CODEX CUMANICUS.

Excerpt from the  Kún chapter of Adorján Magyar’s Az ősműveltség

(The Ancient Culture)

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            Concerning the language of the Kúns: We know from Hungarian history, that after the Kúns were defeated by the Mongols, their King, Kuten, and the remnants of his people, fled to Hungary, where the Hungarian King Béla IV helped them to settle. There are many historical records of them, from which we know that there were peaceful times and some turbulent ones too, between them and the Hungarians. However, it is never mentioned that they did not understand one another’s language although, if that had been the case, it certainly would have been noted. Lacking such information, we may justly think that there must have been only a dialectal difference between the Magyars and the Kúns, such as there is between the Magyars, the Palóc and the Székely even today and, according to some records, it existed between the Magyar and the Kún language too. So much so that, for example, since the people of Szeged city did not have to pay a bridge tax and the people of the Kún district did have to pay, the guardian of the bridge exchanged a few words with the people whom he did not know, in order to be able to discern who was from Szeged and who was from the Kún region.  If  he detected the Kún dialect, the person had to pay the bridge-tax. The Kúns, in earlier days, were unable to pronounce the Magyar s (sh in English) and the cs (ch as in church) sounds and they pronounced them as sz (s) and c (as in certificate) the same way as the Csángó people of Kún origin (who live in Rumania) still do. (There are Csángó people of Jász and of Kún origin.)

Even so it has become widespread opinion, based upon the language of the  Codex Cumanicus or Petrarca Codex, the Kún Pater Noster, that the language of the Kúns was a Turkish-Tatár dialect. Concerning this Pater Noster, I have to mention that, because someone mistakenly called it a Kún Pater Noster, (Kún miatyánk), this does not prove that the Kúns really spoke a Tatár language. A similar situation exists with the Jász people, who live in the Great Plains of Hungary and speak the clearest Magyar language.  We don’t consider them to be either German or Slavic even though the German scholar, Schlözer, called them Slavs and the Italian scholar, Peter Ranzan, believed them to be German!

It is a fact that, in the Petrarca Codex, we find a Pater Noster, which is called Tatár and not Kún, which in many respects resembles our Kún Pater Noster and, based on this fact, we come to the conclusion that this is not written in the Kún language but in the Tatár language, the same way as the Jász people are neither Slavs nor Germans! Furthermore, we know that there is a great anthropological difference between the Tatárs and the Mongols.  We also know that the Tatárs were only defeated by the Mongols.  Even so, in the whole of Europe, and even in Hungary, the Tatárs are called Mongols and we still don’t talk about the Mongol invasion but the Tatár invasion. This is done even though,  in 1588 AD, there were smaller communities in Hungary speaking the Tatár language because the Tatárs fled from the Mongol invasion to Hungary, just like the Kúns, although in smaller numbers.  Moreover, the Hungarian laws, such as from the year 1454 II.codice 9th article, the 1459 codice’s 3rd article and the 1467 codice’s 2. article, make a clear difference between the Kún and the Tatár. (See István Gyárfás: A jász-kúnok története Kecskemét, 1873. II. kötet, 162. oldal.) It is still within the realm of possibility that someone mistakenly called the mentioned Pater Noster,  the Kún Pater Noster instead of the Tatár Pater Noster, just as we repeatedly call the Mongol invasion, the Tatár invasion. So, although it continues, maybe from  ignorance, maybe with conscious intent, to take away facts from the Hungarian past, this Codex is still called the Kún Pater Noster.

Concerning the Petrarca Codex: Travellers to the East in olden days, such as for example Wilhelm Rubruquis, made note and wrote clearly about the fact, that the present inhabitants of Cumania ARE NOT KUNS, because the „Tatárs”, in effect the Mongols, exterminated them completely, except those who fled with their King to Hungary. The title page of the Codex Cumanicus shows the date 1303, marking its origin, even though the Mongols held the territories belonging to Russia at that time and also the territories of Cumania in 1238, and the remnant Kúns were already in Hungary in 1239! Moreover, in 1241, the Mongols subjugated Hungary also. We know, as a historical fact, that Rubruquis was in Cumania in 1253 and Plan Carpin in 1245. In other words: Rubruquis was there 15 years after the Mongols exterminated the Kúns and became masters of their country, but Plan Carpin was there only seven years after the fact and he not only writes that there were no more Kúns to be found, because the „Tatárs”, more exactly, the Mongols exterminated them, but he also adds that he saw the bones and skulls of the victims all over the land. Even so, the country of the Kúns was still called Cumania centuries later, but probably only in the Western Christian countries. The writing of 1303 contains not the Kún language but the language of Cumania and this is the reason that it is called Codex Cumanicus and not Codex Cumanus. Judging from the signs, it was written by some missionary for other missionaries and merchants, who visited Cumania in the days when Cumania was inhabited mostly by Tatárs, Mongols and Oláh (Wallachian/Rumanian) people. Large numbers of the Tatárs freely surrendered themselves to the Mongols. Consequently, these were spared and some of them were conscripted into the Mongol army. This may be one of the reasons that, in the West, there is confusion concerning the  Mongol and Tatár names and the Mongols are called steadfastly Tatárs. This was helped along by the Greek name for the netherworld, which is Tartaros, which was used by the Christian priests as the name for Hell. They had a great fear of the Mongols, which led them to compare the Mongols with the devils of Hell. At the same time they confused them with the Tatárs and, with a little mix of superstition and ignorance, they changed the Tatár name to “tartarus” or “tartereus”, which means „hellish” or  „from Hell”. This name became embedded so deeply that the Italians call the Tatárs up to this day Tartari instead of Tatari (and the English call them Tartars).

We learn from the above, that to continue to call the language of the Codex Cumanicus, contrary to all evidence, the language of the Kúns, is the same as if we were to call the language of today’s England, or Great Britain the language of the earlier Brits. Even so, today’s historians like to call the language of this Codex, the language of the Kúns, although it is hard to imagine that, if someone researched this matter, he would not have realized this impossibility from the discrepancy in the dates. Because of this, we can ascribe this entrenched error to conscious falsification. The Hungarians, even though they realized the truth, did not dare to speak up because they had been subjugated for centuries and they feared being called chauvinistic.