Milena VARBANOVA
I have completed my previous extensive study "Who is the ancestor of the Bulgarians" with the conclusion:
"BULG (BULGAR), BRIG (BRIGU) and ELIN are the different names of the same prehistoric (and not legendary, as its existence is confirmed in three sources) personality and it is this most ancient ancestor who is the true progenitor of the Bulgarian people."
But didn't the ancient Bulgarians know better than anyone else who stood at the beginning of our historical path?
An early medieval document, which today is fundamental for the preservation of Bulgarian historical memory, gives us an unambiguous answer to this question. This is the "Namebook of the Bulgarian Princes", which survived, by the will of Providence, from the monstrous holocaust of Bulgarian literature by the Greeks. This laconic and magnificent chronicle of our history was taken to Rus, where its copies were made, the earliest of which is the so-called. Uvarov copy from the 15th century. The information given in the Namebook about the first rulers of the Bulgarians is extremely well known, but to this day their meaning remains a mystery to researchers. Uvarov's copy reads:
"Avitokhol lived 300 years. His family is Dulo, and his year we say by word of mouth.
Irnik lived 150 years. His family is Dulo, and his year is dilom tvirem".
Many historians look for the personalities Avitohol and Irnik in the historical figures of Attila and his son Ernach, and the three-dimensional duration of their lives attested in the Name List, they explain with an error in the transcription and even in the original of the chronicle. Others interpret the clearly mentioned 300 and 150 years of life of Avitohol and Irnik, respectively, as historical eras influenced by their rule. But do these explanations have anything to do with the truth? I have always argued that when we accuse of "error" ancient chroniclers, this means that we ourselves are mistaken.
Given my discoveries, shared in the study "Who is the ancestor of the Bulgarians", I declare that Avitohol is actually Togar (Togarma), and Irnik is none other than Bulg or Brig (Brigu), the parent of the Bhargavas and the eponym of the Bulgarian ethnos.
Why do I think so?
Let's analyze the name Avitohol. "Avi", as I have repeatedly written, means "ancestors", "grandfathers", "fathers" "predecessors". This is also known to other authors and represents a technique in composing ancient names, well known in the Bible and in the Arab tradition - "abu". That leaves "TOKHOL", which in a number of cases (see my interpretation of the name of the Assyrian kings Tukul-ti-Nin-Ur-ta in the article "The True Names of the Assyrian Rulers Tukultininurta, Salmanasar and Shammuramat", 2021, as well as the concept "tokel", which I discovered in the village of Bolgare, Lombardy) means "son, descendant". I have previously translated, like other authors, the name Avitohol as "descendant of the ancestors". But in the light of my discoveries in "Who is the ancestor of the Bulgarians", I see an obvious identity between "tohol" and "togar", as the second syllables in both concepts - "ol" and "ar" - are suffixes, forming identical epithets. Moreover, in "ol" one can easily recognize the slightly modified suffix "or", a variant of "ar". As I explained in the cited study, "togar" means "pure, shining, righteous", and also "dressed in a toga", "wearing a veil", "hiding", "protecting", "guard", "dog", "wolf". I also recall the meaning of the name of the great Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore - Takhur in his native Bengali (derived from Sanskrit) language, which translates as "lord of the Sun". Therefore, according to the reasoning presented in this way, I interpret the name of the first Bulgarian ruler named in the "Nomenclature" - Avitohol - as "ancestor, father" of the "pure, righteous, shining, bright, protectors, dogs, wolves". I identify him with the biblical character Togarmah (Togar-ma), son of Gomer and grandson of Japheth (Iapet), mentioned in "Creation", First Book "Paralipomenon" and Book of Ezekiel in the Old Testament. In Sanskrit, the term "vitthola" means a form of Vishnu or Krishna.
How can the name Irnik, the second ruler of the Bulgarians, mentioned in the "Namebook of the Bulgarian Princes", be interpreted? I derive this name from the Sanskrit root "ir" - "I walk, move", but also "I pronounce, repeat". In Sanskrit, the word "ira" means "wind" - a concept consonant with the idea of movement. But there is something even more interesting - the Sanskrit word "irya", which means "wandering preacher". All these concepts fit perfectly into the images of the sage Bhrigu and his family of Bhargavis - priests of the doctrine of heavenly fire, whose mission is to spread the cult of the Sun among humanity. This mission and predestination require eternal movement. I have no doubt that the name Ir-nik comes from "ir" and "irya" - and the word-forming suffix "nik" leads us to the Bulgarian language with the concepts "path-nik", "stranger-nik", "preacher-nik". It is amazing that the Persian concept "irfan" means "wisdom, knowledge, science, education, insight, speed and agility (of the mind)". In Sufism "irfan" is a spiritual term, meaning "mystical knowledge - revelation".
"Ira" - "wind" suggests the idea of speed, one of the main ideas embedded in the names Bulg, Brig(u) and "bhargavi" - "agile, fast", as I revealed in "Who is the ancestor of the Bulgarians". This discovery coincides with the definition given by some ancient chroniclers for the eternal movement of the Pelasgians (whom our latest historical literature identifies with the Bulgarians), related to their mission as civilizers. Here is what Diodorus Siculus writes in Book V, Ch.80 of his "Historical Library" about the peoples who inhabited the island of Crete:
80. (1) Examining all this in detail, we will mention the tribes that mixed with the Cretans. So, the first inhabitants of the island were the so-called Eteocretans, who are considered autochthonous, which we have already spoken about above. After them, many generations later, the wandering Pelasgians arrived in Crete in constant campaigns and migrations, who occupied part of the island. " (...)(4) Here we followed those (authors) whose exposition is more distinguished by reliability and persuasiveness, sometimes relying on the author of divine stories Epimenides, and sometimes — on Dosias, Sosicrates or Laosphenides. "
About the undeniable authority and special role of the Pelasgians on the island of Crete, Homer himself mentions in the Nineteenth Book of "Odyssey" - "Odysseus at Penelope. The Washing":
"Crete is a distant land in the middle of a wine-red sea. It is beautiful
and fertile, the waves lap it from all sides. In it
the people are numerous, and the ninety cities.
A mixture of different languages is heard. Here a tribe of Achaeans,
Eteocrites live there proudly, beyond the Cydonians,
three tribes of Dorians and THE SACRED PELASGIAN TRIBE."
"Sacred Tribe" in the language of the people of the Bronze Age it would mean "a people of priests" dedicated to the works of the gods.
I open a short parenthesis to add a new possible meaning of the term "Pelasgians", along with the mentioned and discovered by me linguistic connections with "white", "hairy, with white skin" (pellis – skin, pillus – hair), "marked, that is, destined, charged with a mission - mark" and "marine - pelagius, from pelagus - sea". In Sanskrit "pel" is one of the verbs meaning "to walk, to move", and "peli" means "horse", and through this word the special word "Pelasgians" can be interpreted as "horsemen", "riders".
The idea of speed in the name Bulg - Brig is clearly revealed by the Poet of poets Homer, called by the most ancient chroniclers "Maeonia". Meonia is the oldest name of Lydia, as the identity of the Etruscans - Lydians, with the Bulgarians, I have proven in a number of my publications. Etruscan - ethnonym, originating from ether, "yantra" - machine, "yatrika" - traveler in Sanskrit, therefore also "fast". Homer suggests this idea through one of the most touching heroines of the "Iliad" - Hippodamia, called Briseis after the name of her father - Breeze. Briseis stands at the center of the plot of the poem, since King Agamemnon, returning the captive Chryseis to her father Chryses, a priest of Apollo, by the will of the gods, orders that Briseis (Hippodameia), captured by Achilles and turned into the beloved concubine of Peleus' son, be handed over to him as compensation. It is this humiliating arbitrariness of Agamemnon over the greatest hero in the Achaean camp that provokes the anger of Achilles Peleus - the main driving force of the action in Homer's work, "who brought countless misfortunes to the Achaean troops". Homer describes this episode in detail in the First Song "The Plague. The Wrath".
The powerful king of men Agamemnon replied to him thus:
"(...) As soon as Phoebus Apollo takes Chryseis from me,
I will send her away with the black ship and with my companions,
and I will take beautiful Briseis, your prize,
I will personally come to your tent, so that you may know for yourself
how much stronger I am than you and that no one from today dares
to consider himself my equal and to come out to meet me".
A little later, Agamemnon's heralds come to Achilles to take Briseis to the tent of the "general Greek leader" (I put the phrase in quotation marks because neither the Trojans nor the Achaeans are "Greeks" - the Greeks appeared in the Aegean at least three centuries after the Trojan War). Achilles does not resist, he has already decided to punish the "Greeks" by refusing to take part in the battles. Agamemnon's servants lead away "the fair-cheeked maiden Briseis":
"And the daughter of Briseis went with them reluctantly".
In the Second Song "Dream. In the "Enumeration of the Ships", in the 685th and 690th pentameters, Homer reports in a brief flashback how Briseis was captured by Achilles:
"In the camp by the black ships lay Achilles, godlike,
still angry for the fair-haired maiden Briseis.
He had chosen her from Lyrnes after a great victory,
after he had demolished Lyrnes and the walls of Thebes,
in battle he slew Minnes and Epistrophus, with a spear glorious:
they were the offspring of King Evenus, a descendant of the Selepians."
According to myth, in the ninth year of the siege of Troy, Achilles captured and destroyed the city of Lyrnes in the Troad, whose king Bris was an ally of Priam. The powerful son of Thetis destroyed the entire family of Briseis, but despite this she fell in love with Achilles, as he did with her. Her father Bris was the son of Ardis - king of the Leleges (according to Alexander Milev, "Alphabet of Proper Names", "Iliad", 1969), whose first ruler was Lelex. In other studies, I have written that ancient concepts with a final sound "ks" actually end with the syllable "ka" or "ga". The name of Tsar Leleks should be read Leleka or Lelega - which is the name of his people. The forgotten Bulgarian folk concept "lelek", synonymous with the identical Ukrainian word still used today, means "white stork". Probably, the name of the people "lelegi" contains the idea of speed, movement, flight, "fleeting" - the same one that is contained in Brig and Bulg. And which is obvious in the name Briz.
The name Briz is actually Brig, respectively Bulg. Apparently Briz reigns over part of the Brigs - Phrygs - Bulgs. Breeze is the exact name of one of the types of winds - "breeze". Breeze means - without a shadow of a doubt - exactly "fast" - Breeze.
Homer Meoniets places at the beginning of his magnificent poem, alongside Achilles, a Bulgarian woman - Briseis and her father - Briseis, king of a devastated city, in the flames of a fateful era. After thirty-two centuries, the nationality of these tragic heroes has been revealed. They are part of Bulgaria!
Briseis is also an active figure in Ovid's epistolary poetic work "Heroines" - "Heroides".
The name Irnik - "walking, moving, wandering preacher (priest)" is actually another name for Bulg or Brig. We come to the inevitable conclusion - Avitohol and Irnik from the "Namebook of the Bulgarian Princes" are identical to Togar (Togarma) from the Old Testament and Bulgar (Bulg) from the letter of the Khazar Khagan Joseph. The centuries-old confusion, the chaos of misconceptions and meaningless polemics, is due to the different names of these two personalities in historical sources.
It is clear that Attila and Ernach did not live 300 and 150 years respectively, nor was Attila born 515 before the creation of Asparuhova Bulgaria. These speculations must be put to an end. The unimaginable longevity of the patriarchs Avitohol and Irnik from today's perspective can be explained by the far greater life expectancy in the early eras of the existence of the human race, incomparable to that of modern people.
However, there are still some "inconsistencies" between the theory I have proposed and the existing readings of the "Name List". They are contained in the phrase following the information about the governor Gostun and the rulers Kurt and Bezmer - "сии ҃е кнѧз. дръжаше кнѧженïе обону страну Дунаѧ. летъ. ҃ф.҃еі. остриженами главами". The traditional interpretation of this phrase is "These five princes held the principality on the other side of the Danube for 515 years with shaved heads". The number of "five" includes Avitohol and Irnik. I believe that these predecessors cannot be listed together with Gostun, Kurt and Bezmer. From the text itself, and not only from their longevity, it is evident that they differ from all other Bulgarian rulers attested in the chronicle, that they are representatives of another, very distant time period in the history of Bulgaria and the world. It seems to me that the misunderstanding in the quoted sentence is due to a missing fragment in the original, from which the copies were made. And also - to the desperate attempts of the interpreters to fit the numbers and sums of numbers to the surviving part of the "Namelist" at any cost, without caring that an element of it may not be present.
I think that the mention of the names of Avitohol and Irnik at the beginning of the ancient Bulgarian chronicles was mandatory - in order to remember the historical path of our people. And after them followed all other historical testimonies worthy of being immortalized. With the continuous renewal of the memory of these king-priests and sages, creators of the "Bulgaria of the spirit", the principle of the ancestral power of the Dulo clan is also instilled.
The patriarchal place of honor assigned to Avitohol (Togar) and Irnik (Bulg) in the "Namebook" represents the same ritual for preserving the unity, faith and statehood of a people, as we see in the Christian chronicles, at the beginning of which there is always the Holy of Holies - God and the Holy Trinity.
The article is part of Milena Varbanova's book "Who is the Forefather of the Bulgarians" and was published in the newspaper of the Bulgarian Workers' Party "Slovoto dnes" on March 6 this year.