Our Notes & References

First edition of the first ABC and primer of the Svan language, a major cultural landmark for this celebrated region of the Southern flanks of the Caucasus.

Created in 1860 and headquartered in Tiflis, the Society for the Reestablishment of Orthodox Christianity in the Caucasus Region had various goals: build and maintain churches, establish schools, conduct missionary activity among locals. It had also an aim much inspired by the earlier Propaganda Fide of the Vatican: to study local languages, develop their writing, and translate the main Orthodox works into local languages. A special commission, led by the linguist and ethnographer Major-General Peter Karlovitch von Uslar (1816-75), was created for this purpose. As a result, several alphabets were structured in the early 1860s: a Chechen one, Abkhazian, Aysoric, and one for Svanetia.

Famous for its controversial use of Russian.

This Svan ABC is a direct result of the Society’s work. It contains spelling exercises, prayers, a catechism, and a trilingual glossary (Svan-Georgian-Russian). The alphabet was based on Cyrillics and brief explanations were written in Russian, an editorial choice which was met with hostility and sharply criticized. Stoyanov, the author of the early Travels across Svanetia (1876), notes that Svan children, though taught with this Lushnu Anban, do not understand anything in it, as they don’t speak a word in Russian or Georgian. Besarion Nizhiradze, a priest and specialist of the Svan language at the turn of the century, remarked that Svan and Georgian languages were very close and only Georgian alphabet should have been used instead of Russian: “half of the first page [in Lushnu Anban] is occupied by Uslar’s alphabet, which is based on Russian letters and the whole page of the book is devoted to explaining those 13 letters of the Svan language, which do not correspond to Russian letters, but actually to Georgianones… The examples mentioned here should be sufficient to confirm the unsuitability of Lushnu Anban. Its use in schools will do great harm to the religious and moral education of Svans”. (Nizhiradze, B., Tavisupali Svani. Bibliographic Notes, No.6, 1891).

In spite of this debate, Lushnu Anban became an important landmark in the history of Svan culture, as nothing similar had been published. But also thanks to this controversy, it opened to way for other publications and a development of Svan literature.

From the towers of Savage Svanetia.

Svan belongs to a Kartvelian family of languages, together with Georgian, Colchian, Mingrelian. It is believed that it separated from the latter ones approximately 4000 years ago. At the time of Lushnu Anban, Svanetia was still a remote and rather feared region of Georgia, with most inhabitants illiterate. Clive Phillips-Wolley famously titled his 1883 book Savage Svanetia because of brutal customs of the locals, such as propensity to murdering enemies or just people they disliked. This casual attitude towards life partly explains why the region remained for a long time one of the least-known corners of the Caucasus. It is now celebrated for its remarkable traditional village architecture featuring numerous high towers.

Very rare. We could trace only one copy in the US (Library of Congress) and three in Europe (BL and two in Berlin). We are not aware of any other example at auction in recent decades or on the market.

Bibliography

Stoyanov, I.A., Travels across Svanetia, Zapiski Kavkazskogo otdela Imperatorskogo russkogo istoricheskogo obschestva, Volume X, Issue 2, 1876.

Nizhiradze, B., Tavisupali Svani. Bibliographic Notes, No.6, 1891.