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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
The following paper, of which a part only was read before the Asiatic Society on March 19th, is founded on a book published in Russian by Prof. Maxim Kovalefsky. In the author gives the results of his investigations into the manners and customs of the Ossetes, with special reference to the light thrown by them on the evolution of law. The late Sir Henry Maine, who may be justly regarded as our authority on ancient law and early customs, has well said in a passage quoted by Prof. Kovalefsky on his title-page, “In order to understand the most ancient condition of society all distances must be reduced, and we must look on mankind, so to speak, at the wrong end of the historical telescope.”
page 364 note 1 Dissertations on Early Law and Custom, but I have not found the passage in this work.
page 365 note 1 Schamyl, , the last independent chieftain, only surrendered in 1859.Google Scholar
page 366 note 1 The Ossete word for river is ‘don,’ occurring in Ardon, Sandon, Fiagdon, Ghizeldon, etc. But we find the same word for river in England, Scotland, and Russia. It is supposed that the Russian Don owes its name to the Ossetes, whose territory ran up to this river formerly dividing Europe and Asia. Possibly, too, the name of the latter continent itself originated with this people—As or Asi as they were called.
page 367 note 1 Professor Max Müller in his Lectures on the Science of Language classes the Ossete as an independent member of the Aryan family of languages; cf. Telfer's, Crimea and Transcaucasia, vol. ii. p. 2,Google Scholar note.
page 367 note 2 The Vendidad, forming part of the Zend Avesta, the religious writings of the Parsees, contains the most explicit rules for the disposal of dead bodies. They were to be laid on the highest places where they could be best seen by birds of prey and dogs. The bodies were to be fastened in such a way that the bones could not be taken by birds and beasts of prey to trees or water, and they were to be laid on stone or some metal, so that the rain should not dissolve any part of them into the earth. See Bleeck's Avesta, from Prof. Spiegel's German Translation, Fargards v. and vi.
page 367 note 3 Among the inscriptions in Greek characters referred to in the text were some in an unknown language. These M. Miller discovered to be Ossete.
page 367 note 4 Klaproth, , Voyage au Caucase, ii. 438.Google Scholar
page 368 note 1 Cf. Travels of Josafa Barbara (Hakl. Soc), p. 5.Google Scholar Dr. Smith, the learned editor of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, expresses doubt upon this point, chiefly upon the testimony of Lucian and Ammianus, who describe the Alani as resembling the Huns, and inhabiting a country too far to the north, namely, that occupied in modern times by the Nogai Tartars. But these facts are by no means inconsistent with the identity of the Alans and Ossetes from all we know of the latter people now, and their accepted Iranianism agrees with the remark of Firdusi, who says that the Alans originally came from the Paropamisus, and were the people mentioned in Chinese annals as Yen-thsai (cf. Gibbon, , 1872, ed. by Smith, , vol. iii. p. 315;Google ScholarYule's Marco Polo, ii. 164).Google Scholar With regard to the doubt expressed by Col. Yule as to whether the Ossethi or Ossetes are the same as the Aas or Assi, we may mention that this people are invariably called Assi or Assethi by the Russians, through whom we have in recent years become acquainted with them, though in writing the name it is spelt Ossi, Ossethi, the O being pronounced A. Some interesting particulars of these Alans or Aas, and of their service in China under the Tartar Khans, will be found in Yule's Cathay, pp. 316–318.Google Scholar Prof, de Lacouperie obligingly informs me that there are several interesting statements in Chinese documents about A-lan, A-lan-na, formerly Yen-thsai, Sukteh, Uen-na-sha, etc.
page 368 note 2 About 966 A.D. Cf. Karamzine, , Histoire de la Russie, Paris, 1816, tome i. p. 216.Google Scholar
page 369 note 1 I shall follow Mr. Kovalefsky's work closely. The immediate environs of Vladikavkaz are inhabited by Ingash, a thievish tribe, and other people; the first Ossete settlements are two or three stations from the town.
page 369 note 2 According to an article on the Ethnology of the Caucasus, in Petermann's, Mittheilungen, vol. xxvi. 1880,Google Scholar the Ossetes north and south of the range number 110,914 altogether.
page 370 note 1 The story of the blessed St. Nina and her conversion of the Georgians to Christianity in the reign of King Mirian (A.D. 265–342) is given at some length by the late M. Brosset, a distinguished scholar and Orientalist, in his history of Georgia, founded chiefly on the chronicle of Wakhusht and unpublished MSS. This is very briefly what he says: “St. Nina, who was on her father's side of Cappadocian origin, was brought up at Jerusalem under the care of a religious Armenian woman, Niafor, by whom she was instructed in all the mysteries of the Christian faith. Having learned that the seamless robe of our Saviour had been taken to Mtzkhetha, then the capital of Georgia, she determined on setting out in search of it. But before doing so she visited some part of Greece, where she made a convert of the beautiful princess Riphsiné of the Imperial Court, afterwards martyrized together with her thirty-three companions in Armenia, whither she had fled for refuge from the lust of the Emperor. St. Nina, having escaped from her persecutors, had a vision, inspiring her to undertake the conversion of the Georgians. After long wanderings and many sufferings she reached Mztkhetha, where the people were revelling in Magian superstitions and sacrificing to their gods Armaz and Zaden. Her prayers for this misguided people were answered by a sudden tornado of frightful violence. Great hailstones fell and destroyed the idols, shattering them into thousands of pieces. In the midst of this destruction St. Nina alone remained unhurt. Assisted by a converted Jew, Abiathar, who like a second St. Paul had become an ardent disciple of the faith, she began preaching Christianity openly, and when King Mirian returned from an unsuccessful expedition into Greece, where his army had been defeated by the Christian emperor Constantine, she was summoned to his presence and explained the doctrines of her religion. But it was not till some time after his Queen Nana had embraced Christianity that the king abandoned his gods and became a convert, when he and all his people were baptized.”—Brosset, , Histoire de la Georgie, pp. 90–132.Google Scholar
page 370 note 2 According to Brosset, Tamar reigned twenty-seven years from 1134 to 1211 or 1212 A.D.
page 371 note 1 From eri ‘people’ and tava ‘head’ or ‘chief.’
page 371 note 2 The Tartar mountaineers occupied country previously inhabited by Ossetes, so that their language and customs retained much that is peculiar to this people. This fact may be observed in their numeration and topographical names.
page 372 note 1 On the Caspian littoral.
page 372 note 2 Tarkhu or Tarki, a small place on the Caspian, 4 days' march north of Derbend, is still the residence of the Shamkhals. Not many years ago the writer saw the last of this royal race on board the Caspian steamer—an imposing-looking individual in a long white coat and high white sheepskin hat (papakha). He is now a pensioner of Russia. Tarkhu is said to occupy the site of the ancient Semender, a town of the Bulgars, destroyed by the Russians under Sviatoslaf in A.D. 968. Cf. Dorn, , Ueber die Einfalle der Alten Russen in Tabaristan, pp. vi.Google Scholar 122, 309.
page 373 note 1 For a full statement of M. Kovalefsky's views on this interesting subject, he refers the reader to his work on Communal Land Tenure and his address to the Archæological Congress at Odessa.
page 374 note 1 The Kavdasards, as Prof. Kovalefsky informs me, were not only the sons of the owner of the concubine, but also children begotten of her by other persons to whom she had been lent, a custom closely analogous to the Niyoga marriage of India. Similar relations also existed in Ireland at the time of the Brehon law.
page 374 note 2 On the wall of a very ancient church in the Alaghir defile are frescoes representing five armed men, with an inscription in Greek letters. According to tradition these figures represent Osa Bagatar and his four brothers; Kartlos, chief of the Georgian people, from whom they take their name Karthli; Lesgos, from whom the Lesghians are descended; Imeritos, the ancestor of the Imeritians; and Mingrelos, chief of the Mingrelians. Seee Vestnik Imp. Russ. Geogr. Soc. 1855, ii. s.v. pp. 4–5.Google Scholar
page 375 note 1 According to the Georgian Chronicle already quoted, Osa Bagatar was slain by Wakhtang, , king of Georgia (466–499),Google Scholar in single combat. Upon his death the hostile armies engaged, and the Ossetes were completely routed. The engagement is said to have taken place in the Dariel Pass. Cf. Brosset, , l.c. p. 158.Google Scholar
page 375 note 2 The Taghaurians are settled on the left bank of the Terek, and in the defiles of the Saniban and Ghizel, parallel with it, included in the Vladikavkaz territory. Their traditions preserved in songs and tales make frequent allusion to their bloody feuds with the Kabardinians. According to Tolstoi, for whose accuracy however I cannot vouch, the Taghaurians derive their name from a chief whose ruined fortress stood at the source of the Ghizel. They are mostly Muhammadans, and continued to hold to this faith after the other Ossetes had adopted Christianity. Cf. an article by Tolstoi in the Vestnik of the Imp. Russ. Geogr. Soc. 1854, part ii. s.v. pp. 3–6.Google Scholar
page 377 note 1 The ruins of Madjar or Madjari are situate in the district of Vladikavkaz, at the confluence of the Buival and Kuma, on the left bank of this last-named river near the stanitsa or Cossack village of Praskovia. Klaproth, who visited these ruins in 1810, says, that the foundation of Madjar has been erroneously attributed to the Hungarians. He derives the name from a Tartar word meaning ‘stone building,’ and says that the first to inhabit this place were the Kipchaks. In support of this view he adduces the similarity in the style of building and monuments, the inscriptions and coins of Sarai their chief city found here, and lastly the information concerning it given by Eastern writers. Thus in the Derbend Nameh, it is stated that in the second century of the Hejrah (i.e. eighth of the Christian era), Great and Lesser Madjar were two important towns. They are mentioned by Abulghazi in A.D. 1282, and by Abulfeda in his geography (A.D. 1321). Finally Madjar was known to the Russians as late as the year A.D. 1319, when it was a large trading town, and it was to this place that the body of Mikhail, prince of Tver, was brought after he had been tortured to death by the horde. Madjar probably ceased to exist in the fourteenth century during the civil wars of the Kipchaks. The ruins have been well described by Güldenstädt, cf. Klaproth, , Voyage au Caucase, vol. ii. pp. 165, 180;Google ScholarReineggs, , vol. i. p. 66;Google ScholarKaramzine, , Histoire de Russie, ed. cit. vol. iv. pp. 234–5.Google Scholar
page 378 note 1 Fort Naltchik in the district of Kabarda, territory of Terek, on a river of the same name, was founded in 1817–20 in order to strengthen the Russian advance into Trans-Caucasia.
page 380 note 1 Voyage au Caucase, vol. ii. p. 262,Google Scholar note.
page 380 note 2 Cf. Description of Mount Caucasus, translated by Wilkinson, , i. 248.Google Scholar
page 380 note 3 New Christian, New Muhammadan or Ardon communities.
page 380 note 4 e.g. in the Nart legends.
page 381 note 1 Cf. l.c. vol. i. p. 243.Google Scholar
page 382 note 1 This is still the case in Ossetia, and also among the Pshaves and Khevsurs, as Prof. K. informs me. In a Khevsur house the hall where the fire is burning is occupied by women and the upper storey by the men, and there is a small secret staírcase by which the men descend to the women's apartments in the night by the aid of an old woman, the mother of the bridegroom. The idea prevailing is that the woman is an impure being, and this appears from their exclusion from any place consecrated by religion. There is evidently a connexion between the views taken by Christianity on the one hand, and specially by the Greek church, and the Avesta. The whole history of Georgia points to a close connexion between the Shahs of Persia and the rulers of Georgia.
page 383 note 1 Perhaps answering to Vishnu, the god of the hearth in the Rig-Veda, , cf. Journ. Roy. Asiat. Soc. Vol. XIX. Pfc 4, p. 609.Google Scholar
page 384 note 1 The laws of Mann, however, prescrihe the eating of the sacrificial food as the duty of the higher caste of officiating priests who might alone do this. Cf. Sir W. Muir.
page 387 note 1 Some interesting particulars of the sacrificial horse in the Hindu funeral rites will be found in the article already referred to. Cf. The first Mandala of the Rig Veda, Journ. Roy. Asiat. Soc. Vol. XIX. Pt. 4, pp. 621seqq.Google Scholar
page 388 note 1 There is a strange similarity between this name and that given by the natives in some districts of India to the prehistoric graves. Cf. Mr. Bidie's account of his visit to the graves near Pallávaram in Notes of the Quarter, Journ. Roy. Asiat. Soc. Vol. XIX. Pt. 4, p. 693.Google Scholar
page 389 note 1 Cf. Shanaief, in Sbornik Svedenii Kavkazkikh gortsef, vol. iii. p. 27, and Vol. vi. p. 26.Google Scholar
page 390 note 1 Cf. Shanaief's collection of the legends and tales of the Osaetes.
page 390 note 2 Cf. Ralston, , Songs of the Russian People, London, 1872, pp. 129Google Scholar seq.
page 392 note 1 Cf. SirMaine's, H.Early Law and Custom, chap, viii.,Google Scholar on East European House Communities, p. 246.Google Scholar
page 395 note 1 This system prevails in all parts of the Caucasus, both in the east as well as in the west, and gives rise to some curious rules in the grape country, where a day is fixed for beginning cutting the grapes.
page 397 note 1 Cf. Maine, , Early Law and Custom, p. 336,Google Scholar
page 397 note 2 See his Obschinoye Zemliya, ch. 1.
page 398 note 1 The Nart tales are the sagas of Ossete national life corresponding to the Icelandic sagas. Klaproth was the first to mention them in his Voyage au Caucase. It was not till fifty years later in 1862, that Schiefner acquainted us more fully with these myths (see his Ossetische Sprüchwörter, etc.). According to this writer the Narts are half men and half angels or heroes, whose deeds are celebrated in the songs of the Ossetes, sung by them to the accompaniment of a musical instrument like a violin. These lays prevail among other inhabitants of the Caucasus, viz. the Ingush, Kumyks, Avars, and Kabarimians, by whom the Narts are represented as giants frequently contending with beings of a higher order, the Dzuar or gods, and sometimes vanquishing these. The names of these Nart heroes, of whom there are not many, are: Khamits, Urysmag, and his son Batyradz, Sosryko, Bétéko, Soslen, etc., and the same names occur with variations in the Kabardinian legends and songs. The Narts are said to dwell in one village in the mountains on the river Sequola, crossed by a bridge leading to the village. The best collection of these sagas is by V. Miller, who committed them to writing in 1880 from the lips of the Ossetes in Vladikavkaz, Alaghir, and Sadon. Cf. an article by Hübschmann, Sage und Glaube der Osseten, in Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, Band 21, Heft iv.
page 399 note 1 Prof. Kovalefsky tells me, there are lands in the Ukraine (S.W. Russia), known as Staraia Zaimotchnaia, i.e. anciently occupied by colonists, corresponding with the German ‘bifang.’ These are at present claimed by the Crown and taxed accordingly. Some six or seven years ago, however, lawsuits were brought before the courts of Kharkof and Sumy to test the validity of these claims, and resulted in the acknowledgment of the proprietary rights of the peasants. The government upon this prohibited any further suits of this nature upon the pretence that the historical and judicial character of these lands have not been sufficiently investigated. The question is one of great importance.
page 400 note 1 Cf. Mayne, , op. cit., chap, viii.Google Scholar
page 403 note 1 The ‘artel’ is a well-known institution in St. Petersburg, Moscow, and other large cities of Russia. All the work of the foreign houses of business except merely clerical work is performed by artels. The members of these bodies are responsible one for the other, and all losses arising from the dishonesty or negligence of one of the members is payable out of the common funds. See an able pamphlet by Luginin, M., “Les Artels,” written for the Cercle St. Simon in Paris.Google Scholar
page 403 note 2 Cf. Hindu Law and Usage, etc., p. 290.Google Scholar
page 403 note 3 Cf. Early Law and Custom, p. 338.Google Scholar
page 411 note 1 The code of Vakhtang, Prince of Georgia, was revised in 1723, according to M. Dareste, who, in an earlier number of the same volume of the Journal des Savants, reviews both the Armenian and Georgian systems of jurisprudence and their close connexion with Ossete customs. Cf. l.c. p. 169.