Home – Home – Jornals – Humanitarian sciences in Siberia 2019 number

Apart from the main versions of the origin of the Chuvash people, there are quite curious ones. The article deals with two versions: Syanbi and Yuhuani. As is well known, those tribes lived and migrated in South Siberia. Syanbi which were ancient Mongolian nomads originally lived in the north-eastern part of Internal Mongolia. They separated from the Donghu tribal confederation as early as before Christ. It is common knowledge that originally Syan-bi is not an ethnographic name, but a geographic one. Peoples of the Syanbi race named themselves by the names of those mountains and valleys where they lived. In this particular case, the mountain Syan-bi-shan is meant, now it is called Great Khingan Mountain. It is believed that Syanbi, Uhuani and Donghu were ancient Mongolian tribes. The relation of the ethnonym syanbi with sebir is just one of a number of working hypotheses of the Chuvash origin which is far from being irreproachable. Anyway, in the 4th century, the Syanbi were still the northern neighbours of China, and by the 6th century they dispersed among the tribes of the southern part of West Siberia and China. The historical ancestors of the Chuvash (Savars/Savirs) were fixed in the Caucasus no later than the 2nd century A.D. Even if we leave aside all other aspects of ethnogenesis, identification of Savirs/Suvars with Syanbi in the spatiotemporal terms is untenable. This assumption only relies upon the remote and doubtful consonance of the ethnonyms. Uhuani belong to the Montolian anthropological family and trace their origin to the Donghu tribes. They are known in history by their relations with Syanbi and North Chinese tribes. The attempt to identify the Uhuani with East European Ogur tribes is untenable. Orientalist scholars tend to believe that Uhuani are ancestors of Avars. Such being the case, the attempt to speak of Uhuani as historical ancestors of the Chuvash is absolutely hopeless. Using an integrated historical and anthropological analysis the author comes to conclusion that none of the two versions (Syanbi and Uhuani ones) have any relevance to the history of the Chuvash people’s origin.