Russia 2,892 | ||
The Kumandins also known as the Kumandy, Kumanda, Qumandy and Qumanda are a people indigenous to Central Asia. They reside mainly in the Altai Republic of the Russian Federation.
Contents
According to the 1926 census, 6,335 Kumandins lived within the territory of Russia. In the 2010 census, the number was only 2,892, but possibly the 1926 census included some related peoples. Some Kumandins, living on the banks of the Biya River, from the Kuu River downstream, almost to the city of Biysk, and along the lower course of the river Katun River, by 1969 were conflated with the ethnic Russian population.
History
Omeljan Pritsak claimed that kuman- in the name of the Kumandins is identical in meaning to the names given to other Turkic peoples, such as Kipchak and Polovets (a Slavic term for Cumans).
However, the seoks (tribes) of the Kumandins have varying origin myths; L. Potapov proposed that they were originally a federation of peoples from different backgrounds: nomadic steppe pastoralists (such as the Cumans), taiga hunters (Chuvash), deer pastoralists (Nenets), and fishers (Tatars).
"[The] Kumans belonged to the Kuman-Kipchak confederation (Polevetses of the Rus annals, Comans of Byzantine sources, Folban of German annals) [and] during the period from the end of the 800s to 1230s CE spread their political influence in the broad steppes from Altai to Crimea and Danube. Irtysh with its adjoining steppes (at least below the lake Zaisan) was in the sphere of that confederation. Members of the confederation undoubtedly also were the ancestors of the present Kumandy and Teleuts, which is evidenced by their language that like the language of the Tobol-Irtysh and Baraba Tatars belongs to the Kypchak group."
By the 17th century, the Kumandins lived along the river Charysh, near its confluence with the river Ob. A subsequent relocation to the Altai was driven by their unwillingness to pay yasak (financial tribute) to the Russian sovereign. N. Aristov linked the Kumandins – and the Chelkans – to the ancient Turks, "who in the 6th-8th CC. CE created in Central Asia a powerful nomadic state, which received ... the name Turkic Kaganate".
Potapov regarded the Kumandins as being related anthropologically to the Uralic peoples, and suggested that they were phenotypically more Caucasoid and less East Asian than the Altaians proper. This subjective impression has been borne out, to an extent by genetic research suggesting that most Kumandir males belong to subclades of "West Eurasian" Y-DNA haplogroups such as R1b or N. However, a majority of mitochondrial DNA lines belonged to the North East Asian haplogroups C or D.
Six seoks have been identified:
An ancient Turkic legend recorded in the Chinese Zhoushu annals (周書, 636 CE) tells of the origin of the ancestors of the ancient Türks from a state or possession named So, located "north of the Hun country" (which, in this case, apparently meant Mongolia).
The name of the seok Ton is explained as an ethnonym that reflects their economic specialization, as a word meaning "deer" and "reindeer breeder". The remote ancestors of this Kumandy seok Ton were reindeer breeders, reflected in Kumandy hunting legends and fairy tales, for example about milking deer (which is attributed to the Kumandy's mountain spirits). The memory about breeding and milking reindeer belongs to some remote historical ancestors of a part of Kumandy; they can be explained by participation in the Kumandy ethnogenesis of the southern Nenets tribes, who cultivated riding deer, typically used not only for transport but also for food and dress.