Limestone walls of a Mountain Tatar settlement
Editorial contextThe Russian village of Kostychi, Lepekhin was told, had once belonged to the 'Mountain Tatars' of the Volga. Three ruined walls of the Tatar settlement still stood, with the steep Volga bank serving as protection on the south side. He notes they were built of limestone quarried on the Volga (he could tell from the veins of mineral pitch in the stone), and that the old walls now simply fenced the churchyard and its wooden church.
but in olden times it belonged to the Volga Mountain Tatars. … Of the Tatar settlement traces could still be seen to this hour, consisting of ruined walls. There were only three of them; on the south side the steep bank of the Volga served as protection. They were built of limestone quarried on the Volga
Working translation
Original wording
vor Alters aber gehörte er den wolgaischen Bergtatarn. … Von dem tatarischen Wohnplatze waren noch bis diese Stunde Spuren zu sehen, welche in verfallenen Mauern bestanden. Es waren ihrer nur drey an der Zahl; auf der Mittagsseite aber diente das steile Ufer der Wolga zum Schutz. Sie waren von Kalksteinen, die man an der Wolga gebrochen hatte, aufgeführt
About 'Volga Mountain Tatars' (Tatars of the Volga's high right bank)
A grave mound with furnaces: laboratory or metalworker's tomb?
Editorial contextNear a Don Cossack farmstead Lepekhin examined a grave mound that had been dug open. The top of the page is damaged, but it can be made out that inside were furnace-like structures, slag, pieces of crucibles and a human skeleton, and that much iron had been found. He decides it is more likely a tomb than a workshop, because 'the old Tatars' buried people of rank with the tools of their trade, and concludes that the old inhabitants of the Volga were skilled in all the useful arts.
that the old Tatars had the custom of burying persons of distinguished rank and station with all the tools and gear they had chiefly worked with in their lifetime. For the rest, this mound may be a Tatar laboratory or the tomb of a famous metallurgist among them; it is all one to me.
Working translation
Original wording
daß die alten Tatarn im Gebrauch hatten, Personen, deren Rang und Stand sich auszeichnete, mit alle dem Geräthe und Zubehör zur Erde zu bestatten, womit sie in ihrem Leben vornehmlich zu schaffen gehabt hatten. Uebrigens mag dieser Hügel ein tatarisches Laboratorium, oder das Grabmahl eines berühmten Metallurgen unter ihnen seyn; das ist mir einerley.
About 'The old Tatars' and the ancient inhabitants of the Volga country
Keep in mind
Calling the mound Tatar is Lepekhin's inference from what he had read about Tatar burial; the damaged scan hides the full description of the finds.
Paying the bride price by instalments
Editorial contextA Tatar groom had to pay a bride price (kalym). If he could not pay at once, the bride stayed with her father until the whole sum was paid off bit by bit, but meanwhile the groom could visit her secretly, a custom called 'going to the bosom', with strict limits. Lepekhin adds that these visits let the groom get to know his bride and, if he found something amiss, cancel the match and recover part of the price. The mullah then completes the marriage by asking set questions three times, answered by the groom's helper and the matchmaker.
otherwise the bride stays with her father until the groom has paid off the whole sum little by little. Meanwhile the groom has the right to visit his bride secretly from time to time, which they call 'going to the bosom' … for the groom's liberty may extend only as far as the bride's bosom, and no further.
Working translation
Original wording
widrigenfalls bleibt die Braut so lange bey dem Vater, bis der Bräutigam die ganze Summe nach und nach abgezahlet hat. Indessen hat der Bräutigam das Recht, seine Braut insgeheim von Zeit zu Zeit zu besuchen, welches bey ihnen an den Busen gehen heißt … denn nur bis auf den Busen der Braut, aber weiter nicht, darf sich die Freyheit des Bräutigams erstrecken.
About Volga Tatars
Gravestones of a princess and a man from Samarkand
Editorial contextThe journal prints some fifty epitaphs from Bulgary's grave mounds, copied in 1722 on Peter the Great's orders and translated into Russian by an akhun, a local translator and an Armenian (for the Armenian stones). Each begins 'The Lord is the living and immortal God' and gives a name and a Muslim year: a man 'from the city of Samarkand', a patriarch from Shirvan, a woman 'from the kingdom of Bulgaria', and this princess Sara, daughter of Achmet, who died in the year 670 of the Hijra (1271 or 1272). A translator's footnote notes that the year 623 (1226) appears most often and guesses there was an epidemic that year.
The Lord is the living and immortal God. This is the resting place of the most godly, very merciful, very beautiful, high-born and spotless, venerable and most faithful princess Sara, daughter of Achmet. She died in the year of Mohammed 670.
Working translation
Original wording
Der Herr ist der lebendige und unsterbliche Gott. Dies ist die Grabstätte der überaus gottseligen, sehr barmherzigen, sehr schönen, hochgebornen und unbefleckten, verehrungswürdigen und vielgläubigen Fürstin Sara, Tochter Achmets. Sie starb im Jahr von Mahomed 670.
About Muslim inhabitants of medieval Bulgar (epitaphs in 'Tatar script')
Keep in mind
A translation of a translation (Arabic-script original, then Russian, then German); names may be distorted.
A mosque in every village, plain inside
Editorial contextEvery Tatar village Lepekhin saw on the Cheremshan had its own mosque (metschet) and clergyman, and larger villages two or three. The mosques were bare of ornament except for a carpet on the wall and another on the floor at the place of the akhun, the senior cleric. He goes on to explain the ranks of Tatar clergy (akhun, mullah and abyz, muezzin), how only the akhun may wear the turban, and how the clergy judge quarrels and punish offenders by the Koran.
The Tatars who live on the Cheremshan are, as far as I have seen of them, all of the Mohammedan religion, and every village has its mosque and its clergyman … In their mosques there is nothing ornamental to be seen, except at the place of the chief clergyman, the akhun.
Working translation
Original wording
Die Tatarn, welche am Tscheremschan wohnen, sind, so viel ich ihrer habe zu sehen bekommen, alle mohamedanischer Religion, und jedes Dorf hat seine Metschet und seinen Geistlichen … In ihren Metscheten ist nichts von Zierrathen zu sehen, außer an dem … Platz des vornehmsten Geistlichen des Achun.
About Volga Tatars (Muslim farming villages)
Keep in mind
Marginal headings printed beside the text break into the OCR line; they are left out with ellipses.
A father's duty: school and an early marriage
Editorial contextFrom what Tatars told him, Lepekhin picked out two rules he thought did them credit and could serve as an example to many fathers. A Tatar father who did not send his son to school, to learn reading, writing and religion, was held to commit an unforgivable sin, and it was an equally serious fault to leave one's children long unmarried out of stubbornness or greed.
From their accounts I have noted two things that I cannot pass over in silence, [which not only] redound to the credit of the Tatars but also serve as an example to many fathers. … it is counted an unforgivable sin if he does not put [his son] into school, both to learn to read and write and [to be] instructed in religion.
Working translation
Original wording
Aus ihren Erzählungen habe ich zweyerley bemerkt, das ich nicht verschweigen kann, … den Tatarn zum Ruhm gereicht, sondern auch vielen Vätern zum Exempel dienet. … wird es für eine unverzeihliche Sünde angerechnet, wenn er … nicht in die Schule thut, sowohl um lesen und schreiben zu lernen, … der Religion unterrichtet zu werden.
About Volga Tatars
Keep in mind
A few words are lost at the left edge of the scan; the gaps are marked.
The town the locals said had sunk into the earth
Editorial contextAt Uvek the ground sometimes caved in over deep stone cellars. The local people took these cellars for 'sunken stone buildings' and believed the whole town had sunk into the earth when the ground broke open, with many other tales Lepekhin thought too odd to repeat. He dismisses this as the chatter of the common people and prefers his own explanation: a Tatar town destroyed by an enemy, whose buried cellars remained.
The common people believe it sank into the earth when the ground broke open, because one sometimes finds places where the earth has fallen into deep stone cellars lying beneath and broken through, and these cellars they take for sunken stone buildings. To this they add many other little tales and chatter, too strange to be repeated.
Working translation
Original wording
Das gemeine Volk glaubt, er sey in die Erde durch einen Durchbruch derselben versunken, weil man zuweilen Stellen findet wo die Erde sich in die darunter liegenden tiefen steinernen Keller hineingestürzt hat und durchgebrochen ist, welche Keller sie für versunkene steinerne Gebäude halten; diesem fügen sie noch viele andere Mährgen und ein Gewäsche bey, welches zu wunderlich ist, als daß man es anführen könnte.
About Russian peasants of the Saratov district, about the old Tatar site
Keep in mind
Folk belief reported and rejected by Lepekhin; he saw the collapsed cellars himself.
Elephant bones by the Volga: war elephants, not the Flood
Editorial contextA broken elephant tusk nearly a metre long had washed out of a river bank, and human bones and broken iron spearheads had been found nearby. Lepekhin sets aside the theories that the far north was once hot, that the Flood carried the beasts there, or that they were freaks of nature. He argues instead that Asian peoples trained elephants for war, that these animals were buried only a few hundred years ago, and that Tatar-style armies would never have bothered to saw off the tusks.
That some of the Asiatic peoples trained elephants for fighting and battle is, in my opinion, surely a well-known fact. Accordingly my view is that these foreign corpses were buried not far from the Volga not many thousands but a few hundred years ago. … [another thing is] to saw off elephant tusks and drag them away, especially when we consider the way the Tatars are used to going to war.
Working translation
Original wording
Daß aber die asiatischen Völker zum Theil Elephanten zum Gefecht und zur Schlacht abgerichtet haben, ist ja wohl, meines Erachtens, eine bekannte Sache. Und diesemnach ist meine Meynung, daß diese ausländischen Leichen nicht vor vielen tausend, sondern vor etlichen hundert Jahren nicht weit von der Wolga begraben worden sind. … Elephantenzähne abzusägen und mit fortzuschleppen, zumal wenn wir die Art bedenken, wie die Tatarn zu Felde zu ziehen pflegen.
About 'Asiatic peoples' and Tatar armies (Lepekhin's theory)
Keep in mind
He saw the tusk; the war-elephant explanation is his own guess. Such tusks are now known to be fossil mammoth ivory, and he himself mentions 'mammoth bones' from Siberia on the same page.
Cave spirits that steal Tatar calves
Editorial contextThe Tatars who guided Lepekhin to the warm caves near Tabynsk would not go near the entrance, let alone inside. They told him that spirits lived in the caves and often dragged calves and small livestock down the holes, and many swore they had seen the spirits, in human shape, hauling Tatar cattle inside. Lepekhin blames 'old wives' chatter' and goes in anyway.
The Tatars did not dare go near the cave, … and told us incredible fables about the spirits living in these caves, which besides frightening them also did them harm, often dragging calves and other small livestock into the holes that lead inside; they assured us that many of them had been eyewitnesses of how the spirits, in human shape, had hauled the Tatars' cattle in.
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Original wording
Die Tatarn getrauten sich nicht nahe an die Höle zu treten, … und erzählten uns unbegreifliche Fabeln, von den in diesen Hölen wohnenden Geistern, welche außer der Furcht ihnen auch Schaden zufügten, indem sie nicht selten Kälber und anderes kleines Vieh in die hineinführenden Löcher zögen; sie versicherten uns viele von ihnen wären Augenzeugen davon gewesen, wie die Geister in Menschengestalt der Tatarn Vieh hineingeschleppt hätten.
About Tatars of the village of Kurmanaevo near Tabynsk
Keep in mind
Local belief reported by a sceptical outsider.
Milk that makes you drunk: a German chemist scoffs
Editorial contextLepekhin describes how the baptized Kalmyks distil fermented mare's milk into a spirit, with two kettles joined by a tube sealed with clay, and says he saw it more than once, as Professor Gmelin had reported. Foreign chemists called this a fable. His German translator adds a footnote quoting the chemist Caspar Neumann, who had never seen a Kalmyk or Tatar: Neumann found it hard to believe that the 'Tartars' could achieve such a thing and thought the recipe (with millet and barley added) looked 'truly Tartarish'. The translator uses the quotation to show how prejudice misled even a careful scientist.
that such a rare thing should be brought about by the Tartars, who, as far as I know, have shown the world few or no physical or chemical discoveries and are hardly likely to; … whereupon I cannot deny that at first sight the ingredients struck me as truly Tartarish
Working translation
Original wording
daß dergleichen seltene Begebenheit von den Tartarn zuwege gebracht würde, als welche, meines Wissens, wohl wenig oder keine physikalisch-chymische Erfindungen der Welt dargethan, auch wohl nicht leicht darthun werden; … da ich denn nicht läugnen kann, daß mir im ersten Anblick die Ingredientien wahrhaftig recht tartarisch vorkamen
About Baptized Kalmyks, and 'Tartars' in general as imagined by a German chemist
Keep in mind
The sneer is Neumann's, quoted in order to refute it; Lepekhin himself vouches for the milk spirit from what he saw.