I will try to clearly demonstrate an example of "mashing Tartary", that is, the method of hiding some information about some reality. Moreover, I will immediately note that this is not an isolated case, but rather a system.
The incomprehensible Tartary is replaced by an even more incomprehensible "Tartary".
The impetus for the post was a book taken from the library dump. The first Spanish edition of it was published in 1614, only in 1972 a translation into Russian appeared, although at one time it was a bestseller and in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries withstood up to a dozen editions in the main European languages.
"Wanderings". Fernand Mendes Pinto
Notes of a Portuguese adventurer who traveled all over South and East Asia, who was anything but a God-fearing and decent person. A monument to its era, which called sin a sin. The book is also unique as an eyewitness account of the heyday and rapid decline of the Portuguese world empire, as a source of data on the states of the Indian and Pacific oceans. (available online).
I was immediately alarmed by a lengthy subtitle, the beginning of which in the Russian translation sounded like this: The Wanderings of Fernano Mendes Pinto, which reports on many and many things that he happened to see and hear in the kingdoms of China, Tartary, Sornau …
I will clarify right away that Fernand, it seems, was officially only in the south of China, and he did not climb into any "Tataria". And the very word "Tataria" … Well, you know what it hides.
Promotional video:
I found on the net the same text in its original form (first edition of the memoir): the second and third lines are Tartaria.
Wanderings. Fernand Mendes Pinto. ~ 1520-1578.
The habit, for some reason, piously, which has gotten a sad soreness, to edit the authors by redirecting Tartary to Tartary - they say, now it is better to know what they wrote about in their time.
It is asserted with academic reinforced concrete confidence: medieval authors were confused in ethnonyms and called the place of residence of the Tatar tribes distorted Tartary.
Here comes the king of the European traveler and asks all the oncoming - cross: "Whose will you be, good people?"
And people answer him: "We are the people of the Marquis of Karabas," we are Tatars, don't you see what?"
Our Marco Polo goes like this for a month, a year, finally, he gets tired of asking and hearing a stereotypical answer, and he calls all the places he visited Tatarstan, and since he has no time to understand the local gibberish, he alters it into Tartary.
Enlightened Europeans appreciate the subtle humor of the traveler, since from the ancient tradition Tartarus is a place of imprisonment for the titans, a very remote place, that is, it is quite suitable for all sorts of savages.
This continued until the amateur geographer, Swede Strallenberg, who returned from Siberian captivity and dispelled these delusions in 1730. True, Tartary continued to exist in geography, but this, they say, was by inertia.
This version is a cliché and looks plausible until the point when the cliché is not critically approached - clichés are not intended for analysis, they are axioms, one can only believe in them.
And if you don’t believe, then questions immediately arise: for example, who are the Tatars and why were three quarters of Eurasia named after them?
The origin of this word is unknown, there are about a dozen versions, which means that they are equally unconvincing. In general, first some Turkic tribes of the time of Great El were called Tatars, then either their descendants, or the next with a similar name, who annoyed the Chinese, and even managed to become the blood of Genghis Khan with all the ensuing consequences, after which the history of the Tatars their homeland in Mongolia ended.
Then a little strange happens - the Tatars, carved at the root, resurrect (the zombie apocalypse nervously smokes on the sidelines), after which they conquer Central Asia, Iran, Eastern and Central Europe, and they seize China so that it would not be bored alone in an independent position. And they found several nomadic empires. In memory of these Tatars, the Volga Bulgars, Nogai and Ugro-Türks of Siberia begin to call themselves Tatars, although there is no kinship with the so-called. Tatars, and among themselves, no and cannot be.
In medieval Europe, even before the Mongol invasion, or simultaneously with it, there is a tradition to call Eastern Europe and North Asia "Tartary".
These are facts. Further interpretations follow.
Personally, I find two reasons for this hypothesis extremely unconvincing: that the two concepts could be confused with each other, and that "Tartaria" comes from "Tatars".
As for the first: personally, I do not know any more such persistent and long-term delusions. European science does not provide for this.
European scholarship generally began as philology, that is, the discipline intended for the interpretation of biblical and ancient texts. And the attention to the written word, to the nuances of pronunciation and interpretation, was incredibly scrupulous. To confuse the words "Tatars" and "Tartar" among such scientists is like saying at a party meeting in 1937 that our leader is Trotsky. Such reservations are not forgiven.
And later on, European ethnography and geography were born as auxiliary disciplines in the wagon train of the colonialists. They required the utmost accuracy of the report from the upcoming battlefield. Again, it was impossible to confuse two different words.
Imagine how the James Bond of the eighteenth century, risking their lives, collecting information about the Tatars in anticipation of the Great Game with the Russian Empire: numbers, fighting efficiency, morals, beliefs, everything that will help later use them in the interests of Her Majesty. And then some armchair clever guy renames Tatars to tartar. And now emissaries from Albion arrive to the Tatars and declare: "Isn't it time for the valiant Tartars to rise up against the Uruses?" To which the Tatars look around in bewilderment, who are they still talking about, and reasonably answer: "Let the tartars fight, but what have we to do with it?"
Believe me, the identification of several Tatar tribes with Great Tartary on land maps looks even stranger.
However, it turns out that they were confused. And they did not see anything strange in this.
You can, of course, remember how America was called India and how the New World got its name from the Italian cartographer, but as soon as the error was clarified, the "Indians" immediately appeared, not the "Indians", "West Indies" versus "East Indies" ", So the confusion lasted for decades.
I repeat, the confusion between Tartary and Tartary has survived for almost a millennium.
Imagine another international analysis of our international turner Satanovsky, in which he, in the course of the next philippics addressed to the monarchies of the Arabian Peninsula (well, he does not like them:))) instead of “Arab dynasties” pronounces “Berber dynasties”. And then he calls them that way. The meaning is lost immediately, the reputation too. The words sound almost the same, but between them there is a difference in the origin of peoples, a gap in chronology and a spread in geography.
Didn't the opposite happen? The fact that Tartary (or something with a similar name) actually existed in Northern Eurasia for centuries, and had such a reputation that completely different tribes considered it an honor to secretly join the glory and power of "something" and take similar names?
Comrade Fernando Mendes Pinto (this is how his name sounds in his native Portuguese) adds the missing details to confirm the existence of Tartaria and a conspiracy theory about erasing the memory of her.
The conquistador made his way to the borders of Tartary-Tataria from the south, that is, there were no "Tatars" on his way to transfer their name to a huge geographical area. He generally could not hear the word Tataria from the Chinese - the closest neighbors of hypothetical tartars: the fact is that there is no "r" sound in the Chinese pronunciation, for example, Tatars in the hieroglyphics in the Mandarin dialect are pronounced as ta-ta. Fernando wrote titles and names as he heard, the whole book consists of distorted native words. And, nevertheless, he mentions Tartary - just like that, and not about the Tatars, as editors and translators try to assure us.
He describes the great Tartar Khan attacking the northern provinces of China …
Unfortunately, this is the only thing that I can tell about this part of the book: in addition to the vivisection in the title, the castration of Tartaria to Tartary, about 20 chapters were removed in the Russian translation - instead of them, a summary of what is written in them is given. Approximately, at the place of the retelling of chapter 122 or 128, there is a conversation between several Portuguese, among whom was our hero, with Khan Tartar. Tartarus interrogates the pale-faced brothers and makes the correct conclusion about their intentions, very unseemly.
In the preface of the Russian edition, this trick with the ears is explained by the fact that Fernando's description of Northern China and Tataria is absolutely fantastic, has no real features, and therefore such Swiftism is not interesting. Fernando, they say, was not there and was only retelling stories. As an objection, you can look back at the rest of the book and find that all the other parts of the memoirs are filled with stories: “Why should you feel sorry for them, infidels” © and “lying as an eyewitness” ©. By the way, whether Fernando was actually in China or not is a subject of discussion, the chronology of his wanderings is very approximate and confusing.
The argument about fantasy looks especially surprising from the point of view of Russian translators and readers. For a minute, Fernando writes about North China, Transbaikalia and the Far East at a time when there is practically no other evidence about this part of Siberia, we are talking about the lands where Russian pioneers will come out in a hundred years - and any information about this period is priceless for us, even if she was completely delusional. This is our history, a gap in it that needs to be filled, and the layer of information of a contemporary and traveler, who got close to close, who had almost first-hand news, is thrown into the trash.
So, excuse me, in this situation, the favorite question of a famous character with a pipe is: "Are you a fool or a rogue?" does not look stupid at all. This is an absolutely clear algorithm for distorting history: first, the name of the country is changed, then, for fidelity, the information itself is deleted. Under the distribution falls completely innocent North China with Beijing, which in the "Wandering" are given in a synopsis: they say, together the catch is not so noticeable.
It can be assumed that Fernando decided to show off his erudition and mentioned Tartaria in vain - he pulled her by the ears from Marco Polo or some other authors. Alas, there are no other traces of references to senior comrades in the text. And it can't be.
Fernando is a "chit kid from the Ryona", revolving among the same "cool and simple guys". Erudition was not in their honor, they are "gopniks", not "nerds". In addition, they are all Iberians, residents of a remote part of Europe, who had their own Tartarus by their side - with the Moors, and they frankly did not care what happened in the distant kingdoms three hundred years ago with the Tatars.
And, nevertheless, there is Tartary, and the ordinary conquistador of the South Seas clearly knows its name, represents the position and has the idea that it is better not to mess with it.
The text of "Wanderings", or even more precisely what is distorted or withdrawn in it, personally convinces me once again of the reality of the phenomenon of "Tartary", whatever stands behind it.
Author: Konstantin Tkachenko