Our Notes & References

A fascinating publication: probably the earliest extensive version of the Old Testament in Ossetian, this one for children, in a new, adapted alphabet, and part of intensive missionary efforts in this region of the Caucasus, in particular to counter the development of Muslim faith.

Extremely rare: only one other copy traced, in Denmark – apparently none in the Americas and none in the two main Russian libraries; no copies traced on the market in recent decades either.

Ivan Ivanovich Chepigovskii (1821-90) was a Russian clergyman, author and translator. Born in Crimea, he became the first Bishop of Vladikavkaz in 1875. Until that point most priests in Ossetia had been Georgians, who carried out services only in their own language (see Gostieva). Furthermore, the state of Orthodoxy in the region was very poor — Chepigovskii wrote of the pagan rituals of the villagers, and of “the blasphemy of dirty peasants against the sanctity of God’s temple” (Gorobets). In the face of these low standards and increasing competition from the mullahs of neighbouring Daghestan, Chepigovskii understood the importance of learning the Ossetian language and publishing religious texts which the locals could understand.

He not only learned the language from scratch but also further modified the Ossetian Cyrillic system, eliminating eleven letters (mostly the diacritics), which allowed Ossetian books to be printed in any Russian printing house (ibid.). This allowed him to import the relevant typefaces from Tbilisi to Vladikavkaz and publish a catechism (1878), a Russian-Ossetian dictionary and grammar (1884), the first Ossetian-language periodical and the present volume, which contains stories from the Bible and aims to teach children the basics of the faith with simple, catechismic questions such as “Who is God”?

Except the Psalms in 1848, it seems that, from the whole Bible, only the Gospels had been translated into Ossetian (two editions in the 1860s), making Chepigovskii’s publication the first extensive part of the Old Testament to see light in this language. A volume similar to ours and focusing on the New Testament was also published by him in 1881.

With a fine inscription: Chepigovskii inscribed this copy immediately after printing to Mikhail Nikolaevich Smirnov (1847-92), the head of the Society for the Restoration of Orthodox Christianity in the Caucasus, founded in 1860 specifically to evangelise the newly incorporated territories of the Russian Empire (cf. the Smirnov Museum). Chepigovskii himself was a member of the Society, whose goals included the translation of sacred books, the building of churches and the instruction of missionaries in local languages — in fact, “particular attention was paid to Ossetia, where the greatest success was achieved” (Klychnikova and Savenko). It is unsurprising that he is said to have played an instrumental role “in defending the Orthodox faith and countering Muslim propaganda” (The Moscow Patriarchate, in 2019).

The book is also interesting as one of the few Imperial-era publications in Ossetian, which is an Indo-European language of the Iranian branch, and the last living descendant of Scythian and Sarmatian. Historically written in either the Georgian or Cyrillic script, Ossetian has only a few hundred thousand speakers, who can be traced back to the Alans who fled the Mongol and Timurid invasions. Long isolated from the rest of the Iranian world, their language has both preserved a number of archaic features and absorbed influence from their Caucasian neighbours.

Provenance

Mikhail Nikolaevich Smirnov (1847-1892, inscription from the author to title verso, “Mikhailu Nikoleavichu G. Smirnovu Milostivomu Gosudariu Sostavitel Iosif Episkop Vladikavkazskii. 26 iuniia 1881″); Evgenii Gustavovich Veidenbaum (1845-1918, a Russian ethnographer, Caucasian scholar and President of the Caucasian Ethnographic Commission, who travelled to the south-west Caucasus in the 1870s and published a book which remains an invaluable source of information about the 19th century Meskheti; blue ink stamps to title and upper wrapper); Biblioteka Kavkazsk. Muzeia (the first museum in the region, founded in 1852; pre-revolutionary stamps and shelmarks to title and upper wrapper).

Bibliography

Gorobets, A.A. 2015. ‘IOSIF’. In Pravoslavnaia Entsiklopedia, vol. 25; Gostieva, L.K. 2022. ‘Perevodicheskaia Deiatel’nost’ Episkopa Vladikavkazkogo Iosifa (Chepigovskogo) [The Translation Activity of Bishop of Vladikavkaz Iosif Chepigovsky]’. 11 (18); Klychnikova, M.V., and E Savenko A,. 2010. ‘Den’ utverzhdeniya ustava Obshchestva vosstanovleniya pravoslavnogo khristianstva na Kavkaze [Day of Approval of the Charter of the Society for the Restoration of Orthodox Christianity in the Caucasus]’. Biblioteka Im. M. Iu. Lermontova; Russkaia Pravoslavnaia Tserkov’, Moskovskii Patriarkhat [Russian Orthodox Church, Moscow Patriarchate]. 2019. ‘126 let nazad otoshel ko Gospodu vydaiushchiisia osetinskii sviashchennik Mikhail Sukhiev [126 years after the death of the outstanding Ossetian priest Mikhail Sukhiev]’.