croats had according to the dai been a fighting folk who subdued avars repelled franks and saved serbs from bulgarian captivity serbs were a docile folk who essentially didn't fight their place under the sun their very name signified servitude of a sort as evidenced by the dai's etymology they lost every battle with foreigners they ever fought placed themselves under byzantine suzerainty amd were saved from extinction by croats who crushed bulgarian aggression there are historical documents galore which testify about croatian legal parliamentary and cultural continuity from the times of trpimir and kre imir to the later corpora croatian language heritage in the vernacular is well attested in from the th century on at least they croatian name is explicitly mentioned in various sources both akavian and tokavian particularly in dalmatia dubrovnik and bosnia moreover linguistic characteristics are the same as with contemporary mid th century croatian language on the other hand serbian written works up until dositej and vuk were written exclusively in church slavic language serbian literature until vuk is essentially a variant of church slavic literature flourishing in byzantium influenced area hence vuk's linguistic pan serbism which tried to appropriate all tokavian vernacular literature is evidently a falsity and concoction early slavic studies ara ik et al were deluded in ascribing parts of the croatian literature to the serbian heritage serbian ethnic affiliation in modern terms is a relatively new phenomenon in croatia the major part of eastern orthodox inhabitants of croatia who actively participated in the croatian cultural life illyrian movemont have begun to show serbian national allegiance only in recent s years virtually all star evi 's claims are corroborated by historical sources available at his times whether the veracity of historical sources like the dai can withstand the test of time this is another question but from the vantage point of mid th century clash of serbian and croatian ideologies star evi polemic stands as an example of skilled sometimes sardonic and always truthful debate without distortions lies or misappropriations sarcasm hurts but this is what the polemic is all about