was called Lajma; the rain-deity, Letuwanis. The whole realm of nature was animated by good and evil divine beings, on which the life of man was dependent at every turn and step. Among such we find the deities Lel and Lado, who were also known to the Slavs, then Ragutis, the deity of joy and marriage, Letuwa, the deity of happiness, also Andaj, Diweriks, Mjedjej, Nadjej, and Telawelda. Besides the sun, fire was held in great veneration. The eternal fire of znicz (snic), which was under the protection of the goddess Praurima, burnt in the temple of Perkunas in front of his image. There were sacred lakes and groves, as among the Greeks and the Romans. The affinity of the Lithuanian with the Slavonic and Germanic religion proves that these nations formerly lived together. But when we discover that the Lithuanians, like the Teutons, worshipped the god of thunder, whose sacred tree was the oak, and whose temples stood in oak groves, we realise how hard it is to single out the genuinely Lithuanian element. The chief shrine of Perkunas was situated somewhere near Romowo in Prussia. But when Prussia was conquered by the Poles it was removed into the interior, to the confluence of the Dubissa and Niemen, and further east to the Wilija, in the direction of Kernowo, and lastly to Wilna.

The sacerdotal system was highly developed. The high priest, who had his seat at the chief sanctuary, was called Krywe-Krywejto. Subordinate to him were all the priests, male and female (Wajdelotes), whose principal occupation was to offer sacrifices. A higher grade among them was formed by the Krewy, to whom were intrusted the superintendence and care of the temple; their badge was a stick of peculiar shape. A life of chastity was obligatory on them. The power of the head priest, Krywe-Krywejto extended over every tribe. High and low bowed before his sign, which he sent by his Wajdelotes. One-third part of the booty taken in war belonged to him. Ample sacrifices were made to the Lithuanian gods, mostly animals, occasionally prisoners of war. They were always burnt-offerings. The old Krywe-Krywejto himself, like other old men also, is said not infrequently to have mounted the pyre, so strongly was the prevailing belief in the purifying power of fire. The priests also, in default of every sort of political government, disseminated public order and civilization, the Krywe-Krywejto being as it were, the head chieftain of all the tribe. Even among the above-mentioned Kunigas we must only imagine to ourselves priests. A proof that the same system. obtained among the Slavs and Teutons is afforded by the word kunigas (kuning= king), which among the Slavs denotes both prince and priest; knjaz (prince), knez (czechish priest), or in Polish ksiadz (priest), and ksiaze (prince). The priests were in possession of a method of writing. The chronicler of the Teutonic Order, Peter of Dusburg (c. 1326), asserts that writing was unknown to the Lithuanians; but this can only be true of the common people. Traces of a secret writing have been found. The Runic characters were probably familiar to all the northern peoples, -Slavs, Teutons, Lithuanians, and Fins.

If Lithuania had not encountered any obstacles in its expansion, a theocratic monarchy would probably have been formed there. External dangers led to the severance of the spiritual from the military power, and thus to the development of a secular government. The legend was current among the people that Widemut -perhaps connected with the lawgiver Odin, common to all Germanic tribeshad laid the foundation of a social and political organisation. Family life was dependent on the priests, who administered justice according to ancient custom.

Peter of Dusberg relates that the Lithuanians held meetings in sacred places. They occupied their time in agriculture and cattle-breeding, drank mares' milk, and were skilled in brewing beer (alus) and mead. Rich men drank from horns, poor men from wooden cups. Autumn was a season of mirth in the villages. Guests were treated with especial attention, hospitably entertained, and not dismissed until they were drunk. The Lithuanians learnt the art of war by necessity. They fought with bow and arrow, sword and lance, and also with battle-axe and sling. The oldest weapon was an oaken club. The gods were consulted before every campaign. Clad in the skins of aurochs and bears, with caps (neromka) on their heads, they marched to battle amid the flare of trumpets, sometimes on foot, sometimes mounted. On their military standards were depicted figures of deities, and men with bears' heads, or two wreaths, blue and yellow; the galloping horseman who first appears in the coat of arms of Lithuania proper was ultimately adopted by the whole race. They contrived to cross the rivers in boats made of the hides of aurochs, or by holding on to the tails of their horses, as we are told the Hunga rians and Tartars did. The home-coming warriors, if victors, were received by the women and girls with dance and song, but were treated with contempt after a defeat, while fugitives were punished by death. The Lithuanians also believed in a life after death. They equipped the dead man with all that he had required on earth, weapons, ornaments, and clothes, horses, hawks, slaves, and wives. They were then all burnt, and their ashes laid in the grave. A funeral feast was held in commemoration.

(b) The Fins, Bulgarians, and Khazars. The Fins occupied originally the entire north of modern Russia. Their various tribes were settled as easterly neighbours of the Lithuanians between the White Sea, the Ural, and the Volga. The river Dwina can be roughly regarded as the boundary between Lithuanians and Fins, although some Lithuanians were to be found on the right bank of the Dwina. On the shores of the Baltic were settled the Livonians and the Esthonians, who still survive in Livonia and Esthonia. Besides these chief tribes, Wesses or Besses, Meren, Muromians, Tcheremisses, Jamen, Mordwinen, Tchuden, Permians, and others are mentioned in the Russian chronicles; they were settled more to the south, and were called Tchuden by the Slavs. Here once lay the Finnish kingdom of Biarmia, probably the modern Perm. We possess very scanty information, derived from the Scandinavian Vikings who made their way there, about this kingdom so famous in northern legends. At the time of Alfred the Great Ot(t)er was the first to come into these regions, then Wulstan. In the days of Olaf the Holy (1026) the Vikings Karli and Torer Hund followed. They professed to be merchants, brought furs, and then apparently withdrew, in order to lull the suspicions of the inhabitants. In reality, however, they were preparing for a raid, which Torer conducted, as an expert in Finnish magic. Their goal was the tombs of the Biarmians and the temple of their chief god Jumala. Marking their path by stripping the bark from the trees, they reached the meadow where the temple stood, surrounded by a high wooden paling; the guardians had gone away. The Vikings dug up the sepulchral mounds and found a quantity of gold. There stood in the temple an image of Jumala, on whose knees was placed a plate filled with gold; this Torer carried off. Karli, however, struck off the head of the idol, in order to seize its golden necklace. The guards rushed up at the noise, blew

their horns, and the Vikings escaped their pursuers with difficulty. This is almost the only account we have of Finnish Biarmia. Its history is then merged in that of Novgorod. The Finnish tribes could not resist the advance of the Slavs. The Esthonians alone were able to maintain their nationality. Mordvinnic princes are mentioned by the Russian chroniclers even in the fourteenth century. The Fins, especially the Permians, carried on a modest trade; they were glad to take sabres from Mohammedan countries in exchange for furs. They also engaged in agriculture. Their religion resembled the Lithuanian. The Fins also were widely famed as soothsayers and magicians. This ice-bound country was otherwise little known or explored. Kaswini († 1283) relates how the Bulgarians on the Kama and Volga traded with the Fins in dumb show. The Bulgarian brought his goods, pointed to them, and left them on the ground. He then came back and found on the same spot such commodities as were used in the country. If he was satisfied with them he exchanged his goods for those deposited by the strangers; if he was dissatisfied, he took his own wares away again.

We have almost as little information about the Bulgarians, that nation of horsemen on the Volga, and even that only after the tenth century, when their prince Almys went over to Islam shortly before 921. We are indebted to this circumstance for the wonderful report of Ahmad ben Fadlan (ibn Fadhlân or Foszlan), who entered the capital, Bulgar, on May 11, 922, as the envoy of the Kalif. The Spaniard Abu Hamid (Muhammad ben Abdar-Rahim al-Mazini) al-Andalusi (al-Garnāti = from Granada; † 1169), who visited Great Bulgaria in the twelfth century, reports "Every twenty years the old women of this country are suspected of witchcraft, and great excitement prevails among the people. The old women are then collected, their feet and hands are bound, and they are thrown into a great river that flows past. Those who swim are considered to be witches and are burnt; those who sink are regarded as innocent and are rescued." Human sacrifices were not infrequent in those days. We come upon instances among the Herulians (Procopius and Ennodius) and the Rōs (ibn Rusta), among the Winds or Sorbs (Bonifatius) and the pagan Poles (Thietmar), the Radimiči, Wjatiči, and Sewerane (Nestor), and finally even among the eastern Slavs (Abu Abdallah Muhammad ben Ahmad al-Gaihāni [Samaniden-Wezir], and from Gaihani's report in the works of ibn-Rusta, al-Bekri and Gardīzī). Most of the instances described here were cases of the burning of widows (cf. p. 329). Some Slavonic tribes paid the Bulgarians a tribute in horses, furs, and other articles, such as an ox-hide, from every house. The tenth part of the goods of trading vessels was taken as toll.

At this same era the West Turkish nation of the Khazars (Khasars; cf. pp. 84 and 327), of whom we have evidence after the second century A. D., was settled in the south of Russia between the Caspian and Black Seas. The most flourishing period of the Khazar Empire seems to have been in the seventh century, after the fall of the Hun Empire. Their most important towns were Saryg-sar on the west bank of the Volga (yellow town; later Itil, now Astrachan), and Khamlikh, or Khazarān, which lay opposite; also Samandar, or Směndr (now Tarchu, east of Temirchan-Schura, on the west shore of the Caspian Sea), and the fortress of Sarkel at the mouth of the Danube, built under the emperor Theophilus in 833-835 by the Greek Petronas (in Nestor: Bélawěža; destroyed by Sviatoslav); a second Khazar fortress of some temporary importance was Balangar, north of Darband in the Caucasus. The Khazars carried on an extensive trade with Bulgaria, Russia,

Persia, and Byzantium. The half-nomadic population still lived partly in those Wojlok-Jurtes which we find at the present day among the Kirghiz. Only the richer men built themselves mud huts and the Khagan (Khakʻan) alone had high tiled houses. The Khagan was the supreme head in religion, while a Veg (Vezir) stood at the head of military affairs. Under the Khagan Bulan (traditionally c. 740; more correctly shortly after 860) the Khazars, after a temporary conversion to Christianity, partly adopted the Jewish faith. "There are seven judges," says Masudi," two for Khazar Mohammedans, two for Khazar Jews, to whom law is dispensed according to the Mosaic code, two for Christians, to whom justice is administered according to the Gospel, and one for the Slavs, Russians, and other heathen, who are judged according to pagan laws." The Polani, Radimiči, Wjatiči, and Sewerane (p. 435) paid tribute to the Khazars. The power of the Khazars was first broken by the Arabs, who conquered the southern shores of the Caspian Sea, and by the Pecheneges (Patzinaks), who appeared in South Russia, until in the end they were completely subjugated by Russia (c. 969). Remnants of the Khazars long remained in the Crimea and the Caucasus; some memories of them still survive in the names of a few towns.

C. THE LIFE OF THE ANCIENT SLAVS

ALL these empires, the Finnish, the Bulgarian, and the Khazar, have disappeared, yet not without having first exercised a more or less permanent influence on the customs and the life of the Slavs of ancient Russia. The Slavonic tribes, who occupied chiefly the centre of the East European plain, found themselves in the majority and unceasingly drove before them the heterogeneous nations, first by peaceful colonisation, and then by the sword. We may assume that all Slavs as a whole had the same customs, the same religion, the same tribal and national institutions. Differences will only be apparent where nature prescribed other conditions of life or where foreign influence made itself felt. Thus the Slavs on the seacoast lived in one way, those on the steppes or in the forests in another. Although they originally appeared in Europe as a united nation with similar customs, ideas, language, traditions, and government, yet the different natural surroundings soon impressed a distinctive stamp on the principal tribes and guided social, religious, and legal life into different paths. The nomads of the steppes can hardly have held the same faith as the dwellers on the seacoast. Again, while the forest-dwellers paid their tribute in furs and honey, the tribes of the lowlands discharged it in horses or cattle. If a numerous clan was the natural form of life among the dwellers on the fertile plains with its agriculture, in the forests the families were forced to separate one from another. Further differences were produced by the influence of neighbours; thus the northern Slavs, who lived near the Teutons, had a kindred religion and mythology. The change of language was closely connected with this, since to express new ideas new words had to be invented or borrowed from other tribes. An attempt has been made to draw a general picture of the life of all the Slavonic tribes, but in doing so the fact has been overlooked that such a picture can only be true of a time when the Slavs still formed a single united nation - the time, that is, before the Christian era. Our authorities, however, date from an era five

hundred, or possibly a thousand years later and are extremely defective. It is not surprising that the results of such imperfect investigations are conflicting. As members of the Indo-Germanic family of nations they will have had much in common with other Aryans. The chief task of historical inquiry would be to sift out this common element, and to show the cross-roads, where the Slavs part company from the other nations, as well as to indicate the special paths into which the individual Slavonic races struck. It is universally asserted that all Slavs were agriculturists at the period when they came into the light of history. Can that assertion hold good of the forest-dwellers or the inhabitants of the lakes and swamps? Our authorities do not in any way corroborate it. A writer of the twelfth century relates in astonishment that he heard of a man in the Arctic regions who had lived all his life on fish. That would hardly be an isolated case. Forests, rivers, and swamps then covered at least a tenth of the surface. If the Slavs during their migrations kept to the river valleys we can hardly call this a peculiar characteristic of the race.

(a) Religious and Social Conditions and the State of Culture. The Slavonic pagan religion, about which we know very little, resembles in its main ideas that of India and the other Aryans. The Slavs had the dualism between good and evil deities; they had also their family gods, like the Greeks and Romans. They, too, regarded nature as animated by various beings; and animals were held sacred by them, as in Greece and other places. Again, it was merely their natural environment which taught men in the northern forests to revere owls and other birds, the wolf (as were-wolf) and other animals, and on the plains the horse; while it urged the people of the Nile to worship the crocodile or the scarabæus (Vol. III, p. 600, and Vol. IV, p. 263), and those on the coast to worship other beasts and fishes. The Slavs, too, honored the sun, moon, and stars, thunder and lightning; they were also fire-worshippers. But inquiry has not told us in what the true Slavonic element, that is, the innovation, really consists. Some persons wish to recognise the Slavs by peculiarity of diet, for example, millet and honey, but are we not told the same of Huns and Bulgarians?

The same holds good of the legal and social conditions of the Slavs. The family was the foundation of their national and religious life (cf. p. 277). The eldest of the family was the supreme lawgiver, judge, and priest. Since the knowledge of the laws, customs, and ritual could only be transmitted orally, this naturally fluctuating tradition was all important. The Slavs, divided into separate independent tribes, could not but diverge more widely from each other in their methods of life. The separate districts were called Župas (p. 277), Opole, or Wolost. We cannot decide whether the Župa is genuinely Slavonic or is to be compared with (for example) the old Germanic Goba (Gau). The centre of a district was the Grad (gorod borough), where the tribal sanctuary stood. The ancient places, where once a gorod stood, were called gorodyšče. But it cannot be settled whether gorod is peculiar to the Slavs only, or whether it is identical with the old Gothic words garde (watch) and garder (to watch). Everywhere in Slavonic countries a definite district was surrounded with a boundary fence, while the roads were watched and defended with palisades, which were called preseka. At suitable points guards were posted on watch-towers erected (straža, a genuine Slavonic word); similar boundary woods existed in ancient Germany down to the age of the Hohenstauffen,