Old East Slavic language
Old East Slavic language is a name for a literary language used between the
10th and
14th centuries in
Kievan Rus and its
successor states.
As the language is part of the (pre-)national history of all Eastern Slavs, it is in their languages usually known by the respective national names, viz. as
Old Belarusian (
Belarusian старабеларуская or
старажытнабеларуская мова),
Old Russian (
Russian древнерусский), or
Old Ukrainian (
Ukrainian староукраїнська or
давньоукраїнська мова). However, there are also supranational names for that language in East Slavic: Belarusian
старажытнаруская мова 'Old
Rusian (= East Slavic)', Ukrainian
давньоруська мова (idem) and
давньокиївська мова 'Old Kievan'.
The language was a descendant of the
Proto-Slavic language and faithfully retained many of its features. A striking innovation in the evolution of this language was the development of so-called
full vocalism, which came to differentiate the newly evolving East Slavic from other Slavic languages. For instance, Proto-Slavic
*gordъ ‘town' became OES
gorodъ, Proto-Slavic
*melko ‘milk' - OES
moloko, and Proto-Slavic
*korva ‘cow' - OES
korova. Other Slavic languages would develop such forms as
gradъ, mlěko, krava (
South Slavic,
Czech and
Slovak) or
grodъ, mleko, krova (e.g.
Polish) etc.
Its
dialects were spoken, though not exclusively, roughly in the area today occupied by European part of
Belarus,
Russia,
Ukraine and part of
Poland.
It is difficult to assess this language as standardised in the modern sense. The spoken language in
Rus' consisted of a variety of dialects, and today we may speak definitely only of the languages of surviving manuscripts, which show regional divergences from the beginning of the historical records.
With time it evolved into several more diversified forms, which were the predecessors of the modern
Belarusian,
Russian,
Rusyn and
Ukrainian languages. Each of these languages preserves much of the Old East Slavic grammar and vocabulary.
When after the end of the 'Tatar yoke' the territory of former Kievan Rus was divided between the
Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the
Grand Duchy of Moscow, two separate literary languages emerged in these states,
Ruthenian in the west and
Early Russian in the east.
|
A page from Svyatoslav's Miscellanies (1073). |
The political unification of the region into the state called
Kievan Rus, from which modern
Belarus,
Russia and
Ukraine trace their origins, occurred approximately a century before the adoption of
Christianity in
988 and the establishment of the South Slavic
Old Church Slavonic as the liturgical and literary language. Documentation of the language of this period is scanty, making it difficult at best fully to determine the relationship between the literary language and its spoken dialects.
There are references in Arab and Byzantine sources to pre-Christian Slavs in European Russia using some form of writing. Despite some suggestive archaelogical finds and a corroboration by the 10th-century monk
Khrabr that ancient Slavs wrote in "strokes and incisions" (
черты и резы ), the exact nature of this system is not known. Recent amateur investigations in Russia have proposed that this was a syllabic system that may have survived, possibly into the 20th century, in cryptography (
тайнопись ), but scholars have reached no consensus beyond undecidability.
Although the
Glagolitic alphabet was briefly introduced, as witnessed by church inscriptions in
Novgorod, it was soon entirely superseded by the
Cyrillic. The samples of
birch-bark writing excavated in
Novgorod have provided crucial information about the pure tenth-century
vernacular in North-West Russia, almost entirely free of church influence. It is also known that borrowings and calques from
Byzantine Greek began to enter the vernacular at this time, and that simultaneously the literary language in its turn began to be modified towards Eastern Slavic.
The following excerpts illustrate two of the most famous literary monuments.
NOTE. The spelling has been partly modernized. The translations attempt to be as literal as possible; they are not literary. |
Graphic of the text (if your browser's font is missing some characters), click to enlarge |
c. 1110, from the
Laurentian Codex, 1377
.
These [are] the tales of the bygone years, whence is come the land of Rus', who first began to rule at Kiev, and whence the land of Rus' has come about.Early language; Russian and Ukrainian not yet fully differentiated. Fall of the
yers in progress or arguably complete (several words end with a consonant; "to rule" < , modern Uk
княжити, R
княжить). South-western (incipient
Ukrainian) features include "bygone"; modern R
временных). Correct use of
perfect and
aorist:
"сть пошла "is/has come" (modern R
пошла),
нача "began" (modern R
начал as a development of the old perfect tense.) Note the style of punctuation.
 |
Graphic of the text (if your browser's font is missing some characters), click to enlarge |
. c. 1200, from the Pskov manuscript, 15th cent.
.
Would it not be meet, o brothers, for us to begin with the old words the difficult telling of the host of Igor, Igor Sviatoslavich? And to begin in the way of the true tales of this time, and not in the way of Boyan's inventions. For the wise Boyan, if he wished to devote to someone [his] song, would wander like a squirrel over a tree, like a grey wolf over land, like a bluish eagle beneath the clouds.Illustrates the sung
epics. Typical use of metaphor and simile. The apparent (Russian) misreading
растекаться мыслью по древу (to effuse/pour out one's thought upon/over wood) has become proverbial in modern Russian with the meaning "to speak ornately, at length, excessively". (The misreading is of
мысію, "squirrel-like", taken to be
мыслію, "thought-like". It is present in both the manuscript copy of 1790 and the first edition of 1800, and appears to have been aided by a then misunderstood change in the meaning of the word R
течь "to flow".)
The Old East Slavic language was the only ancient Slavic tongue (apart from the Old Church Slavonic) that developed a great literature of its own. Surviving literary monuments include the legal code
Justice of the Rus (
Руська правда ), a corpus of
hagiography and
homily, the disputed epic
Song of Igor (
Слово о полку игореве ) and the earliest surviving manuscript of the
Primary Chronicle (
Повесть временных лет ) - the Laurentian codex (
Лаврентьевский список ) of 1377.
The
Book of Veles, said to have been found during the Russian civil war and to have disappeared in WWII, would, if genuine, provide about the only surviving pre-Christian East Slavic literary monument. Since the account of its find and eventual fate (several photographs are claimed to survive) has not been confirmed, and its language deviates from the accepted reconstruction, most professional linguists have so far dismissed the book's authenticity.
The earliest dated specimen of Old East Slavic (or, rather, of
Church Slavonic with pronounced East Slavic interference) must be considered the written
Ostromir Codex, written by the
diak Gregory at the order of
Ostromir, the
posadnik or governor of
Novgorod. This is an East Slavic recension of the Slavonic
Gospels, of the year 1056/57. Of the year 1073 we have the
Izbornik or
Miscellany of Sviatoslav. It was written by John the diak or deacon for that prince, and is a kind of Slavonic encyclopaedia, drawn from Greek sources. The date is 1076.
The next monument of the language is the famous
Slovo o zakone i blagodati, by
Hilarion,
metropolitan of
Kiev. In this work there is a panegyric on Prince
Vladimir of Kiev, the hero of so much of East Slavic popular poetry. This subtle and graceful oration admirably conforms to the precepts of the Byzantine eloquence. It is rivalled by another panegyric on Vladimir, written a decade later by Yakov the Monk.
Other 11th-century writers are Theodosius, a monk of the
Kievo-Pecherskaya Lavra, who wrote on the Latin faith and some
Pouchenia or
Instructions, and Luka Zhidiata, bishop of
Novgorod, who has left us a curious
Discourse to the Brethren. From the writings of Theodosius we see that many pagan habits were still in vogue among the people. He finds fault with them for allowing these to continue, and also for their drunkenness; nor do the monks escape his censures. Zhidiata writes in a more vernacular style than many of his contemporaries; he eschews the declamatory tone of the Byzantine authors. And here may be mentioned the many lives of the saints and the Fathers to be found in early East Slavic literature, starting with the two Lives of Sts
Boris and Gleb, written in the late 11th century and attributed to Jacob the Monk and to
Nestor the Chronicler.
With the so-called
Primary Chronicle, also attributed to Nestor, begins the long series of the Russian annalists. There is a regular catena of these chronicles, extending with only two breaks to the
17th century. Besides the work attributed to
Nestor, we have chronicles of
Novgorod,
Kiev,
Volhynia and many others. Every town of any importance could boast of its annalists,
Pskov and
Suzdal among others. In some respects these compilations, the productions of monks in their cloisters, remind us of the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, dry details alternating with here and there a picturesque incident; and many of these annals abound with the quaintest stories.
In the 12th century we have the sermons of bishop
Cyril of Turov, which are attempts to imitate in Old East Slavic the florid Byzantine style. In his sermon on
Holy Week,
Christianity is represented under the form of spring,
Paganism and
Judaism under that of winter, and evil thoughts are spoken of as boisterous winds.
 |
The 12th-century Novgorodian children were literate enough to send each other letters written on birch bark |
There are also admirable works of early travellers, as the igumen
Daniel, who visited the
Holy Land at the end of the 11th and beginning of the 12th century. A later traveller was
Afanasiy Nikitin, a merchant of
Tver, who visited
India in
1470. He has left a
record of his adventures, which has been translated into English and published for the
Hakluyt Society.
A curious monument of old Slavonic times is the
Pouchenie (Instruction), written by the great
Vladimir Monomakh for the benefit of his sons. This composition is generally found inserted in the Chronicle of Nestor; it gives a fine picture of the daily life of a Slavonic prince.
The Paterik of the Kievan Caves Monastery is a typical medieval collection of stories from the life of monks, featuring devils, angels, ghosts, and miraculous resurrections.
We now come to the famous
Lay of Igor's Campaign, which narrates the expedition of
Igor Svyatoslavich, prince of
Novhorod-Siverskyi against the
Cumans. It is neither
epic nor a poem but is written in
rhythmic prose. Any Christian influence is hard to trace, whereas pagan gods and deities are famously invoked by Igor's grieving wife, Yaroslavna, from the walls of
Putyvl. Of the whole bulk of the Old East Slavic literature, the Lay is the only work familiar to every educated Russian or Ukrainian. Its brooding flow of images, murky
metaphors, and ever changing rhythm haven't been successfully rendered into English yet; the best attempt at translation belongs to
Vladimir Nabokov.
The
Zadonshchina is a sort of prose poem much in the style of the
Tale of Igor's Campaign, and the resemblance of the latter to this piece furnishes an additional proof of its genuineness. This account of the
battle of Kulikovo, which was gained by
Dmitri Donskoi over the
Mongols in 1380, has come down in three important versions.
The early laws of Rus' present many features of interest, such as the
Russkaya Pravda of
Yaroslav the Wise, which is preserved in the chronicle of Novgorod; the date is between 1018 and 1072. The
laws show Rus at that time to have been in civilization quite on a level with the rest of Europe.
|
First page of the 10th-century Novgorod Codex, thought to be the oldest East Slavic book in existence |
*
Bylinas*
The Tale of Igor's Campaign - the most outstanding literary work in this language
*
Ruska Pravda -
11th century legal code issued by
Yaroslav the Wise *
Praying of Daniel the Immured*
A Journey Beyond the Three Seas*
* History of the
East Slavic languages*
Slavic languages*
Russian language*
Ukrainian language*
Belarusian language*
Ostromir's Gospel Online*
Online library of the Old Russian texts*
'Izbornyk', library of Old Ukrainian chronicles
