Georgian scripts: Difference between revisions

The origins of the Georgian alphabet are to this date poorly known, and no full agreement exists among Georgian and foreign scholars as to its date of creation, who designed the script and the main influences on that process. The oldest uncontested example of Georgian writing is an inscription in the ''Asomtavruli'' script that has been dated to c430 AD, in a {{which|date=August 2014}} church in [[Bethlehem]], Palestine. The oldest example of the script being used in Georgia is found in the church of [[Bolnisi Sioni]], dated 494 AD.<ref name="Haarmann2012">{{cite book|author=Harald Haarmann|editor=Matthias Hüning, Ulrike Vogl, Olivier Moliner|title=Standard Languages and Multilingualism in European History|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=HZqBCTDxqcgC&pg=PA299|accessdate=19 September 2013|year=2012|publisher=John Benjamins Publishing|isbn=978-90-272-0055-6|page=299|chapter=Ethnic Conflict and standardisation in the Caucasus}}</ref><ref name="Hewitt1995">{{cite book|author=B. G. Hewitt|title=Georgian: A Structural Reference Grammar|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=MUBtUcqOF-AC&pg=PA4|accessdate=19 September 2013|year=1995|publisher=John Benjamins Publishing|isbn=978-90-272-3802-3|page=4}}</ref>

 

 

A point of contention among scholars is the role played by [[Armenian Apostolic Church|Armenian clerics]] in that process. According to a number of scholars and contemporaneous Armenian sources, [[Mesrop Mashtots]], who is generally acknowledged as the creator of the [[Armenian alphabet]], to have also created the Georgian and [[Caucasian Albanian alphabet]]s. This tradition originates in the works of [[Koryun]], a fifth century historian and biographer of Mashtots,<ref>[http://armenianhouse.org/koryun/mashtots-en.html Koryun's Life of Mashtots]</ref> and has been quoted in some Western sources,<ref name="Donald Rayfield">[[Donald Rayfield]] ''The Literature of Georgia: A History (Caucasus World)''. RoutledgeCurzon. ISBN 0-7007-1163-5. P. 19. "The Georgian alphabet seems unlikely to have a pre-Christian origin, for the major archaeological monument of the 1st century 4IX the bilingual Armazi gravestone commemorating Serafua, daughter of the Georgian viceroy of Mtskheta, is inscribed in Greek and Aramaic only. It has been believed, and not only in Armenia, that all the Caucasian alphabets — Armenian, Georgian and Caucaso-Albanian — were invented in the 4th century by the Armenian scholar Mesrop Mashtots.<...> The Georgian chronicles The Life of Kartli - assert that a Georgian script was invented two centuries before Christ, an assertion unsupported by archaeology. There is a possibility that the Georgians, like many minor nations of the area, wrote in a foreign language — Persian, Aramaic, or Greek — and translated back as they read."</ref><ref>[[Glen Warren Bowersock]], [[Peter Robert Lamont Brown]], [[Oleg Grabar]]. ''Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World''. Harvard University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-674-51173-5. P. 289. [[James R. Russell]]. Alphabets. "Mastoc' was a charismatic visionary who accomplished his task at a time when Armenia stood in danger of losing both its national identity, through partition, and its newly acquired Christian faith, through Sassanian pressure and reversion to paganism. By preaching in Armenian, he was able to undermine and co-opt the discourse founded in native tradition, and to create a counterweight against both Byzantine and Syriac cultural hegemony in the church. Mastoc' also created the Georgian and Caucasian-Albanian alphabets, based on the Armenian model."</ref> but has been criticized by scholars, both Georgian<ref name="Javakhishvili">Georgian: ივ. ჯავახიშვილი, ქართული პალეოგრაფია, გვ. 205-208, 240-245</ref> and Western,<ref name=Lig1 /> who judge the passage in Koryun unreliable or even a later interpolation. Other scholars quote Koryun's claims without taking a stance on its validity.<ref name="Thomson1996">{{cite book|author=Robert W. Thomson|title=Rewriting Caucasian history: the medieval Armenian adaptation of the Georgian Chronicles : the original Georgian texts and the Armenian adaptation|publisher=Clarendon Press, Oxford|isbn=0198263732|page=xxii-xxiii}}</ref><ref name="Rapp2003">Stephen H. Rapp. ''Studies in medieval Georgian historiography: early texts and Eurasian contexts''. Peeters Publishers, 2003. ISBN 90-429-1318-5. P. 450. "There is also the claim advanced by Koriwn in his saintly biography of Mashtoc' (Mesrop) that the Georgian script had been invented at the direction of Mashtoc'. Yet it is within the realm of possibility that this tradition, repeated by many later Armenian historians, may not have been part of the original fifth-century text at all but added after 607. Significantly, all of the extant MSS containing The Life of Mashtoc* were copied centuries after the split. Consequently, scribal manipulation reflecting post-schism (especially anti-Georgian) attitudes potentially contaminates all MSS copied after that time. It is therefore conceivable, though not yet proven, that valuable information about Georgia transmitted by pre-schism Armenian texts was excised by later, post-schism individuals."</ref> Many agree, however, that Armenian clerics, if not Mashtots himself, must have played a role in the creation of the Georgian script.<ref name="Rapp2010"/><ref name=Lig1>{{cite web |url=http://www.academia.edu/1355678/Werner_Seibt_The_Creation_of_the_Caucasian_Alphabets_as_Phenomenon_of_Cultural_History |title=The Creation of the Caucasian Alphabets as Phenomenon of Cultural History |first= Werner |last= Seibt}}. Quote: ''So Mashtots would have been at least an indirect initiator of the Georgian alphabet''</ref><ref>[http://www.csuohio.edu/class/english/faculty/greppin.html Greppin, John A.C.]: ''Some comments on the origin of the Georgian alphabet''. — Bazmavep 139, 1981, 449-456</ref>