Alanic marginal notes in a Byzantine manuscript: a
preliminary report
Engberg, S.; Lubotsky, A.M.
Citation
Engberg, S., & Lubotsky, A. M. (2003). Alanic marginal notes in a Byzantine manuscript: a preliminary report. Nartamongae: The Journal Of
Alano-Ossetic Studies, II(1-2), 41-46. Retrieved from
https://hdl.handle.net/1887/16361
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NARTAMONGA7, 2003
Sysse ENGBERG Alexander LUBOTSKY
ALANIC MARGINAL NOTES IN A BYZANTINE A PRELIMINARY
Vol. 1-2
In:. 1992, while studying the Byzantine liturgical manuscripts in the Library of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, one of the authors (Sysse Engberg) discovered a manuscript with some thirty marginal notes. notes were written in Greek characters, but the language of the majority of them was not Greek. Back in Copenhagen, Engberg showed the glosses to her colleagues, who suspected that they were written in an Iranian language, possibly in a pre-stage of Ossetic. The specialists in Ossetic, however, strongly doubted this attribution, and Engberg put some of the glosses on the web ( «Linguist-list») with a request to the linguists of the world to help her to identify the language. It is in this way that the glosses have come to the attention of the other author (Alexander Lubotsky), who could confirm the pre-Ossetic provenance of the glosses. The two authors are currently preparing an edition of all these marginal notes with an extensive commentary on the language, palaeography, and liturgical context. We hope that the edition will be published in the near future, and this short note serves as a preliminary report.
The manuscript in question is a Greek Old Testament lectionary, or Prophetologion. The Prophetologion is a book which contains the Old Testament lections in the order in which they are read during the liturgical year. Individual scribes have found different solutions to the problem of the chronological arrangement of the fixed and the movable feasts in relation to each other, a fact that explains why some of the users of the book have had difficulty in finding their way about their manuscript. An arrangement found in many Prophetologion manuscripts begins with Christmas (December 25) and Epiphany (January 6), followed by the movable year, i.e. the readings for the weekdays of Lent from Wednesday before Carnival, up to and including Easter Eve. Then come the readings for vespers of the Triodion period, i.e. until Sunday after Pentecost, and finally the fixed year, from September to August.
will specify the day of the week, and the week within Lent, e.g. Friday of the Third week of Lent ('Cn rcaP<XO'KEUn 'Cfj<; E~8olla8o<; "CcOv Vl1O''CEHDV) . Each of the feasts in the Triodion period has its particular name, e.g. Sunday of the Holy Fathers (KUptaKTj "C(oV 'Ayicov Ilm:£pO)v). The headings of the fixed feasts normally carry both the date and the Saint of the feast, e.g. November 13, St. John Chrysostom (Il11Vt VOEIl~pi(? ty' 'Cn rcap(XIlOVn 'COt) ayiou 't 0)cX, VV(YU 'COU XPuO'oO''Co ~LOU) .
This is the arrangement found in the St. Petersburg manuscript, which was copied in A.D. 1275 by one 'IO)cX,VV1l<; avayvO)O''CoOtcX,KOVO<; (deacon responsible for the recital of the Holy Scripture in church). He did not copy the manuscript for himself, but for a priest named Chrysos who commissioned it. Unfortunately, this is all we know about the manuscript; the scribe has not added particulars about the geographical location, neither of himself, nor of the prospective owner. The manuscript itself does not give us any clue as to where it was copied. It is written on paper, with two columns to the page, and the model from which it was copied belonged to the Constantinopolitan, as opposed to the monastic, tradition. It could have been copied almost anywhere within the Byzantine sphere of influence, except in Italy.
At one point, the manuscript was owned and used by a non-Greek who had learned to read and write Greek, and who lived in a Greek Orthodox society where Greek served as the liturgical language. This possessor felt the need to identify the feasts in the margin of his manuscript, because he could not easily find them by skimming the text, as a native Greek would have done. A similar phenomenon appears in Prophetologia used in Arabic speaking countries. Supposedly, our possessor was entrusted with the recitation of the Holy Scripture in church, and was sufficiently familiar with Greek to recite the readings, once he had found them.
For this purpose, he wrote an abbreviated heading of his own in the margin, next to the full heading of the manuscript. Some notes are in Greek, others in his native language written with Greek characters. Almost all feasts of the Triodion period and of the fixed year have received a marginal note, but in the Lenten period only Monday of each week is marked. On the basis of the palaeographical evidence, the notes may tentatively be dated 14th or 15th century.
The glossator had a good passive knowledge of Greek and of orthodox liturgy. correctly identified abbreviations like XP( UCl'OO''to ~wu),
arco('Co)ll(l1v), etc., often transcribed the Greek heading freely and even sometimes abbreviated it. On the other hand, it is also obvious that the notator, although he appears to be conversant in Greek, does not have an active knowledge of Greek morphology and syntax.
The native language of the glossator can be identified as Alanic, a prestage of Ossetic, which clearly follows from the following examples of the notes.
Folio 69r, next to heading 'C'n Kat ~(£)Y(cX)A(n) [3'
npcot 'The and Holy Monday Monday before
marginal note aU'CEO'1f
lP O''toup. a1)'C£crl1P is unmistakably identical with avdiseer 'Monday'. This word represents an original phrase consisting of 'seven (gen.sg.)' and seer 'head' and meaning literally head of the
While writing au't£O'Y1P with two accents, the considered it as two words. Elsewhere, the word also appears as ex 1)'tE0'11P with
compound. Alanic cr1:0UP stands for Oss. [Iron] styr, great'. The word order is different from that of
attribute always precedes the referent, while here we the reverse
However, the order of the elements in compounds like seerystyr (scer
+
(y)styr) 'proud, haughty, arrogant', 'pride, haughtiness', lit. '(having) a head', Iron seerg W ybyr, Digor seergubur 'with a hanging head', etc. shows at a previous stage the order could be different. More examples of this kind can be found Abaev 1949: 1fI., 1964: § 204.
On folio 1071', next to the heading ~l1(vl) ()Erc1:(EIl~piw) 11' 1:(Tjv) Y£VV1Ptv 'tfje;; urc(Epayiac;;) 0(£01:0)K01) 'September 8, the Birth(day) of the Most Holy Mother of God', we find a marginal note aO''C£)lCl'.K nay,
must represent *a:steejmag ban 'the eighth day' (Modern Ossetic eesteejmag ban) and refer to the date of the feast, viz. September the eighth. Alanic *ban 'day' is also found in the greeting 'Carcavxac;; Ossetic da! bon xwarz 'good day to you'. In the so-called 'Yas word list' from the century
(N~meth
1959: 14f) this greeting appears in the form daban horz. development *a -> 0 before nasals took place in Ossetic rather late. According to Abaev (1949: 256), it did not occur before the XnIth century.show that this development must be dated even later than the XIVth century, which is in conformity with the Yas form ban.
On folio 116v, next to the Greek heading P,l1(vl) vo£p~piO) ty'
'cou
Xp(ucrocr'C0IlOU) 'November 13, the Eve of John Chrysostomos', the glossator wrote ~tprlv Ka~l rcav, which evidently stands for *zeerin kam ban 'day of the golden mouth' (Modern Ossetic zeerih kom ban [Iron] / zeerina: kom ban [DigorJ). The name of St. John Chrysostomos has often been translated, Old Church Slavonic Zlatousto, Georgian Okrop'iri. Presumably, the missionaries working among the Alans did the same, translating XpucroO''C6~o~
!I
REFERENCES
Abacv, V.I.
1949: Osetinskij jazyk i fol 'klor, l. Moscow ~ Leningrad.
!964: A Grammatical Sketch of Ossetic. Bloomington - Thc Hague. Ncmcth,1.
1959: Eine Worterliste der Jassen, der ungarliindischen Alanen. Abhandlungen der deutschen Akademie der Wissenschafien zu Berlin. Klasse fur Sprachen, Literatur und Kunst.
Jahrgang 1958, Nr. 4.
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ANNOTATIONS MARGINALES ALANIQUES SUR UN MANUSCRIT BYZANTIN: COMPTE RENDU PRELIMINAIRE
(resume)
Recemment retrouve, le manuscrit en question se presente comme un Icctionnaire
veterotcstamcntaire grec, cn l'especc, un prophetologion (prophetologe), c'est~a-dirc un livre
constitue d' cxtraits de l' Ancicn tcstament rcproduits dans l' ordrc OU ils sont cites an cours de
I' annee liturgique. Les copistes avaient chacun leur fa<;::on de resoudre le prohlemc de la disposition chronologique des fetes mohiles et des fetes fixes les uncs par rapport aux atItres, cc qui explique que certains utilisateurs du livre aient eu quelque clifficulte
a
s'y retrouver clans leurs manuscrits respectifs. Une solution adoptee dans hon nomhre de manLlscrits duprophetologion consiste
a
prendre Noel (25 decembre) et j'Epiphanie (6 janvier) pour point de depart, puisa
passera
!'annee mobile, c'cst-a--dire aux lecturcs destin6cs aux vepres des jours de semaine du Carerne, depuis le mardi pr6c6dant le Carnaval jusques et y compris la veillee pascale. Viennent ensuite les lectures pour les vepres de la pel'iocle du Triodiort, JaquelJe s't~tcndjusqu'au premier dimanche aprcs la Pentecote, et enfin l'annee fixe de septembre
a
aoOt. Chaque jour litllrgique comporte nonnalement une rubrique precisant ou la fete correspondante se situe dans I'mmce mobile OH I'annee fixe; mais, durant le Carerne, Icsdites rubriques spccifient en outre de que! jour de la semaine et de quelle sernaine du Careme iI s'agit, par ex., Vendredi de la troisieme semaine du Careme ('tfl 1W:PCX(J1\::£1l'n 'tile; f.~ooWiooC; 'tcilv VTICl"t£tcilv). Chacune des fetes de la periode clu Triodion a un nom particulier, par ex., Dimanche des Saints-Peres (KllPWKT] 'tcilv 'Aytwv f1m:ripwv). En regIe generale, le~; rubriqucs des fetes fixes p0l1ent a la fois la date et le nom du saint c61ebre: par ex. Novembre 13, saint Jean Chrysostome (p,'llVt VOql~Pl(Per'
1:'n nCXp(XllOVfj 'tou ayioll\wavvoll 'tou XpUO'OO'tClpO'tl).Telle est la disposition qu' on peut trollver dans le manuscrit de Saint .. Petersbourg, lequel a ete copic en 1275 par un certain loannes anagnostodiakonos (i.e. Jean le diacre ell charge de la lecture des Saintes Ecritures). Ce dernier n' a pas r6alise cette copie pour lui .. meme mais pour un pretre nomme Chrysos qui lui en avait passe comrnande. C'est malheureusement tout ce qu'on sait de ce manuscrit. Celui·cj ne no us Iivre aucune information particuliere, notamment qllant
