MAGARS, MAGYARS, MUGARS & MOGHULS

Fri Apr 22 00:25:38 UTC 2005

Magar language is a TB language. The central Magar and Kham Magar languages are different. The Kaike Magar language is even different.

'Langhali' [not LAGghalI] is a Central Magar Language term meaning 'villager or neighbour' [Langha > village with prefix ali> of or belonging to].  It means of the village.

We have been able to found a voluntary social organization in New York - Langhali Association USA. last year.

I myself am a Magar and hence 'Langhali' also..  There are lot more other books that you have cited. Does one have to accept whatever  an otsiders write ?

As far as  I understand, the Magars [Langhalis] have never claimed that Magyars are their ancestors. But a team of the Magyars of Hungary have visited in early 90s  in search of their ancestors.

“In search for his ancestors, a Hungarian researcher, Alexander Choma De Korus [?], while en route via Lhasha of Tibet to Mongolia, died in Darjeeling in 1842. There is a memorial tablet erected in honor of him in Darjeeling” - one of the team members had written in a faxed message to me also.

Another Hungarian scholar Gyula Laszlo [The Magyars: Their Life and Civilization 1996] has ruled out any nearness between Magars and Magyars.

 Both Dor Bahadur Bista ‘Fatalism and Development [1994] and F. B. Hamilton “An Account of the Kingdom of Nepal’ [1819] write Magars and the current Shah kings are of same origin.

We also believe in it as both the Shah Kings and Magars share exactly same cultures eve today. The priests in the king’s guardian deity are always a Magar. There are lots of stuff on Magars and others in Brian Hodgson’s Essays on the Language, Literature and Religion of Nepal and Tibet [1857].

Perceval Landon’s Nepal [1928], Michael Oppitz’s research article   - The Wild Boar and the Plough: Origin Stories of the Northern Magars – in Kailash [1983]. Eden Vansittart has written profoundly on Magars in his ‘The Gurkhas’ [1906]. Recently, John Whelpton has also written in his book ‘King Soldiers & Priests in Nepalese Politics and the Rise of Jung Bahadur [1830-1857] published in 1991.

The northern Magars are subdivided into Buda, Gharti, Pun and Roka. Some writers have written the Huns invaded Nepal and they became ‘Pun’.

There are lot to write here.

Thank you,

BKR

Allen W Thrasher <athr at loc.gov> wrote:
George van Driem, Languages of the Himalayas, Brill, 2001 (Handbuch der Orientalistik, Section 2. India. vol. 10), v. 2, p. 780, has this to say (I have rendered his standard transliteration into Harvard-Kyoto):

"Before the 1990 revolution, a rare Magar periodical entitled LaGghalI [sic: it should be LAGghalI- AT] appeared irregularly. In the atmosphere of political fervour prevailing in the years following the Nepalese revolution of 1990, various booklets were published which made fantastic claims. One such claim [identified BrAhmI script as of Magar origin]. Another claim was that the Magars are related to the Magyars or Hungarians, a fact which is argued solely on the basis of the similarity of the name, e.g. BuDA Magar (VS2053b). The latter claim must, however, be seen as just a recent episode in a long tradition of pseudo-scholarly publications attempting to relate the Magyars with any and every distant group. [Uxbond 1928 used this as part of a theory linking with Magyars with the Mundas and as far afield as the Maoris.]

Parts in square brackets are my summary.

Citations:
BuDa Magar, HarSa BahAdur. VS BhAdra 2053b (AD 1996). Magar jAti ra unkA sAmAjik saMskAr. Kathmandu: ZrImatI PuSpAvatI BuDA Magar.

Uxbond, F.A. 1938 Munda-Magyar-Maori, an INdian link bertween the antipodes: new tracks of Hungarian origins. London, Luzac and Co.

Van Driem considers Magar a Bodic language within the Tibeto-Burma, which further subdivision within the Bodic not yet clear. However, he uses the term Magaric to include Magar and Kham.

Allen Thrasher

Allen W. Thrasher, Ph.D.
Senior Reference Librarian
Southern Asia Section
Asian Division
Library of Congress
Jefferson Building 150
101 Independence Ave., S.E.
Washington, DC 20540-4810
tel. 202-707-3732
fax 202-707-1724
athr at loc.gov
The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the Library of Congress.

B. K. Rana
Winter Hill, Massachusetts
United States of America
Tel: 617 233 0158
http://www.geocities.com/bk_rana
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