Bulgarians, mentioned in Chinese, Byzantine, Arabic, and Western European sources from the first to the tenth centuries A.D., have little in common with those Bulgarians who are today the majority of the population in Balkan or Danubian Bulgaria. Even in widespread language dictionaries, such as the ”Random House Webster's College Dictionary”, the Bulgars are defined as a ”Turkic people who formed a state in the Southern Balkans in the late 7lh century A.D.” and who were, ”by c.900, largely assimilated by the local Slavic population”. Meanwhile the Bulgarians are, according to the same dictionary, natives or inhabitants of Bulgaria who speak a ”South Slavic language”. ¹

However, everything seems to indicate that the deeply rooted myth about the Slavic origin of the Bulgarians is motivated mainly, if not exclusively, by political considerations. Up to 1601 A.D., when the Ragusian Mauro Orbini published his ”Kingdom of the Slavs”, practically everyone made a clear distinction between the Bulgarians and the Slavs. Eager to see the emergence of a great and unified Slavic empire, Mauro Orbini assigned a Slavic descent to a number of definitely non-Slavic peoples, such as the Goths, the Khazars, and even the Etruscans. Naturally enough, the Bulgarians were also included in the Slavic family, it should be noted in this regard that Mauro Orbini denied the very existence of separate Slavic ethnicities and considered that the Russians, the Poles, the Czechs, the Slovaks, the Slovenes, the Croats, and the Serbs were just ''tribes” of one and the same nation. ²

At a later stage the idea about the Slavic origin of the Romanians and of the Bulgarians was strongly supported by Russia for the simple reason that these two nations lay on the road of Russia's expansion toward Constantinople and the Straits.

In a 1769 manifesto the Russian empress Catherine II (1762-1796) claimed that the ”Slavs” of Moldova, Wallachia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Albania had come to the Balkans from Russia. Hence they had to rise against the Turks in support of the Russian armies that were about to attack the Ottoman Empire. ³

Looking for foreign support against the Ottoman rule many Bulgarian national leaders turned out to be quite susceptible to the propaganda of Russian Pan-Slavism. Even the father of the Bulgarian national revival Paissi of Chilandar, who didn't like the Russians and the Serbs at all, readily accepted Orbini's theories about the Slavic origin of: the Bulgarians. As a matter of fact, he dreamed about the restoration of the ancient Bulgarian Tsardom and any hint at a possible kinship with the Turks was out of the question. For this reason he deliberately distorted a popular legend of his time, according to which the Bulgarians were relatives both to the Slavs, to the Russians, and to the Turks: in his ”Slavobulgarian History” Paissi simply omitted the relationship with the Turks. ⁴

Up to 1601 all written sources make a clear distinction between the Bulgarians and the Slavs who are considered as entirely alien and often hostile to each other. ⁵ For instance, a late eleventh century Bulgarian author is obviously convinced that the Bulgarians are just ”the third part of the Cumans”. In his eyes the only difference between the Bulgarians and the Cumans was that the Bulgarians were Christians, while the Cumans were still pagans. ⁶

Even in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when there were already considerable differences between the separate Slavic peoples, foreign observers duly noticed that the Slavs had no direct relationship either with the Bulgarians or with the Wallachians.
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Thus the Venetian Andrea Dandolo wrote about Dahnaria as the country of the Southern Slavs, while Bulgaria was the country of the Bulgarians and Wallachia was the country of the Wallachians, even though there was no single southern Slavic, Bulgarian, or Wallachian state at that time. The Serbs were split among several principalities, while the Croats were under the supremacy of the Hungarians. The Bulgarians lived, in their turn, in at least ten different kingdoms and principalities and there were no less than two Romanian or Wallachian states. ⁷

Scholars often refer to such phrases as ”Slavs or Bulgarians”, ”Slavs from Bulgaria” or ”Slavs, called Bulgarians”, which are found in a number of primary sources, as an evidence of the Slavic character of the Bulgarians. However, the meaning is quite clear: the people mentioned in these sources were not Bulgarians, but Slavs who were called Bulgarians because they had either spent some time under Bulgarian rule or emigrated from Bulgaria. As Imre Boba points out, the Slavs of Pannonia, Upper Moesia, and the Carpathian foothills were often referred to as ”Sclavi ex Bulgariae” since back in the ninth and tenth centuries these areas were part of the Bulgarian Empire. ⁸

The theory about the Slavic origin of the present-day Bulgarians does not seem to be confirmed by the archaeological data either. Many attempts have been made to find in the three historical provinces of Moesia, Thrace and Macedonia some Slavic pottery, Slavic settlements, or even isolated Slavic dwellings, but the results are so far highly doubtful. Some scholars hastened to proclaim that the primitive, nonprofessional pottery, found in many Balkan areas, is the product of Slavs. However, such pottery was characteristic of the ancient Thracians as well, and the Romanian archaeologists appear right in their belief that this pottery belongs to the local ”Dridu” culture. ⁹

As a matter of fact, it is impossible to judge about a particular ethnicity by the nonprofessional pottery since it is nothing more than a local domestic product of a quite primitive technology. The same by no means applies to the professional pottery and in this regard the professional pottery found in the lands of today's Bulgaria and Macedonia is definitely similar, it not identical with the professional pottery of the Volga Bulgaria. ¹⁰ Moreover, the architecture of medieval cities like Pliska and Preslav has nothing to do with the Slavs, but it is related to the architecture of the cities, whose ruins lie basically in the lands once inhabited by the Bulgarians or ”Bulgars” in their long way from Asia to Europe. ¹¹

Bulgar city in Caucasus, 10th c.

Practically none of the human skulls and skeletons that are found in Bulgaria or Macedonia have any Slavic features whatsoever. The same applies to the present-day Bulgarians who, according to most experts, belong to a local Mediterranean race, differing from the remaining southern Europeans but identical with the racial characteristics of the medieval Bulgarians. On the other hand, the southern European racial type is completely absent from the eastern and western Slavs. There are no southern European elements in the skulls, found in the medieval Slavic graveyards.

The southern Slavs, namely the Serbs and the Croats, belong in their turn to the so-called ”Dinaric” type of the southern European subrace. This ”Dinaric” type is less pronounced in the plains, while the skulls of the medieval Slavic graveyards of Serbia and Croatia have all the features, proper to the Slavic sub-race which is totally absent from Bulgaria and Macedonia. In other words, in the case of the Serbs and the Croats one may talk about a mixture between Slavic and significant native elements, while the Bulgarian sub-race is entirely different from the Slavic racial type. It goes without saying that the Bulgarians were and, of course, are far from being a ”pure race” but everything seems to indicate that the Bulgarian sub-race is by no means a mixture between Slavic and non-Slavic elements: it is a mixture between Iranoids, Balkan natives, and a limited amount of Mongoloids. ¹²

The Slavic theory about the origin of the Bulgarians is based mainly on the argument that today the Bulgarians speak a Slavic language. Indeed, most philologists claim that about 80 per cent of the Bulgarian words have more or less identical Slavic counterparts. However, a closer look at these words leads to the discovery that too many words, existing both in Bulgarian and in all the Slavic languages, have a Ural-Altaic rather than an Indo-European origin, even though the Slavic idioms belong, no doubt, to the Indo-European family. For instance, for a long time it has been established, that such words as ”tovar” (”load”, ”cattle”), ”kniga” (”book”), ”zhupan” (”governor”) and ”otets” (”father”) are probably early Altaic loanwords in the Slavic languages. In the same vein the Bulgarian word ”dyado” and Slavic ”ded” (”grandfather”) may be related to Turkish ”dede”, while Bulgarian ”vrukh” and Slavic ”verkh” (”summit”) are apparently of the same origin as Chuvash ”vur”, Mongolian ”oroi”, and Hungarian ”orr”. The Bulgarian and Slavic word for ”waler”-”voda” is clearly related to the German ”Wasser”, but it is even closer to the Mordvinian ”ved”'.
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The same applies to ”olovo” (Bulgarian and Slavic for ”lead” as metal, which is ”olom” in Hungarian), to ”med” (Bulgarian and Slavic for ”honey”, which is ”med”' in Mordvinian and ”mez” in Hungarian), ”beg” or ”byag” (Bulgarian and Slavic for ”run, rush, flight”, which is ”beige” In Kirgiz, ”paige” in Eastern Turkic, and ”poktem”, ”potta” and ”fut” in a number of Finno-Ugric languages), to ”pol” or ”polovina” (Bulgarian and Slavic for ”half”, which is ”pele” in Mordvinian), to ”slovo” (Bulgarian and Slavic for ”word”, which is ”szo” in Hungarian and ”söz” in modern Turkish), to ”tsvet” or ”tsvyat” (Bulgarian and partly Slavic for ”color” or ”flower”, which is ”chechek” in Chuvash and ”chichek” in Turkish), to ”sveti” (Bulgarian and Slavic for ”to shine”, which is ”süt” in Hungarian), to ”tegne” or ”tezhi” (Bulgarian and Slavic for ”to weigh”, which may be associated with ”takmak” in Turkish, as well as with the ”Bulgar” or ”Protobulgarian” word ”tagrogi”), to ”koza” (Bulgarian and Slavic for ”goat”, which may be associated with the Chuvash word ”kachaga” and Turkish ”kechi”), to ”vodi” (Bulgarian and Slavic for ”to lead”, which is ”ved” in Mordvinian), to ”dee” or ”dyava” (Bulgarian and Slavic for ”to do”, which is ”tei” in Mordvinian), to ”pishe” (Bulgarian and Slavic for ”to write”, which is ”pit” in Eastern Turkic and ”bichi” in Mongolian), to ”meri” (Bulgarian and Slavic for ”to measure”, which is ”mer” in Hungarian), to ”pali” (Bulgarian and Slavic for ”to light” or ”to kindle”, which is ”pal” in Mordvinian).

Even a numeral like ”edin” (Bulgarian and Slavic for ”one”) may be associated with the Hungarian word ”egy”, while ”devet” (Bulgarian and Slavic for ”nine”) has no certain Indo-European parallels, but it might be of the same origin as ”tovir”. which is presumably the ”Bulgar” or ”Protobulgarian” word for ”nine”.

All these words, as well as many others, should be considered early Ural-Altaic, if not Bulgarian loanwords in the Slavic languages rather than Slavic words in modern Bulgarian. This assumption seems to be confirmed by the existence of a considerable number of Bulgarian words, which are totally absent from the Slavic and Indo-European languages and which have at the same time clear Altaic or- Finno-Ugric counterparts, such as ”biser” (”pearl”), ”beleg” (”mark, sign”), ”belchug” (”bracelet; handcuffs”), ”bubrek” (”kidney”), ”pashenog” (”brother-in-law”), ”toyaga” (”stick”), ”kapishche” (”temple”), ”kumir” (”idol”), ”kushta” (”house”), ”kani” (”to invite”), etc.

On the other hand, though, both modern Bulgarian and ”Bulgar” or ”Protobulgarian” are distinguished by a great number of Indo-Iranian words. Thus, for instance, the word ”Bog” (”God”) has parallels in all the Slavic languages, but it seems to be related to an Indo-Iranian word. ”Bulgar” or ”Protobulgarian” words like ”bogatur” or ”bagain” (aristocratic titles in medieval Bulgaria) apparently derive from ”Bog”. On the other hand, such words as ”san” (”rank”), ”delva” (”large earthen jar”), ”stopan” (”owner, proprietor, master, husband, landlord”), ”Asparukh” (the name of the first ruler of Danubian Bulgaria) and many others originate from Indo-Iranian radicals but they are absent from the Slavic languages.

Words go easily from one language to another but the same by no means applies to phonetics and morphology. In this regard modern Bulgarian is clearly different from the Slavic languages and at the same time, there is an obvious kinship of modern Bulgarian both with the Ural-Altaic languages and with ”Bulgar” or ”Proto-bulgarian”. On the other hand, both modern Bulgarian and ”Protobulgarian” appear to be a peculiar mixture of Ural-Altaic and Indo-Iranian features.

The division of modern Bulgarian into two groups of dialects according to the pronunciation of the old ”ae” sound is also unknown to the Slavic languages. For instance the word ”byag” (”run, rush, flight”) is pronounced as ”beg” in today's Western Bulgaria and Macedonia. This division seems to correspond to the areas, once colonized by the Bulgarians under Asparukh on one hand, and by the Pannonian Bulgarians on the other. The presence of the ”ae” sound in ”Bulgar” or ”Protobulgarian” appears to be corroborated by such forms as ”belyazvam” and ”beleja” (”to mark”), whose ”Protobulgarian” character is a well established fact.

Similarly to Turkish, modern Bulgarian differs from the Slavic languages by the accentuated form of the ”eu” sound, pronounced like ”i” in ”bird”. Some of these sounds come from the ”o(n)” nasal, which existed in the Cyrillo-Macedonian version of Old Slavonic and which still exists in Polish. However, the same nasal was surely typical of ”Bulgar” or ”Protobulgarian” as well, which is proven by such ”Protobulgarian” words as ”to(n)gan” (”falcon”). Probably under Turkish influence, this word has changed in modern Bulgarian into ”dogan”.

Unlike the Ural-Altaic languages both modern Bulgarian and ”Bulgar” or ”Protobulgarian” have no vocal harmony. As far as ”Protobulgarian” is concerned, this seems to be corroborated by such words as ”dilom” (”snake”), ¹³ ”shegor” (”cattle”) ¹⁴ ”tovir” (”nine”), etc. Nevertheless, according to some scholars there are remnants of vocal harmony in at least one or two modern Bulgarian dialects. For instance, words like ”shapka” (”hat”), ”zhaba” (”frog”), and ”chasha” (”cup”) change in these dialects into ”shepki”, ”cheshi”, and ”zhebi”. ¹⁵

Modern Bulgarian differs substantially from the Slavic languages also by the absence of soft and hard forms of the letters ”l”, ”n” and ”r”, but both Bulgarian and the Slavic idioms are different from the Indo-European languages by the correspondence of ”ch”, ”sh” and ”j” to the Indo-European ”k”, ”x”, ”g” and ”k”, ”s”, ”z”. In a paper to the Sixth International Congress of South-East European Studies in Sofia in 1939 the Austrian philologist Gallon pointed out that these ”Slavic” sounds are in fact of Ural-Altaic origin.
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An undoubtedly Indo-European feature of modern Bulgarian is the existence of three genders. Both in modern Bulgarian and in the Slavic languages masculine nouns, for instance, end usually in a consonant, feminine nouns usually end in ”a”, while most neutral nouns end in ”o” or' ”e”. It is difficult to say whether genders existed in ”Bulgar” or ”Protobulgarian” as well. However, such endings are found also in well established ”Protobulgarian” words, such as ”beleg” (masculine?), ”toyaga” (feminine?), and ”kupe” (neuter?), which means ”chain amour” and which has been probably preserved in some modern Bulgarian dialects as ”kepe” (”shepherdscloak”).

The plural of nouns and adjectives is formed in modern Bulgarian in a great variety of ways. However, ”kucheta” (”dogs”) from ”kuche” (”dog”) may be compared to the Finnish word ”talot” (”houses”) from ”talo” (”house”), while ”kushti” (”houses”) from ”kushta” (”house”) may be associated with the Hungarian form ”könyveim” (”my books”) from ”konyv” (”book”). It should be also noted that the particular possessive form of the Ural-Altaic languages like Samoyed ”tubkami” (”my ax”) from ”tubka” (”ax”) or Turkish ”odam” (”my room”) from ”oda” (”room”) have their exact counterparts both in ”Protobulgarian” and in modern Bulgarian: e.g.”bashta mi” (”my father”) from ”bashta” (”father”) or ”alkhasi” (”his or her ring”) from ”alkha” (”ring”). This way of indicating possession is unknown to the Slavic languages.

As a rule, unlike the Slavic languages there are no cases of declension in literary Bulgarian. Modern Bulgarian has preserved some case inflections of pronouns in its literary version and both of pronouns and nouns in a number of dialects, as well as in folk songs. However, unlike the Slavic and Indo-European languages and similarly to the Ural-Altaic languages the Bulgarian case inflections do not change according to gender or number and there is no difference between the case inflections of nouns and adjectives.

Not less important is the fact that the Bulgarian case inflections are not more similar to the Slavic than to the Ural-Altaic ones, but they are almost identical with the Moksha-Mordvinian case inflections. Thus the ”kogo” (”'whom”) interrogative pronoun seems to be identical with its Slavic counterpart. However', Bulgarian ”kogo” comes from ”koi” (”who”), which is obviously different from the Slavic forms ”kto”, ”tko”, and ”ko”, but it is almost identical with Finno-Ugric forms such as Chantian ”koii”. Moreover, the ”go” suffix for genitive is absent from the Indo-European languages but it may be associated with the Mordvinian ”ka” suffix for translative. The same suffix may be found in a well established ”Protobulgarian” form, namely ”ichirgo” from ”*ichir”. ¹⁶

In the same vein modern Bulgarian ”komu” (”whom”) from ”koi” (”who”) may be identical with its Slavic counterparts, but it may have been formed by an epenthetic ”m”. ¹⁷ The ”u” suffix for dative is widespread both in the Indo-European and Ural-Altaic languages, and it may be associated with the Mordvinian ”u” suffix for illative or directive importative, e.g. ”oshu” (”into the city”) from ”osh” (”city”).

In some western Bulgarian and Macedonian dialects there is a special genitive-dative case that is completely absent from the Slavic and Indo-European languages, for instance ”taieta” (”fathers”) from ”tate” (”father”). The ”ta” suffix is almost identical with the Moksha-Mordvinian ”ta” and ”da” for ablative.

Some Bulgarian dialects have preserved the ”a”, ”eu” or ”u” endings for accusative. All the three suffixes probably come from a more ancient ”o(n)”, which may be associated with the Moksha-Mordvinian ”ny” for genitive.

Forms like ”noshtem” (”during the night”) from ”nosht” (”night”) are absolutely impossible for the Slavic languages, since ”nosht” is a feminine noun. The ”in”, ”om”, ”em” and ”am” suffixes may be related to the Moksha-Mordvinian form ”ama” in ”ftama” for extractive. Completely alien to the Slavic languages are also Bulgarian forms like ”dobre” for locative-dative from ”dobur” (”good”). The “e” and especially the ”i” suffix may be also found in a ”Protobulgarian” form like ”Bigi” from ”Big” ¹⁸ in the phrase ”kanasubigi” which is at the beginning of a number of the 9th century Bulgarian stone inscriptions. The ”i” suffix might be related to the Moksha-Mordvinian ”i”, which is a parallel form for directive importative.

Vocative is still widely used in modern Bulgarian. Its ”e” suffix may have existed in ”Protobulgarian” as well. In any case, a number of the 9th century Bulgarian stone inscriptions begin with the word ”kane” which might be a vocative form from ”kan” (”king”).

A substantial difference between the Bulgarian and Slavic languages is the use of postpositive definite articles both in modern Bulgarian and in ”Bulgar”” or ”Protobulgarian”, for instance ”kushtata” (”the house”) from ”kushta” (”house”). The word ”kana” in the above-mentioned phrase obviously comes from ”kan” by adding an ”a”, which is probably a postpositive definite article. Such articles are completely absent from the Slavic languages. They may be found in a number of Indo-European languages such as Armenian, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Romanian and Albanian, but in these languages postpositive definitive articles are used simultaneously with prepositive ones. Indeed, postpositions in general are a typical feature of the Ural-Altaic languages and, for instance, there are postpositive definite articles in the Mordvinian languages as well. From such a viewpoint the Bulgarian form ”kushtata” may be considered as almost identical with Mordvinian ”kudos'” (”the house”) from ”kudo” (”house”).

The Bulgarian personal pronouns are also very different from the Slavic ones but at the same time they seem to be again a peculiar mixture of Ural-Altaic and Indo-European elements. Thus ”az” (”I”), which corresponds to Slavic ”ya”, and ”me” (”we”), which corresponds to Slavic ”mi” or ”my”, are obviously of Indo-European origin, together with ”vie” (”you” in nominative), which differs from its Slavic counterpart ”vi” or ”vy” by its two syllables instead of one. Moreover, the Bulgarian forms ”tebe” (”thee”), ”nas” (”us”), ”vas” (”you” in accusative) are almost identical not only with their Slavic, but also with their Tocharian (i.e. Indo-Iranian) counterparts. On the other hand, the Bulgarian personal pronouns ”men” (”me”), ”on” (”he”) and ”nego” (”him”) are almost identical with their Slavic counterparts, but they have much closer parallels in the Ural-Altaic than in the Indo-European languages. Finally, the ”toi” (”he”), ”to” (”it”), ”tya” (”she”), and ”te” (”they”) personal pronouns have no exact Slavic or Indo-European parallels, but they can be easily associated with such Finno-Ugric forms as Komi ”sia” and Chantian ”tow”.

It should be also noted that negative pronouns are formed in Bulgarian in a way quite similar to the Chuvash one. For instance, Bulgarian ”nikoi” (”no one”) from ”koi” (”who”) corresponds to Chuvash ”nikam” (”no one”) from ”kam” (”who”).

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Last, but by no means least, the whole Bulgarian system of tenses and moods is completely different from the Slavic verbal system, but its structure is almost identical with the Turkish one. This applies, among many other things, to the re-narrative mood, used for describing unwitnessed actions. Renarrative is entirely alien not only to the Slavic, but also to the Indo-European languages. For instance, Bulgarian ”chel sum” and ”chel” correspond to Turkish ”okumusum” - ”(I was told that) I have read” and ”okumus,”-”he read (once)”.

Although limited in number, the ”Bulgar” or ”Proto-Bulgarian” texts, terms and phrases, preserved in written sources until nowadays, are enough to suggest that the difference between ”Protobulgarian” and modern Bulgarian is hardly greater than that between ancient and modern Greek.

Bulgarian and the Slavic languages are both substantially different and obviously similar to each other. This leads us to the conjecture that Bulgarian is a Ural-Altaic language under strong Indo-European influence, whereas the Slavic idioms are Indo-European languages under strong Ural-Aliaic influence. The closest Ural-Allaic languages to Bulgarian are, no doubt, Chuvash (an Altaic idiom) and Mordvinian (a Uralic idiom) and this corroborates a series of ethnographical data, indicating a kinship of these two peoples to the Bulgarians. In other words, the general belief that the Bulgarians are Slavs because they speak a Slavic language appears to be a wrong answer to a wrongly put question: instead of asking why Bulgarian is so close to the Slavic languages one should ask why the Slavic languages are so close to Bulgarian. ¹⁹

According to some theories the Slavs existed as a separate ethnicity as far back as the year 2000 B.C. but everything seems to indicate that up to the fourth and fifth centuries A.D. there was virtually no difference between the Slavs or, rather, the Protoslavs and the Balts, who are the ancestors of the present-day Lithuanians and Latvians. Up to the invasion of the Huns in the second half of the fourth century A.D., the inhabitants of today's Poland, western Ukraine, western Belarus, Lithuania and Latvia apparently belonged to one and the same ethnicity that may be called Balto-Slavs. They worshipped the same gods and their culture, including the pottery and the dwellings, remained practically unchanged until the fourth century A.D. It was only after the conquest of the whole of Europe to the north of the Danube and to the west of the Rhine by the Huns that the Balto-Slavs, living in the areas of today's Poland, western Ukraine and western Belarus, came under strong Ural-Altaic and Indo-Iranian influence. In other words, the Huns invaded these parts of Europe but they did not succeed in penetrating further to the north, and the lands of today's Lithuania and Latvia were not touched by their invasion. The close similarity, if not the identity of the Ural-Altaic and Indo-Iranian sounds and words in the Slavic languages with their Bulgarian counterparts seems to reveal that the Slavs emerged as a separate ethnicity as a result of the merger of a great part of the Balto-Slavs with the Bulgarians or, at least, with some people that was very close to the Bulgarians. ²⁰

The Protobulgarian and the modern Bulgarian vocabulary, phonetics, morphology and syntax seem to indicate that the ”Bulgars” or the Bulgarians emerged as a separate ethnicity in a contact zone between Protoaltaic, Protouralic, and Indo-European elements. One such zone may have been the area included between the sources of the Huanghe and Changjiang rivers and the Balkhash Lake, i.e. today's northwestern China and parts of what was formerly Soviet Central Asia. In was precisely in this region that Protoaltaic tribes lived together with, or in the immediate neighborhood of an Indo-European people, namely the Tocharians. ²¹

As far back as the 6th century B.C. Chinese sources mention the people of Bo-Jiong (Bo-Jiong, 戎 = Jung), where ”Jiong” means a foreigner or an alien, while ”Bo” might have been the Chinese way of pronouncing ”Bulgar”. However, a more reliable testimony about the presence of the Bulgarians in the above-mentioned lands may be found in more recent Chinese chronicles, according to which in the 2nd century B.C. the people of Po-le was in charge of the western wing of the Hsiung-nu Empire. ”Po-le” was apparently another Chinese way of pronouncing ”Bulgar” ²²
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The Hsumg-nu Empire was a federation of a great variety of peoples and tribes, which included the Bulgarians, the ancient Turks, and at a later stage the ancient Magyars or Hungarians, as well as an Indo-Iranian people like the Alans. The whole territory of the federation was divided into three parts: center, left, and right. The center belonged to the ruling tribe that maintained its dominating position by marrying its ruler's children (usually his sons) to the children (usually the daughters) of the other tribal rulers. Everything seems to indicate, therefore, that the Chinese word ”Hsiung-nu”, the Latin word ”Hun” and the word ”Ouar”, as the Huns called themselves, were not ethnonyms but a designation for all the members of the federation, who enjoyed full rights. The ethnic origin did-not matter, the important thing was to have dynastic relations with the ruling tribe. ²³

The early history of the Bulgarians was closely linked with the history of the Huns. Naturally enough, they participated in the invasion of Europe which took place from 372-375 A.D. on. According to some authors, the Bulgarians started to settle permanently in the Balkan lands at quite an early stage. Thus at the end of the fourth century A.D., the Roman emperor Theodosius the Great (379-395) gave permission to two groups of Bulgarians to move into the lands of today's Dobruja, as well as into Moesia. For his part, Theodosius II (402-450) allowed another group of Bulgarians to settle in the same area. ²⁴

Alter Attila's death in 453, the Bulgarians founded a realm of their own, stretching from Pannonia to the northern coast of the Black Sea. According to a fourteenth century Bulgarian chronicle, at the time of the Eastern Roman emperor Anastasius I (491-518), a great number of Bulgarians crossed the Danube at Vidin and settled in Macedonia. ²⁵

The disastrous epidemic of bubonic plague that spread since 542 no doubt facilitated the Bulgarian colonization of Moesia, Thrace and Macedonia since that disease affected mostly the native sedentary population. The Eastern Roman emperor Justinian I (527-565) succeeded in throwing the Kutrigur and Utigur Bulgarians against each other, but at the same time he gave refuge to some 2,000 Kutrigurs who settled somewhere in Thrace. ²⁶

Since the beginning of the 6th century, the Balkans also began to attract the Slavs. The Eastern Roman emperor Heraclius I (610-641) gave permission to the Slavs to settle in the province of Illyria, which corresponds roughly to the present-day territories of Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia. The Slavs were not allowed, therefore, to move into Moesia, Thrace and Macedonia, and until the victory of Asparukh against the Romans or the Byzantines in 680-681, there were hardly more than about 250.000 to 300,000 Slavs in the whole area between the Danube, the Black Sea, the Mediterranean and today's border of Bulgaria and  (apparently, Greek Macedonia) with Yugoslavia. On the other hand, only those Bulgarians who came under Asparukh must have been about 600.000 to 800,000 people. ²⁷

As it is well known, the disintegration of Great Bulgaria after Kubrat's death in 665 resulted in the founding of two Bulgarian realms: Danubian Bulgaria and Volga Bulgaria, while Kubrat's eldest son Batbayan remained in the lands between the Black Sea and the Caspian. As a matter of fact, though, there seems to have been a constant migration of Volga Bulgarians toward the Balkans because of the growing pressure of the ancient Turks and of the Ruses. Finally, in 970 the Danubian Bulgarians were joined by a large group of their Volga brethren under Bilu, Boksu and Hesen. ²⁸ The Bulgarian migration to the Balkans apparently ended with those Bulgarians who were lead once by Batbayan and who came to Danubian Bulgaria and Hungary together with the Cumans in several successive waves from the end of the eleventh to the middle of the thirteenth centuries. ²⁹

The Bulgarians were pushed to Moesia, Thrace and Macedonia by a thirst for land and the fate of the population they met there was the same as that of the native inhabitants of North America at the time of the European colonization. Both the Slavs and the descendants of the Thracians and Romans were simply massacred or deported to the lands to the north of the Danube. Asparukh sent at least seven Slavic tribes to the frontier with the Avars at the southern foothills of the Carpathians. In 760-763 some 208.000 Slavs fled from Bulgaria to Byzantium and were allowed to settle in Asia Minor. According to the Byzantine writer and emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (912-959), there were two mass migrations of Slavs from the north to the Greek lands, including the Peloponnesus: the first one took place at the end of the seventh century, while the second one happened in the ninth century, when the Bulgarians conquered the whole of Thrace and Macedonia. ³⁰

Each ethnicity changes in the course of the centuries, but everything seems to indicate that the difference between the Bulgars and the present-day Bulgarians is considerably less significant than the difference between the Hellenes of Aristotle's times and the Greeks of today. There is no need, therefore, to make a distinction between the ”Bulgars” and ”Bulgarians”.