Великая Хорватия. Этногенез и ранняя история славян Прикарпатского региона - [75]

SHS — Slovanskć historickć studia. Praha.

SK — Seminarium Kondakovianum. Прага.

SI. — Slavia. Praha.

SLA — Slovenskа archeológia. Bratislava.

SN — Slovensko närodopis. Ljubljana.

SO — Slavia Occidentalis. Poznań.

SODF — Südostdeutsche Forschungen. München.

SP — Stratum plus. Кишинёв etc.

SPN — Sprawozdania z prac naukowych Polskiej Akademii Nauk. Warszawa.

SRH — Scriptores rerum Hungaricarum tempore ducum regumque stirpis Arpadianae gestarum / Ed. E. Szentpćtery. Budapestini, 1937–1938. Vol. I–II.

SROA — Sprawozdanie Rzescowskiego Ośrodka Archeologicznego. Rzesców.

SS — Slavica Slovaca. Bratislava.

SSS — Słownik strożytnosci sławiańskich: Encyklopedyczny zarys kultury słowian od zcasów najdawniejszych. Wrocław etc.

SSt — Slovenske Studie. Bratislava.

SТT — Suomalaisen Tiedeakatemian Toimituksia. Helsinki.

UJb — Ungarische Jahubücher. Budapest; Wien.

VAMZ — Vjesnik Arheoloskog muzeja u Zagrebu. Zagreb.

VPS — Vznik a poćdtky Slovanü. Sbomik pro Studium slovanskyh staroźitnosti. Praha.

WA — Wiadomości Archeologiczne.

WBKL — Wiener Beiträge zur Kulturgeschichte und Linguistik. Wien.

WS — Die Welt der Slaven. Halbjahresschrift für Slavistik. München.

WSJ — Wiener Slavistisches Jahrbuch. Wien.

ZĆ — Zgodovinski Casopis. Glasilo Zveze zgodovinskih druStev Slovenije. Ljubljana.

Z£A — Zeitschrift für Archäologie. Berlin.

ZflOF — Zeitschrift für Ortsnamenforschung. München; Berlin.

ZfSHG — Zeitschrift für Schleswig-Holsteinische Geschichte.

ZfSPh — Zeitschrift für slavische Philologie. Heidelberg.

ZHZJ — Zbomik Historijskog zavoda Jugoslovenskei Akademii znanosti і umjetnosti. Zagreb.

ZNŻOJS — Zbomik za narodni źivot i obićaje Jużnih Slavena. Zagreb.

Summary

The permanent contacts with the Iranian-speaking peoples, mostly Sarmathians, were the important feature of the ethnogenesis and the early history of the Slavs in the region near the East Carpathians during the period of their coexistence for several centuries.

The appearance of the ancient tribal union of the Croats with the name of probably Iranian origin had become one of the results of ethnical and cultural synthesis of the Slavs and the Iranians. The Slavs of the Upper Dniester having become the part of the Croatian tribal group inhabited the new territories in Central Europe and the Balkans during the process of the Great Slavonic settlement.

De administrando imperio by Constantine the Porphyrogenitus is the first written test containing the information on the origin and the history of Croats' settling, Great and White Croatias. Both the names, "Great" and "White Croatia", correspond to the traditional geographical nomination known to the contemporary science. Decoding of the symbols of the colour in the names of the peoples and the lands is based mostly on the analogies in the Sino-Tibetan, Iranian, Turkic and Mongolian languages, while the closest parallels for the names with the adjective great are found in the European toponymy.

And still, the simultaneous use of several symbolical names to produce the ethnical and geographical names must be accepted as artificial one. The case of Constantine the Porphyrogenitus' Great and White Croatia ("Great Croatia, called White…") is explained by the intention to agree the contradiction between different, sometimes competitive, versions of the history of the Croats.

The name "Great Croatia" origins in the common Slavonic and European tradition connecting the meanings great and old to indicate the territory the people had lived before at, pre-motherland, sometimes having been already abandoned and kept only in memory.

Byzantine emperor's information on the early Croatian histoiy corresponds to and concerns the meaning of "Great Croatia" as the territory of pre-motherland of the Croatian people the following migrating resulted in new names, that of the land — "White Croatia", and that of the people "White Croats", took place from.

The ideas of Great and White Croatia differ not only as the historical and typological ones, they do not mean the same geographical place. This conclusion is based on the direct indications of Constantine himself compared with the other sources. If one can surely put White Croatia with its White Croats on the Upper Elbe and the Upper Vistula, the land of Great Croatia, the historical pre-motherland for the Croats must be looked for to the East of the Carpathians and may be in Transcarpathia.

The ancient Croats cannot be connected with tribes of the Ants' group, representatives of the Penkovo archaeological culture only. The region the Croats lived in covers the Sclavenian area of the Prague-Corchak archaeological culture including the Smaller Poland. This testifies the Croatian union having formed in the epoch preceding the first reliable Slavonic archaeological cultures — in the Chemyachovo time.

The earliest written evidence of the name connected directly with the ethnonym "Croats" in the form of the anthroponym "Croat" is seen in the inscriptions dated back to the 1–2 c. found in the ancient Greek city of Tanais in the mouth of the Don. The anthroponym "Croat", probably, belonged to the members of the Alanian-Sarmathian tribe living in this region. Their leaders had certain position in the town community of Tanais. The fact, that Croats belonged to the Sarmathian-speaking environment is shown by the morphological similarity of the names: