The Magyar-Uygur Connection

Highly interesting in the quest for the ancient Hungarian homeland have been recent efforts to study the Magyar-Uygur connection. The Uygurs are a people with a Caucasian appearance in the Xinjiang province of China. This region still reflects its ancient role as a meeting place of Chinese civilization and Central Asia's nomadic peoples. Here, members of a dozen ethnic groups outnumber the nationally predominant Han Chinese. The largest among them are the Uygurs, 7 million strong, who still hold fast to their Turkic language.

The Uygurs inhabit the Tarim Basin and a chain of oases between the forbidding Taklamakan and Gobi deserts. Traversing the region is a 4,000 mile trade route used by caravans traveling from China to the shores of the Mediterranean. Taklamakan "in the folklore of the Uygurs means once you get in, you can never get out." Over the centuries the Uygurs have built intricate canal systems for waters originating in the snow-covered mountain ranges to the north. They also dug wells to supply water for growing grains, fruit, vegetables and cotton. At the Uygurs' northern border stretches the Dzungarian Basin, a steppe-like region where dry grain - farming is practiced.

The very name Dzungaria has a striking similarity to Hungaria, the Latin word for Hungary, a word still used in poetic terms in Hungary today. Northeast of Dzungaria lies the Altai Mountain Range, a name used by linguists in defining the Ural-Altaic language group to which Magyar also belongs. Further to the north stretches the Lake Baykal region. It is from here that first the Scythians, then the Huns emerged to conquer the Turanian Plain. The Magyars, Uygurs and the Turks may also have started their migrations from the northeastern part of the Baykal area.

It was not until the 1980s that Hungarian orientalists could finally overcome natural and political barriers to finally take a good look at the Uygurs. They returned impressed by what they had seen, and one after the other gave glowing accounts, documented by audio-visual presentations, of the similarities in facial features, music and folk arts. In addition, reports mention that the Uygurs have an unwritten tradition about their kinship with the Magyars whom they call "vingirs," and who had left many centuries earlier finally emerging as "conquerors" in Europe.

Hungarian Ambiance

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