which they do not know the meaning, handed down from edition to edition through centuries, and at best only approximately suggesting in imperfect Chinese syllables the foreign sounds collected in different places at different times by officers speaking different Chinese dialects, and therefore having different views as to the phonetic value of each syllable. For all these reasons it may not come amiss if I restate our present position in Turkology from its Chinese standpoint, avoiding as many harsh and strange words as possible.

When we talk of the "Turks" and the Turkish group of languages, we must clearly remember that the very word "Turk" only came into existence about the year 500 of our era. In speaking of the ancestors of the Turks, who harassed the Chinese frontiers for at least 700 years before the name Turk was heard and recorded, the term ScythoTurks is often used by Europeans; or some call them Huns; partly because the nomads who attacked China had manners similar to those of the Huns who attacked Europe, and partly because the Chinese called them Hiung-nu, or Hün-nu, meaning (on the mere face of the words) “Hiung slaves," it being thought possible by some that the words Hun and Hiung may be etymologically one and the same. In alluding to the language of this ancient race, in which many so-called Turkish words can be clearly discerned even in their distorted Chinese transliterative forms, we must therefore not lose sight of the fact that, for historical purposes, the word "Turkish is for convenience' sake here used retrospectively, and in no way endows the Turks in the strict sense of the word with an existence longer than 1,500 years, counting backwards from to-day.

By a careful study of Chinese history, either through the medium of translations, or, better still, in the original, it can easily be seen that the Turks of the sixth century were merely a re-shuffle of a few Hiung-nu clans: indeed, apart from the general evidence which demonstrates this fact, there are the specific and positive statements of the Chinese,

repeated several times, directly and indirectly, under different sets of circumstances. Then, as now, the whole of the vast tract between Manchuria, Lake Balkash, Siberia, and Tibet, was extremely thinly populated, and probably at no time contained more than 500,000 tents, or families, all told. At no time was the most powerful nomad ruler able to command the prompt services of more than about 100,000 horse-archers on one or two rare occasions perhaps 200,000-while the minor chieftains, scattered about in the numerous oases, might enjoy a more or less independent position with a fifth, a tenth, or a twentieth of that number, paying tribute to the Great Khan of the Nomads in hides or cattle, and doing military service at the caprice of the leading power for the time being, until some revolution, famine, or other great change should bring on a period of revolt and anarchy, causing the same clans or tribes to split up or amalgamate under a fresh hegemony, according to the exigencies of the hour. After the Chinese had succeeded in finally breaking up the Hiung-nu power, the various Tungusic tribes living farther east had an "innings" for several centuries, and then an energetic adventurer, who seems to have been of mixed origin, succeeded in welding together the nomad empire of the Jeu-jen or Jwan-jwan, which some historians have thought themselves justified in identifying with the Avars of Western history. It was during the few decades when this Jeu-jen power was unmistakably in the ascendant that a clan of the Ashino or Asena family of Hiung-nu settled near the eastern end of what is now known as the Chinese province of Kan Suhnot very far from the well-known lake called Koko-Norserving their masters the Jeu-jen as blacksmiths and workers in iron. One of the mountains in this iron-producing locality bore the appearance of a helmet, which, according to the Chinese, was in the Turkish language of that day called "Türk," and gave the Asena clan that name. Turkologues disagree as to whether there is in any modern Turkish dialect such an alleged word having the precise signification

of "helmet"; but in any case the Chinese statement is clear and positive, and there seem to be many other words, even in the Turkish inscriptions, now quite obsolete in all Turkish dialects. In course of time the hereditary chieftain of the Turks felt himself strong enough to demand a marriage alliance with his suzerain; this presumption of his led to a bloody war, and to the ultimate downfall of the Jeu-jen power. The Turkish chieftain took to himself the title of khagan, which in that form (i.e., replacing the older dignity of khan already long in use among the Tunguses) had been first assumed by his master the supreme ruler of the Jeu-jen; formed alliances with the Tungusic Emperors then ruling part of North China; and on the reconquest of both North and South China by a purely Chinese dynasty (towards the end of the sixth century), found himself able to deal with Byzantium, Persia, and China on practically equal terms. This story of the rise of the Turkish Empire has already been shortly told in the English Historical Review (July, 1896), where full details of the diplomatic dealings connected with that important Asiatic revolution will be found the matter is merely alluded to here again in general terms in order that the subject of our present paper may be led up. to in a consecutive and intelligible way. The Chinese. dynasty of Sui which thus succeeded, for the first time after a break of many centuries, in displacing all Tartar, Tibetan, and Turko-Tungusic adventurers or conquerors from their irregular positions as rulers in North China, was a very powerful house, and made its influence strongly felt even in such widely-separated regions as Corea and Siam; but, unfortunately, the second Emperor was a madman of the Caius Caligula type, and his extravagances at last led to a general revolt. One of his generals, connected by marriage with the Turks, and experienced in Northern frontier diplomacy, after some time succeeded, with the valuable aid of his own brave son, known to history as T'ang T'aitsung, in establishing the new ruling house of T'ang. This seems to have been a very easy matter, so far as South

China was concerned; but there were long and bloody wars with the Turks before anything like peace could be restored along the line of the Great Wall. While these political changes were being made in China, the Turkish power had split up into the rival empires of the Western Turks of Lake Balkash and the Eastern Turks of Kara-Balgassun (near Genghiz Khan's later ordo of Karakorum). The former had more to do with the Persians and the Arabs than with the Chinese; but Chinese influence was always more or less felt even there, and of course the main object of Chinese policy was then (as now) to endeavour to set by the ears the rival barbarians who menaced them. The most powerful of the later Eastern khans was Gheri, or Khieli, who was overlord of the whole of High Asia between Siberia, Tibet, Corea, and Persia; and in his own more immediately governed Eastern portion, corresponding to what we now call Mongolia, gave a vast deal of trouble to the Chinese. But the T'ang Emperor T'ai-tsung, who himself had a streak of Turkish blood in his veins through his mother, was a brave captain; well served, too, by capable generals. Gheri's power was completely broken in 630, when the khagan himself was taken captive: he died in honourable confinement in 633, and for the next half-century the whole of Turkdom was loosely governed by rival Turkish chiefs acting under the supervision of Chinese proconsuls. During this period of subordination the power of the Western Turks and extreme Northern Turks, or Ouigours, began to develop at the expense of the Turks proper, whose sphere of activity always had its centre at shifting-points lying between the Russian frontiers of to-day and the Great Wall of China.

But the Turkish chieftains serving the Chinese as native administrators soon began to chafe under foreign restraint, and towards 680 two princes of the Asena house raised the standard of revolt. Nothing much came of their efforts until, in 682-3, a sort of grand-nephew of Gheri, called Kutlug, after making some successful raids upon the Tölös and Ouigour tribes of the Selenga, established his position

firmly as khagan. He was assisted in this enterprise by the defection of Ashite, or Asete, Yüan-chên, a Turk who had been a page-hostage at the Chinese Court, and who had, since his father's death, taken over the hereditary command, under the Chinese proconsulate, of a mediatized tribe near the modern Kuku-koto-the Tenduc of Marco Polo. The Chinese official narrative goes on to give an account of the numerous raids made by these two men, of the death of Asete in a battle with the Türgäs branch of the Western Turks, and of the death of Kutlug in 692. I must note here, in view of certain knotty points which will be raised anon, that Asete was the next Turkish clan in point of nobility after that of Asena, whilst Yüan-chên is a purely Chinese personal name such as the renegade Turk would probably soon abandon in the freedom of his native deserts. Kutlug was succeeded by his brother Merchör, or Meghchör, who reigned till 716 with great power and glory, completely regaining the lost empire of Gheri, re-establishing his indirect authority over the Western Turks and the Tungusic provinces, defeating the Chinese in numerous frontier battles, and carrying his influence into Persia and Tibet. In his old age Merchör grew tyrannical and grasping, and the consequence was that the outlying tribes began to fall off; it was after a successful campaign on the River Tola against the Bayirku tribe that he fell into an ambush and was killed. Kutlug's second son, the teghin of Köl, now made a pronunciamento in favour of his elder brother Mercren, or Meghkren, murdered nearly the whole of Merchör's relatives and high officers, and set Mercren upon the khanly throne with the title of Bilga khagan. One of the very few who escaped massacre was an aged statesman named Tunyukuk, who was spared by reason of his daughter having married the new ruler; but even an old man of seventy was thought too dangerous to retain at headquarters, and so Tunyukuk was deprived of his ordo offices, and sent back to govern his own province or tribe. Meanwhile, the Türgäs and the Tunguses, who had grown restive under Merchör's tyranny,