TARTAR, Tatar, or Tahtah, a term very vaguely and variously aPplied, but generally to Mongoloid races in High Asia. It is now out of use by all ethnologists. The Bhot of the Hitn alayan frontier of Tibet are called Tartars, as also are the Turks of Khoten and Yarkand or Little Bokhara, and the Manchu of China are called a Tartar dynasty. The Tartars of China, however, are Manchurian Tangus. The peoples who inhabit the vast regions of High Asia, bounded on the south by India, China, and Persia, on the east by the Sea of Japan, on the west by the rivers disetnbogue into the Caspian Sea and Black Sea, and on the north by the Frozen Ocean, are all known in Europe by the collective name of T. artar. The term is applied to numerous half civilised nations, who greatly differ from each other, to— ' The Tartars of the Oxus, the king's guard, First, with black sheepskin caps and with long spears • Large men, large steeds, who from Bokhara come And Khiva, and ferment the milk of mares : Next, the more temperate Turkrnans of the south, The Tukas and the lances of Salore And those from Attruck and the Ca'spian sands • Light men, and on light steeds, who only drink The acrid milk of camels and their wells : And then a swarm of wandering horse, who came From far, and a more doubtful service own'd — The Tartars of Ferghana from the banks Of the Jaxartes, men with scanty beards And close-cut scull-caps ; and those wilder hordes Who roam over Kipcbak and the northern waste Kalmuks and unkempt Kuzzaks, tribes who etre' Nearest the Pole, and wandering ICirghizes Y Who carne on shaggy ponies from Pamere.' Les peuples qui habitent ces vastes contrees de la haut Asie, bornees au midi par l'Inde, la Chine, et la Perse, l'orient par la mer du Japon, l'occideut par les fleuves qui se jettent dans le mer Caspienne et la Pont Euxin, au nord enfin par la trier glaciale, sont connus sous le nom vulgaire et collectif de Tartars. . . . Quoi qu'il en Boit de l'origine de ce nom des Tatars, les Europeens, qui l'ont legerement altere, s'en servent indifferemment pour designer une foule de nations It demi civilisees, qui different beaucoup entre elles, ainsi que la surite de cet ouvrage le fera vois. Dans ce Bens, je crois qu'il est bon de conserver a ces nations le nom cellectif de Tartares, quoique corrompu preferablement celui de Tatars, qui paroit plus correct mais qui appartient a un seul tribu ne doit pas servir designer les autres tribus en general.' It was frotn Tartary those people came, who, under tbe successive names of Cymbriau, Kelt, and Gaul, possessed all the northern part of Europe. The Goths, Huns, Alans, Swedes,
Vandals, and Franks were but swarms of the same hive. The name of Tatar, the terror of Asia and Europe, was applied promiscuously to all the nomadic warriors whom Asia in bygone years poured forth over Europe. Originally Tatar was a name for the Mongolic races, but, through their political ascendency in Asia after Chengiz Khan, it became usual to call all the tribes which were under Mongolian sway by the name of Tatar.
In linguistic works, Tataric is now used in two several senses. Following the example of writers of the middle ages, Tataric, like Scythian in Greek, has been fixed upon as the general term comprising all languages spoken by tbe nomadic tribes of Asia. Hence it is used sometimes in the sarne sense in which we use Turanian. Secondly, Tataric has become the name of that class of Turanian languages of which the Turkish is the most prominent member. While the Mongolic class—that which, in fact, has the greatest claims to the name of Tataric— is never so called, it has become an almost uni versal custom to apply this name to the third or Turkic branch of the Aral-Altaic division, and the races belonging to the branch have in many instances thernselves adopted the name. These Turki, or, as they are more commonly called, Tataric races, were settled on the northern side of the Caspian Sea and on the Black Sea, and were known as Komanes, Pesheneg, and Bulger, when conquered by the Mongolic army of the son of Chengiz Khan, who founded the Kapchakian empire, extending from the Dniester to the Yemba and the Kirghiziau steppes. Russia, for two centuries, was under the sway of these khans, known a.s the khans of the Golden Horde. This empire was dissolved towards the end of the fifteenth century, and several smaller kingdoms rose out of its ruins, among which Krim, ICasan, and Astracan were the most important. The princes of these kingdoms still gloried in their descent from Chengiz Khan, and had hence a right to the name of Mongol or Tatar. But their armies, and subjects also, who were of Turki blood, received the name of their princes ; and their language continued to be called Tataric even after the tribes by whom they were spoken had been brought under the RUSSiall sceptre, and were no longer governed by khans of Mongolic or Tataric origin.