MORDVA - SUPRA-ETHNOS; MOKSHA, ERZYA - SUB-ETHNOSES? (Experience of interdisciplinary dialogue)

Abstract

The prominent Mordovian historian-ethnologist N.F. Mokshin chronologically and consistently presented information about Mordovians, Moksha and Erzya in the mass-political publication "Mordovia through the eyes of foreign and Russian travelers". This information was taken from Iordan, Konstantin Bagryanorodnyj, Rubruk, Joseph, Strabo, Ptolemy Claudius, Abu Ishaq al'-Farisi al' Istakhri, Abu Zayd al-Balkhi, Ibn-Haukal', Julian, H. Fren, P.S. Savel'ev, A.Ya. Garkavi; “The Tale of Bygone Years” (Povest Vremennykh let), V.N. Tatishchev, P.I. Rychkov, P.S. Pallas, Johann-Gottlieb Georgi and others recent and modern historians and ethnologists. In the proposed publication, a comparativist, a specialist in comparative historical linguistics, gives consistent comments to those presented by N.F. Mokshin's views, assumptions and conclusions of travelers, geographers, historians, ethnologists, among whom there was not a single professional linguist. In particular, there are doubts about the rapprochement of the modern ethnonym Erzya with exoethnonyms: Aors (Strabo), Arsiites (Ptolemy Claudius), Aris (Joseph), which are offered other explanations. It is clarified that Artania, as one of the three names of the Eastern Slavs (Rus, Slavia, Artania) mentioned by K. Bagryanorodnyj, should be read [Art̠āniya] in the Latin transliteration of the Arabic original. [Arsaija / Ersanija] readings are distorted; therefore, the archetype of the modern ethnonym Erzya is erroneous. The idea is that the urbanonym ‘Art(a)’ and the name of the country Artania both have a Turkic-Bulgarian origin and the real basis ‘Art’ (“back”; “backside”; “north”, etc.), being the equivalent of the ancient name of northeastern Russia - Zales’e, which had not only a geographical, but political dimension.