Anthropology is often identified as an academic discipline that explores human diversity and the concept of Otherness (see Leistle 2017), offering an opportunity for the anti-hegemonic presentation of plural lifeworlds (Bertelsen and Bendixen 2016: 8). The focus on Otherness has therefore been considered a prominent paradigm, an epistemological basis for anthropological scholarship (Leistle 2015). The earliest instruction for collecting ethnological data compiled by Gerhard Friedrich Müller in 1740, for his follower Johann Eberhard Fischer, accordingly emphasizes the need for collecting “curiosities” that can be contrasted with European experiences (Bucher 2002; Gisi 2007). However, not all (proto-) anthropologies focused on presenting alterity and contrasting non-European peoples with their European counterparts. In Hungary and a few other (semi-) peripheral academic circles in Europe, the concept of Sameness and similarity occupied a significant role in the development of non-European studies.

This two hundred year-old anthropological research legacy is not just a methodological curiosity; it has significantly impacted the field and the research environment for Hungarian anthropologists in Siberia and Inner Asia. The widespread assumption of a common origin based on a shared nomadic heritage, and hence an indelible bond between Hungarian anthropologists and local Turco-Mongolic peoples in Asia, remains a prevalent condition of fieldwork in this area.

In the nineteenth century, Hungarian nation-building and identity construction were heavily influenced by the idea that Hungarians originated from Asia, unlike any other European nation (Klaniczay 2020). The Finnish national awakening had a similar focus on the Finns’ Siberian kinsfolk (Antonen 2012: 343), whereas Estonian nation-building intensely concentrated on Finno-Ugric linguistic relatedness (Raun 2003; Petersoo 2007).

As a result, rather than pursuing colonial agendas, Hungarian travelers in Asia were interested in finding distant relatives or fellow Hungarians (Mészáros et al. 2017). From the mid-nineteenth century, this focus on finding similarities and connections rather than emphasizing differences and exoticizing alterity inspired generations of Hungarian linguists, ethnographers, and anthropologists to conduct field studies in Siberia and Inner Asia. Consequently, Hungarian anthropological scholarship in Asia primarily catered to domestic interests, and was strongly related to the study of Hungarian prehistory; aligning with the major scholarly paradigms of the Anglo-Saxon world was only a secondary goal (Sárkány 2016).

The Self as Other

Several anthropologists have drawn attention to French Enlightenment debates on liberty, equality, and human dignity (Harvey 2012; Graeber and Wengrow 2021). These debates often invoked real and imagined outsiders to critique contemporary European social realities. This well-known hybrid discourse (academic and literary) had an immense impact on the development of anthropology in Europe. 

This was not, however, the only discourse critiquing eighteenth-century European social formations. As a counter-discourse to Western-European experiences of colonial encounters, a robust corpus of texts emerged in German-speaking regions in which fictional ancient German protagonists, rather than contemporary non-Europeans (“savages” or “Oriental others”), articulated their dissatisfaction with the social conditions of the period (Reusch 2008). Alongside the contrastive power of the classical, the primitive, and the Oriental other, a new construction emerged, that of the uncorrupted “same”: the ancestor who lives in original, virtuous social conditions. The ancient German tribespeople appeared as a version of, or rather, a better alternative to, the savage. An essential difference between the two schemes is that the image of the Germanic tribespeople was impregnated with the idea of the “Heimat,” the homeland (Kuehnemund 1953; Skarsten 2012). 

The outsider’s view, provided by the nationally and linguistically identical, but spatially and/or temporarily remote, played an intrinsic role in nation-building processes in Hungarian and to some extent in other (Finnish, Estonian) academic discourses (Merivirta et al. 2021; Annist – Kaaristo 2013). For these academic circles, Siberian and Oriental Sameness represented a point of alignment rather than a contrast. The powerful image of Germanic tribesmen living in an arboreal homeland provides a critical parallel, if not a direct preview, of similar discourses that developed in Hungary in the first half of the nineteenth century. In the case of Hungary, however, the uncorrupted tribesmen and lost homeland are found not in the distant past, but in Siberia or the Orient. 

The representational scheme of Sameness was particularly successful in Hungary. It influenced national discourse and the development of Oriental studies, literary oeuvres, and anthropological interest. It first appeared in the early 1800s as identicality (Békés 1997): the image of the linguistically-nationally identical but uncorrupted Hungarians residing in Asia. Several authors did their best to recognize Hungarian linguistic and cultural traits in Asia, and to create reports about contemporary Hungarians residing in the Orient. This endeavor resulted in a highly varied discourse of different generic and epistemological statuses, such as scholarly articles, reports, pseudo-ethnographies, and literary works (Mészáros 2023). What are the common features of this representational scheme?

First, a fairly uniform portrayal of Hungarians living in Asia came out of this discourse. Their language was reportedly not only similar to Hungarian, but completely identical to it. Therefore, Hungarians from the Carpathian Basin meeting Asian Hungarians could allegedly carry out a conversation easily, and linguists did not need a refined methodology to show that all spoke the same language. Furthermore, the indigenous Hungarian protagonists of these literary works residing between Greenland and China mutually recognized one another as Hungarians (Szeverényi 2002). 

This representational scheme suggested that Hungarians living in Europe and Asia shared a profound sympathy; they were happy to find one another. Furthermore, Hungarians in Asia were portrayed living virtuous lives in abundance and liberty. Compared to Hungarians in Europe, they usually occupied a higher position in the hierarchy of nations. Their language was richer and more authentic, their customs more original, and their religious life more devout. Asian Hungarians encountered outside of Asia in these reports usually expressed dissatisfaction with the degenerate social realities of nineteenth-century Hungary, and were in a hurry to return to their people and homeland (Mészáros 2023). This supposed homeland was said to be located in the Northern Caucasus, Mongolia, Siberia and even in Kandia (Crete).

According to these works, Hungarians living in Asia preserved what Hungarians in Europe had already forgotten: the original meaning of Hungarian words, customs, and personal virtues. At the same time, they maintained economic and cultural traits that were slowly disappearing in Hungary. This element of cultural conservation was one of the main motives for further research and subsequent expeditions to Asia.

Inspired by the discourse on Hungarians living in Asia, and by the European academic currents pointing to the Oriental origin of the Hungarians (Vermeulen 2015; Carhart 2019), more than a dozen research expeditions were organized by Hungarian noblemen and institutions to find Hungarian kinsfolk in Russia and the Orient up to the outbreak of World War I (Mészáros et al. 2017). By cherry-picking those elements from the local lifeworlds that researchers regarded as ancient traits of Hungarian culture, this variety of anthropology created its own frozen, timeless object in Asia: a people who maintained the uncorrupted Asian traits of Hungarian living in Europe.

This object was, therefore, not the Other, but the Self. As a result, popular research topics in Hungary diverged from contemporary mainstream European or American anthropology well into the twentieth century. Instead of focusing on kinship systems or the development of forms of religion, Hungarian (and to some extent Finnish and Estonian) researchers in the late nineteenth century usually focused on fishing and hunting methods, traps (Urbeschäftigungen), and the collection of epic songs in the Urals and Asia (Munkácsi 1893; Jankó 1900; Sirelius 1906). Inspired by earlier studies, in the early-twentieth century Géza Róheim made efforts to reconstruct an ancient Hungarian belief system as a version of Siberian shamanism (Róheim 1954). Based on these ideas, Vilmos Diószegi conducted several field studies in the Soviet Union and Mongolia in the 1960s and 70s, exploring parallel features in local shamanic practices. As a result, he hypothesized an ancient Hungarian pagan belief system (Diószegi 1958, 1968). After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, indigenous researchers in Siberia and Central Asia celebrated his work as a resource for national spiritual revival (Quijada et al. 2015).

The Return of the Idea of Sameness to the Field

Besides developing a set of analytical tools based on the concept of Sameness, Hungarian travelers and anthropologists also established a unique fieldwork methodology based on approaching local peoples in Asia as relatives, rather than exotic others (Klima 2019). Hungarian travelers distinguished themselves from other European travelers and researchers in the region, asserting their desire to reconnect with their kinfolk and visit their homeland (Herman 1898; Szádeczky Kardoss 1895). Notably, Zichy Jenő and Béla Széchenyi, two Hungarian noblemen who organized and financed research expeditions in Asia, sought research permits from the Chinese authorities to conduct research in their ancient homeland (Fajcsák 2023), and in the case of Széchenyi, to visit the graves of Hungarian ancestors, offering prayers for the Hungarian nation (Széchenyi 1890: xix–xxi).

Hungarian researchers highlighted their distinctive position in Asia during their research trips in Siberia among the Obugric peoples. Bernát Munkácsi and Károly Pápai often mentioned their aim to seek out the relatives of the Hungarian nation in Siberia in their fieldwork (Munkácsi 2008:73–74, 93; Pápai 1888: 623–624). A few years later, János Jankó, although heavily reliant on support from the Russian state, assured the indigenous peoples that his intentions differed from those of the Russians (Jankó 2000). When Vilmos Diószegi conducted fieldwork in the Soviet Union and Mongolia after World War II, he also often stressed to the local academic circles and beyond that his main interest was to find parallels between Siberian shamanism and ancient Hungarian religious beliefs (Sántha 2002). Even recent ethnomusicological research trips carried out by János Sipos, Gergely Agócs, and Dávid Somfai Kara reinforce the idea among academic communities and in field studies that Hungarian folk music is part of a great Turkic musical ecumene (Agócs 2020; Sipos 2020).

Sameness and the Diverse Landscape of Anthropology

Hungarian anthropology, focusing on the idea of Sameness, has led to a wealth of research in Asia and has given Hungarian researchers a special position there. This approach has also fostered enduring partnerships with local researchers and communities (Sipos 2003), and facilitated the exchange of information between academic circles and local people (Somfai 2023).

The diversity of the global academic landscape of anthropology is increasingly apparent as research methods and paradigms crisscross between schools and regional varieties. Recently, there has been a growing emphasis on portraying the development of anthropology not only through the major paradigm shifts in metropolitan centers (Kuklick 1991; Candea 2018), but also by giving a detailed picture of the diverse co-development of different anthropologies (Boškovic 2008; Barrera-Gonzalez et al. 2017). The emergence of local (in some cases parallel) disciplines in Europe (Hofer 2018) demonstrates that there is room for diverse and possibly incongruent methodologies and terminologies under the umbrella of anthropology (Sárkány 2013; Mészáros 2022).

The Hungarian example points out that regional academic communities demarcate with a certain degree of independence which activities can be regarded as full-blown academic research, and which do not fulfill the conditions of scientific inquiry. Therefore, not only do the different linguistic, methodological, and sociocultural backgrounds define the national boundaries of anthropological discourse, but also the dissimilar epistemic status of scholarly activities. Texts that may be an organic part of academic discourse in one tradition may be discredited in another.

In Central-Eastern Europe, in what Michal Buchowski has called the “twilight zone of anthropology” (Buchowski 2014), the epistemological status of texts and scholarly contributions is particularly diverse. In the Hungarian ethnological tradition, the epistemological status of texts that focus on Hungarians living in Asia has been the subject of a long debate, preventing their inclusion in retrospective historical studies. This exclusion has led to other contentious debates about Oriental versus primitive Otherness, and the identification of other peoples as kinsfolk in Hungarian ethnology. The irreconcilable difference between the scholarly discourse on Sameness and ideas of Oriental Otherness resulted in incommensurate research epistemologies in Hungary. The extent to which a shared discourse space can be created within anthropology is determined by methodological and epistemological differences and academic networks. Furthermore, many regional varieties of anthropology directly challenge mainstream anthropological or scientific methods, which makes it challenging to find a common ground among anthropological schools.

In anthropologies focusing on Otherness and human diversity, the idea of Sameness is an underlying condition of anthropological work, postulating that “despite, or perhaps because of their differences, all societies embody the same cultural value and worth” (Argyrou 2002:1). That is, “Sameness understood as human unity has always been the ethnological a priori. It has been the axiomatic proposition that demarcated the epistemological space within which it became possible to study Others” (Argyrou 2002:23).

In Hungarian Oriental studies, however, the idea of Sameness had a different epistemological status. Here, Sameness was not an underlying research condition; it had to be unfolded, explored, and demonstrated by subsequent field studies. Not all Asian peoples were identical (or kinfolk) to Hungarians (or ancient Hungarians): only those who conformed to the representational scheme of Sameness established in Hungarian discourse on national origins and prehistory.

Although Sameness is a representational scheme rather than an a priori in Hungarian anthropology, it has been immune to anthropological reflection. The political motivations behind the portrayal of “the Other” as “the Self,” and the perception of Asian cultures as maintaining identical cultural elements from Hungarian prehistory have not been thoroughly explained, and Hungarian anthropological scholarship provides little in the way of a critique of this perspective. Studies on the development of anthropology have pointed out that colonial encounters and dominant European representational schemes of Otherness heavily influenced ethnographic records, but little is known about how the representational scheme of Sameness in Hungary created its own unique Other: the Self. 

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