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The Newly Discovered Alphabet of the Caucasian Albanians

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

H. Kurdian
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Extract

In 1953 I was able to purchase an interesting late sixteenth-century Armenian manuscript written extensively on paper and beautifully illuminated and adorned with fine miniatures in colour and gold. This manuscript, now incorporated in my collection of Armenian manuscripts, contains a rare Armenian glossary with a wealth of linguistic and grammatical information and the most complete extant text of the arithmetical tables prepared originally by the great seventh-century Armenian scientist, Anania of Shirak. The part that interests us here, however, is that which depicts a number of different alphabets with the name of each letter transliterated into Armenian script. This part contains among others the alphabet of the Ałuank', the Caucasian Albanians, which, according to Koriwn, was invented by St. Mesrop, the inventor of the present Armenian and Georgian alphabets. For fifteen hundred years the information given by Koriwn remained totally uncorroborated, for not a single character was found on stone, metal, vellum, or paper that could be recognized for sure as Caucasian Albanian.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 88 , Issue 1-2 , April 1956 , pp. 81 - 83
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1956

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References

page 81 note 1 “Then there came and met him (St. Mesrop) a priest of the Albanian nation named Benyamin, and inquiring from him and examining the barbarous words of the Albanian language he (St. Mesrop) formed alphabets in accordance with his heaven-given vigorous manner, and by the grace of Christ he successfully arranged and weightily established (the Albanian alphabet)”. (Koriwn, ed. Venice, 1894, p. 29.)

page 81 note 2 Twenty-one so-called Albanian letters contained in an Armenian manuscript dated 1535 were reproduced in Karamianz, N., Einundzwanzig Buchstaben eines verlorenen Alphabets, ZDMG.XL (1886), pp. 315 ff.Google Scholar, but these are merely thinly disguised Armenian cryptograms; cf. Shanidze, , op. cit., infra, pp. 46, 47Google Scholar. The same can be said, says Shanidze, of the so-called Albanian alphabets in the Etchmiatsin MSS. Nos. 3124 and 2013. Shanidze thinks that a potsherd from Old Ganja, now contained in the Institute of History, Language, and Literature of the Azerbaidjan branch of the Academy of Sciences in Baku, may bear an Albanian inscription. A reproduction of this inscription is given on p. 61 of his article, but Professor H. W. Bailey points out (Caucasica, , JRAS., 1943, p. 4Google Scholar) that the published photograph is not clear enough to permit of comparison; cf. D. Diringer, The Alphabet, London, 1948, pp. 326–7, fig. 152.1.

page 82 note 1 A. Shanidze, Novootkrytyj Alfavit Kavkazskix Albancev i ego Znacenie dlja Nauki; I. Abuladze, K Otkrytiju Alfavita Kavkazskix Albancev (Izvestija Instituta Jazyka, Istorii i Material 'noj Kul'tury im. Akad. Marra Gruzinskogo Filiala Akademii Nauk SSSR, Vol. IV; the articles were published together as a separate offprint (Tiflis, 1938, pp. ii, 72) with summaries in Georgian and French); cf. G. Dumézil, Une chrétienté perdue: les Albanais du Caucase (Melanges Asiatiques, Paris, 1940–1, pp. 126 ff.).

page 82 note 2 Yovhannēs is also known as Mankasarentz from his father's name, Mankasar. Some 232 manuscripts, of which only about twenty have reached our times, are attributed to his pen; perhaps less than ten, two of which are in my collection, are extant to-day.

page 82 note 3 Driven by the Seljuk invasions in the eleventh century many Armenian emigrees from Ani and the other great cities of Armenia moved to the Crimea (Kafa, etc.), taking along with them large numbers of Armenian manuscripts. A. Shanidze (op. cit., p. 13) says that the State Literary Museum of Erivan contains more than forty manuscripts copied at Kafa from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century.

page 82 note 4 A. Shanidze, op. cit., p. 13.

page 83 note 1 The names of the letters in MS. No. 7117 in Hübschmann's system of transliteration would be as follows: alt', odet', zim, gat, ēb, zaṙl, en, žil, t'as, ča, yud, ža, irb, ša, lan, ina, xēn, dan, čaṙ, zox, kar, lit, hēt, hay, ar, coy, či, čay, mak, kar, nuc, jay, šak', jayn, un, tay, xam, jay, čat, pēn, p'ēs, kat, sēk, vēz, tiwr, soy, on, caw, jayn, yayd, p'iwr, k'iw; Shanidze, op. cit., p. 28.