Anda and koma
Obrusánszky Borbála
The Hungarian brotherhood alliance and its connection with the Mongolian anda custom.
The earliest known Hungarian chronicler, Anonymus or P. Master, recorded in the 13th century the ancient history of the Hungarians. In his chronicles he noted the existence of a special blood-alliance among the seven leading Hungarian tribes, whose customs were unknown in Western-Europe in the Middle-Ages, and which shows important similarities with the brotherhood contract of the nomadic civilization in the Eurasian steppe. The oath itself served not only an alliance, but could also constitute the establishment of a nomadic state, as among Mongolian tribes at the end of the 12th century. In my view this type of alliance was the first constitution of the nomadic state.
Only the above-mentioned chronicle refers to the Hungarian tribe alliance, in which the seven leading tribes concluded an eternal alliance with each other and divided social duties amongst themselves. According to this source, the independent tribes elected as their leader by common consent Álmos, who was himself the chieftain of the Magyar tribe. The tribes further determined the duties both for the prince and for the other “signatories”. As the nomadic peoples, like the Hungarians, concluded verbal oaths, all points of this contract remained only in oral form. With the spread of written culture towards the end of the 12th century, Anonymus recorded this ethno-genesis and the foundations of the state.
Some Hungarian historians believe that the text of the oath was invented by Anonymus, seeing how it was recorded 400 years after the alliance was concluded. On the other hand, in nomadic culture the origins of leading tribesmen are always preserved very accurately even in oral form, which is likely to have been the case with the brotherhood alliance. The ceremony and customs described by Anonymus resemble those of the Scythes as recorded by Herodotus, or of the anda alliance which existed among the Mongols. Comparing all of these texts, it appears that the ceremony documented by Anonymus was one establishing a state among the Hungarian people, who occupied the Eurasian steppes since ancient times.