From: Robert Subject: Re: Caucasoid Turks/Bulgars Date: 22 Jan 1999 00:00:00 GMT Message-ID: <36A95129.AF5336A1@earthlink.net> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: <369E3BE1.5C45@sbu.ac.uk> <77li2j$qi0$1@whisper.globalserve.net> <369F52FE.2B6@sbu.ac.uk> <77rc86$auj$1@brokaw.wa.com> <36A444B3.F3B70F1C@alum.mit.edu.-> <7827sb$269$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <36A52D70.9E372DD2@alum.mit.edu.-> <36A556AB.9927BD29@montclair.edu> <36a63533.58309714@news.yale.edu> <7866ud$i9m$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <36cdb21e.883120019@news.wxs.nl> <36A7FCC8.79790A6B@earthlink.net> <36d77e23.1000882888@news.wxs.nl> X-Posted-Path-Was: not-for-mail Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-ELN-Date: 23 Jan 1999 04:25:18 GMT X-ELN-Insert-Date: Fri Jan 22 20:35:01 1999 Organization: EarthLink Network, Inc. Mime-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: sci.archaeology,sci.anthropology,sci.lang Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote: > > On Thu, 21 Jan 1999 20:21:28 -0800, Robert > wrote: > > >However, Peter Dobrev, a Bulgarian anthropologist championing the > >Pamiric hypothesis, has used Dardic and other eastern Iranic cognates to > >decipher the inscriptions. [...] The evidence he cites to buttress his > >argument is quite persuasive, at least to a layman such as myself. > > Well, I didn't exactly claim the Bolgars were all Turkic, just that > some (R-)Turkic speaking people were among them, as suggested by the > fact that Chuvash is now spoken in former Bolgaria on the Volga. > > It's true that the inscriptions adduced by Dobrev don't look Turkic > at all. However, Dobrev isn't able to make much sense of them by > interpreting them as Iranian either. Unfortunately, this doesn't > stop Dobrev from "translating" the inscriptions. If no suitable > Iranian (Pamiri) word is found, Dobrev does not hesitate to provide > Celtic, Chechen, Georgian or "Sumero-Akkadian" parallels. Anything > goes (except, apparently, Turkic). You seem to be basing your appraisal of his work on a site known to me on the internet. I've actually read one of his books in Bulgarian, where he sticks primarily to Iranic (Dardic) cognates. I don't think it would be accurate to say that he doesn't make much sense of them interpreting them as such. As I mentioned, the namebook of the Bulgar khans yielded a 100% accuracy using his translations, as opposed to the abysmal success of the turkologists. However, since this is a seemingly obscure field of study, the generally accepted dogma about "turkic" Bulgars is likely to remain the dominant one for a long time to come. All studies of Bulgars, Avars, and others appears to stem from the "turkic" paradigm. Robert