SARI, one of the Channel islands. See JERSEY—THE CHANNEL IsIsusems. • The root s-ret in this word is in all probability the same as a-rb, so that it has been conjectured the name Sarmaiians has the same ethnological meaning as &phi and Serri. The oldest Greek form of time word (and the only one found in Heredo tus) is SaUrOnial03. The region occupied by the Sarmamians embraced (according to Ptolemy. our chief authority) a portion both of Europe and Asia.-1. The European Sarmaban4 are found as far w. as the Vistula; as far n. as the Yenedicus Sinus (gulf of Riga?), or even further; as far e. as time Crimea and the Don; and as far s. as Dacia. Roughly speaking. their territory corresponded to modern Esthonia, Lithuania, western Bassin, and parts of Poland and Galicia. The priucipul, or at least the best-known nations among the European Sarmatians, were the Pencini and Bastarnue, about Vie mouths of the •Danube, and in Moldavia and Bessarabia; the Jazyges and Roxolani, Kohably in Kherson, Tauris, and Ekaterinoslav; the Venedi and Gythones, about Molt, Memel, and Elbing; and the Avareni, at the sources of the Vistula.-2. The Asiatic Sarmatians are found as far w. as the Tanais (Don), as far e. as the Caspian, as far s. as the Euxine and Caucasus, and as far n. as the water-shed between the rivers that fall into the White sea and the Black, but we have no distinct knowledge of their ter•itorial possessions. North of the Don, in the region now occupied by the.Dou Cossacks, dwelt
the Perierbidt; s.c. of it, about Astrakhan, the Jaxamatre. Beyond the Perierbidi lay the Asrei, the " (Ilippophagi) Sarmatm, the "Royal" and Hyperborean r at Samre. and many others, besides a multitude of nations in the region of the northern Caucasus. The question naturally arises: What were these Sarmatians? The vast extent of territory over which they spread, and the manifest inclusion under the name Sarmatians of different races, as, for example, Goths, Finns, Lithuanians, Circassians, Seythians, and Slaves, prove that the term was loosely used by Ptolemy and his contem pormies, just like the older Herodotean term Scythia, and is not strictly ethuologieal; yet Dr. Latham's view (see Smith's Dictionary of Greek, and Roman Geography, arts. Sarmatia and Scythia), that it designated on the whole-Slavic races, and in particular the north eastern portion of the great Slavic family, may be regarded as tolerably cer tain. • The Sarmatians figure prominently among the barbarians who vexed the north eastern frontiers of the Roman empire.