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52-462: Surviving Destroyed or barely existing The Nart sagas ( Abkhaz : Нарҭаа ражәабжьқәа; Nartaa raƶuabƶkua ; Adyghe : Нарт тхыдэжъхэр , romanized: Nart txıdəĵxər ; Ossetian : Нарты кадджытæ, Нарти кадæнгитæ , romanized: Narty kaddžytæ, Narti kadængitæ ) are a series of tales originating from the North Caucasus . They form much of the basic mythology of
104-813: A King of the Britons , whose daughter, Helena marries Constantius Chlorus and gives birth to a son who becomes the Emperor Constantine the Great , tracing the Roman imperial line to British ancestors. It has been suggested that Leir of Britain, who later became King Lear, was originally the Welsh sea-god Llŷr , related to the Irish Ler . Various Celtic deities have been identified with characters from Arthurian literature as well: for example Morgan le Fay
156-643: A number of ways, including compounding , affixation, reduplication or conversion from another part of speech. Roughly equivalent to the infinitive, or to a so-called "verbal noun," the Masdar form of the verb resembles the English gerund. It is formed by the addition of a specific suffix to a bare verb stem, -ра ( -ra ) for a dynamic verb and -заара ( -zaara ) for a stative. аԥхьара á-px’a-ra ART -read- MSD аԥхьара á-px’a-ra ART-read-MSD "to read/be reading" Various prefixes can be added to
208-573: A smooth narrative". Some motifs in the Nart sagas are shared by Greek mythology. The story of Prometheus chained to Mount Kazbek or to Mount Elbrus in particular is similar to an element in the Nart sagas. These shared motifs are seen by some as indicative of an earlier proximity of the Caucasian peoples to the ancient Greeks, also shown in the myth of the Golden Fleece , in which Colchis
260-466: A theme of special importance for writers trying to find unity in the mixture of their land's Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, Roman and Norse inheritance." Geoffrey of Monmouth 's Historia Regum Britanniae is a central component of the Matter of Britain. Geoffrey drew on a number of ancient British texts, including the 9th-century Historia Brittonum . The Historia Brittonum is the earliest known source of
312-562: Is a Northwest Caucasian language most closely related to Abaza . It is spoken mostly by the Abkhaz people . It is one of the official languages of Abkhazia , where around 190,000 people speak it. Furthermore, it is spoken by thousands of members of the Abkhazian diaspora in Turkey , Georgia 's autonomous republic of Adjara , Syria , Jordan , and several Western countries. 27 October is
364-561: Is also spoken as a minority language around the world. There is a considerable number of Abkhaz speakers in Adjara in southern Georgia, with the diaspora concentrating itself around the capital Batumi , with about 982 people considering Abkhaz their first language. In the Russian census of 2010, 6,786 speakers of Abkhaz were reported in Russia . In Ukraine there are around 1,458 according to
416-467: Is an agglutinative language that relies heavily on affixation. It has an ergative-absolutive typology, such that the subject of an intransitive verb functions identically to the object of a transitive verb. Notably, Abkhaz expresses ergativity entirely through the ordering of subjects and objects within verb constructions rather than through overt case marking as most other ergative languages do. All Latin transliterations in this section utilize
468-604: Is generally accepted to have been part of modern-day Georgia . In the book From Scythia to Camelot , authors C. Scott Littleton and Linda A. Malcor speculate that many aspects of the Arthurian legends are derived from the Nart sagas. The proposed vector of transmission is the Alans, some of whom migrated into northern France at around the time the Arthurian legends were forming. As expected, these parallels are most evident in
520-419: Is highly regular. Abkhaz, being an ergative language, makes a strong distinction between transitive and intransitive verbs, as well as dynamic and stative . Stative verbs describe states of being, roughly analogous to copular phrases in English, as in дхәыҷуп ( d-x˚əčә́-wə-p - "she is a child"). Dynamic verbs express direct actions, functioning more closely to standard English verbs. Dynamic verbs possess
572-592: Is not clear. The Turkish census denotes 13,951, but the figures are dubious, since the numbers of Abkhazians that came from the beginning of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th have been documented at around 30 thousand. Ethnologue gives 150,000 Abkhazians living in Turkey, of these 50,000 still speak the language. The head of the Abkhaz federation says there are in between 500 and 700 thousand Abkhazians in Turkey. In general, Abkhaz seems to have been lost by most of
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#1732757936975624-656: Is the best-known part of the Matter of Britain. It has succeeded largely because it tells two interlocking stories that have intrigued many later authors. One concerns Camelot , usually envisioned as a doomed utopia of chivalric virtue, undone by the fatal flaws of the heroes like Arthur, Gawain and Lancelot . The other concerns the quests of the various knights to achieve the Holy Grail ; some succeed ( Galahad , Percival ), and others fail. The Arthurian tales have been changed throughout time, and other characters have been added to add backstory and expand on other Knights of
676-432: Is usually represented as [ɨ] if the vowel is in a stressed position, and being unaffected by its neighbouring consonants. Other linguists however, mainly Russian ones, describe the vowels differently. They describe the sound of 'ә' being completely different from [ɨ], and by their descriptions being closer to [ə]. The 'а' is described as being particularly back, likely [ɑ]. Typical of Northwest Caucasian languages, Abkhaz
728-663: The Nart-Orxustxoi , which includes the most prominent Narts known from the other versions (e.g. Seska-Solsa corresponding to Sosruko/Soslan, Khamtsha-Patarish corresponding to Batraz/Batradz, etc.) In contrast to the Ossetian and Abkhaz versions, the Nakh legends depict the Narts as warlike bandits who fight against local good heroes such as Koloi-Kant and Qinda-Shoa (with Qinda-Shoa corresponding to Sawway/Shawey). Shayan Javadi ,
780-482: The Proto-Indo-Europeans were similarly divided into three castes—warriors, priests, and commoners. The Northwest Caucasian ( Circassian , Abkhaz-Abasin and Ubykh) versions are also highly valuable because they contain more archaic accretions and preserve "all the odd details constituting the detritus of earlier traditions and beliefs", as opposed to the Ossetian ones, which have been "reworked to form
832-531: The 12th to the 16th century. The three "matters" were first described in the 12th century by French poet Jean Bodel , whose epic Chanson des Saisnes [ fr ] ("Song of the Saxons") contains the lines: Ne sont que III matières à nul homme atandant: De France et de Bretaigne et de Rome la grant There are only three subject matters for any discerning man: That of France, that of Britain, and that of great Rome. The name distinguishes and relates
884-712: The 2001 census, but of these only 317 speak Abkhazian. There were also communities in Syria , Jordan and Iraq with around 5,000 Abkhazians, although this number could reach 10,000 according to the Abkhazia's Foreign Ministry. The biggest western diaspora is in Germany , with around 5,000 speakers, but other communities are found in countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, Austria, France, Belgium and so on. The earliest indisputable extant written records of
936-468: The 4 kinds of labialisation described by Chirikba. Affricate The nature of the vowels of Abkhaz is not clear. Some linguists, characterise the vowel system as a 2 degree vertical vowel system ; with the two vowels being distinguished by height, 'ә' being the high/close vowel, and 'а' being the low/open. This system would very closely resemble the one found in Adyghe . The quality of 'ә' in this case,
988-643: The Abkhaz language are in the Arabic script , recorded by the Turkish traveller Evliya Çelebi in the 17th century. Abkhaz has been used as a literary language for only about 100 years. It was suggested that certain inscriptions on Ancient Greek pottery which had been considered nonsense are in fact written in Abkhaz-Adydge languages. The methodology of the research was criticised and the results called improbable. In 1918, Tbilisi State University became
1040-615: The Kings of Britain) is a central component of the Matter of Britain. It was one of the three great Western story cycles recalled repeatedly in medieval literature, together with the Matter of France , which concerned the legends of Charlemagne and his companions , as well as the Matter of Rome , which included material derived from or inspired by classical mythology and classical history . Its pseudo- chronicle and chivalric romance works, written both in prose and verse, flourished from
1092-472: The Masdar to form entire dependent clauses, as in аԥибаҽра a-pә́-j+ba-č-ra ART - PREV - RECI -break- MSD аԥибаҽра a-pә́-j+ba-č-ra ART-PREV-RECI-break-MSD "breaking each other" However, the fully conjugated personal Abkhaz verb forms are "templatic," with each grammatical distinction occupying a specific "slot" or "position" within the broader verb template. Verbs are thus formed by
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#17327579369751144-524: The Matter of Britain from the mythological themes taken from classical antiquity , the " Matter of Rome ", and the tales of the Paladins of Charlemagne and their wars with the Moors and Saracens , which constituted the " Matter of France ". King Arthur is the chief subject of the Matter of Britain, along with stories related to the legendary kings of Britain , as well as lesser-known topics related to
1196-511: The Nart epic to be a central feature of their national identity. Based especially on the Ossetian versions, the Nart stories have been valued by scholars as a window towards the world of the Iranian -speaking cultures of antiquity, and as an important source for comparative Indo-European mythology. For example, the philologist Georges Dumézil used the Ossetian division of the Narts into three clans to support his Trifunctional Hypothesis that
1248-527: The Ossetian versions, according to researcher John Colarusso . For more details, see " Historicity of King Arthur – Lucius Artorius Castus and the Sarmatian connection ." There are some differences between the various versions of the Nart legends. For example, the Ossetian versions depict the Nartic tribe as composed of three distinct clans that sometimes rival one another: the brave Æxsærtægkatæ (to whom
1300-527: The Persian translator of "Nart" by matching the Ossetian, Abkhaz, Abaza, Circassian, and Ubykh versions, has been able to identify the lineage of some characters who have only been named. For instance, by recreating a character named "Qânzezâd (Abaza: Qanzhoquo)," he believes that he is the son of Azaukhan in the Ossetian version. [REDACTED] Media related to Nart Sagas at Wikimedia Commons Abkhaz language Abkhaz , also known as Abkhazian ,
1352-493: The Round Table . The medieval legend of Arthur and his knights is full of Christian themes; those themes involve the destruction of human plans for virtue by the moral failures of their characters, and the quest for an important Christian relic. Finally, the relationships between the characters invited treatment in the tradition of courtly love , such as Lancelot and Guinevere , or Tristan and Iseult . In more recent years,
1404-667: The Sakarya province, it being spoken in 14 villages. The other major place where Abkhaz is spoken is in Karachay-Cherkessia , where the Northern dialects are spoken, although there they are considered as a separate language and form the literary Abaza language . They are spoken by 37,831 people in Russia, mostly in the south of Stavropol Krai in the area around Kislovodsk , and in the upper Kuma river area. Abkhaz
1456-522: The addition of various affixes to the verb stem; these affixes express such distinctions as transitivity, person and stative/dynamic quality, occupying rigid positions within the overall verb structure. There is a high degree of agreement between verbs and other parts of speech. Overall, the Abkhaz verb is constructed as follows: Not all of these elements will necessarily co-occur in every verb. The individual parts of verb morphology are addressed below. First Position The first prefixing element of
1508-493: The closest relative to Abkhaz, with it only later on being influenced by Circassian. There is not an agreed number of speakers of Abkhaz, and there are widely different numbers. It is agreed that today most of the Abkhaz people do not live in Abkhazia. In the census conducted by the Republic of Abkhazia in 2011, Abkhazians comprised 50.8% of the population, around 122,175 people; of these 92,838 speaking it natively. Only two of
1560-461: The day of the Abkhazian language in Georgia . Abkhaz is a Northwest Caucasian language and is thus related to Adyghe . The language of Abkhaz is especially close to Abaza , and they are sometimes considered dialects of the same language, Abazgi , of which the literary dialects of Abkhaz and Abaza are simply two ends of a dialect continuum . Grammatically, the two are very similar; however,
1612-488: The descendants, and bilingualism being low except in some specific areas, although there seems to be an effort for the new generation to learn the language with public schools being able to teach Abkhaz and together with 7,836 second language speakers. Abkhazian villages are concentrated around the cities of Adapazarı , Düzce , Sinop , Hendek and Samsun in the northern part, and in the west around cities such as Bilecik , Inegöl and Eskişehir ; they are mainly found in
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1664-493: The differences in phonology are substantial, it also contains elements characteristic of Kabardian ; these are the main reasons for many others to prefer keeping the two separate, while others still refer to it as the Tapanta dialect of Abkhaz. Chirikba mentions that there are possible indications that proto-Northwest Caucasian , could have divided firstly into proto-Circassian and to proto-Ubykh-Abkhaz; Ubykh then being
1716-609: The early Arthurian and pseudo-historical sources of the Matter of Britain. The Scots , for instance, formulated a mythical history in the Pictish and the Dál Riata royal lines. While they do eventually become factual lines, unlike those of Geoffrey, their origins are vague and often incorporate both aspects of mythical British history and mythical Irish history. The story of Gabrán mac Domangairt especially incorporates elements of both those histories. The Arthurian literary cycle
1768-488: The ethnic groups in the area, including Abazin , Abkhaz , Circassian , Ossetian , Karachay - Balkar , and to some extent Chechen - Ingush folklore. The term nart comes from the Ossetian Nartæ , which is plurale tantum of nar . The derivation of the root nar is of Iranian origin, from Proto-Iranian *nar for 'hero, man', descended from Proto-Indo-European *h₂nḗr . In Ingush and Chechen ,
1820-484: The first institution of higher education to teach Abkhazian language. The founders of the university began to take care of the development and scientific study of the Abkhazian language. At the meeting of the Council of Professors held at Tbilisi State University in 1918, Ivane Javakhishvili noted the scientific importance of studying Caucasian languages. In 1918, by the decision of the Council of Professors, Petre Charaia
1872-411: The following: Arthurian legends By century The Matter of Britain ( French : matière de Bretagne ) is the body of medieval literature and legendary material associated with Great Britain and Brittany and the legendary kings and heroes associated with it, particularly King Arthur . The 12th-century writer Geoffrey of Monmouth 's Historia Regum Britanniae ( History of
1924-479: The full range of aspect , mood and tense forms, in contrast to statives, which do not. Some verbs, called inversives, combine certain features of both stative and dynamic verbs. Another important verbal distinction in Abkhaz is finite versus non-finite, referring to the duration of the action . Finite verbs usually contain enough information to form a complete sentence, whereas non-finite verbs typically form dependent clauses . Verb stems can be derived in
1976-413: The history of Great Britain and Brittany , such as the stories of Brutus of Troy , Coel Hen , Leir of Britain (King Lear), and Gogmagog . The legendary history of Britain was created partly to form a body of patriotic myth for the country. Several agendas thus can be seen in this body of literature. According to John J. Davenport, the question of Britain's identity and significance in the world "was
2028-571: The language has only two phonemically distinct vowels, which have several allophones depending on the palatal and/or labial quality of adjacent consonants. Labialised alveolo-palatal fricatives are found in the Bzyp and Sadz dialects of Abkhaz, but not in Abzhywa. Plain alveolo-palatal consonants and the pharyngealised and labialised-pharyngealised uvular fricatives are unique to the Bzyp dialect. The consonants highlighted in red and in brackets are
2080-462: The most preserved lexicon, with few borrowings. Abzhywa has adopted many loans from Kartvelian , specially Mingrelian ; Sadz on the other hand has more words from Circassian . Northern dialects in general have more loanwords from Persian, Arabic, Turkish and Circassian. Abkhaz has a very large number of consonants (58 in the literary dialect), with three-way voiced / voiceless / ejective and palatalized / labialized /plain distinctions. By contrast,
2132-470: The most prominent Narts belong), the rich Borætæ, and the wise Alægatæ; the Circassian versions do not depict such a division. The Abkhaz versions are unique in describing the Narts as a single nuclear family composed of Satanaya's one hundred sons. All of these versions describe the Narts as a single coherent group of (mostly) "good" heroes. Some Nakh ( Chechen - Ingush ) legends include a group called
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2184-538: The original dialects are still spoken in Abkhazia. The Bzyp dialect is still spoken in its homeland northwest of Sukhumi , stretching from the Bzyp River to the western environs of Sukhumi and the Psyrtskha valley, whereas the Abzhywa dialect is spoken south-east of Sukhumi. The rest of the Abkhaz speaking population inhabits other neighbouring areas. The exact number of Abkhazians and Abkhaz speakers in Turkey
2236-527: The provinces of Sakarya and Bolu in the western part, and near the Çoruh river in the north-east. Historically the dialects of Sadz, Ahchypsy and Tsabal were located in Abkhazia; Sadz being spoken from the Bzyp river to the Matsesta River , and further to the north-west bordering the Sochypsta River . Today they are exclusively spoken in the northwestern part of Turkey, specially in
2288-428: The standard Abzhywa dialect. The only dialects spoken in Abkhazia are Abzhywa and Bzyp. Northern dialects which are the basis for literary Abaza are spoken in Karachay-Cherkessia , while the other dialects such as Sadz are spoken in Turkey due to Russian invasions in the 19th century. While most differences are phonetic, differences in the lexicon are present, although mostly due to exterior contact. Bzyp contains
2340-611: The story of Brutus of Troy . Traditionally attributed to Nennius , its actual compiler is unknown; it exists in several recensions. This tale went on to achieve greater currency because its inventor linked Brutus to the diaspora of heroes that followed the Trojan War . As such, this material could be used for patriotic myth-making just as Virgil linked the founding of Rome to the Trojan War in The Æneid . Geoffrey lists Coel Hen as
2392-521: The system explicated in Chirikba (2003) (see Abkhaz alphabet for the details). DETR:detrimental BENF:benefactive PREV:preverb SPREV:stem preverb EXT:extension MSD:masdar Abkhaz morphology features a highly complex verb system that could be called a "sentence in miniature." Chirikba (2003) describes Abkhaz as a "verbocentric" language wherein verbs occupy the "central part of the morphology." However, despite its complexity, Abkhaz verbal morphology
2444-401: The trend has been to attempt to link the tales of King Arthur and his knights with Celtic mythology , usually in highly romanticized, 20th-century reconstructed versions. The work of Jessie Weston , in particular From Ritual to Romance , traced Arthurian imagery through Christianity to roots in early nature worship and vegetation rites, though this interpretation is no longer fashionable. It
2496-451: The verb complex expresses either the subject of an intransitive verb in the absolutive construction, or the direct object of a transitive verb in an ergative construction. The following table illustrates the various agreement markers which can occupy the first position. These prefixes can either be in their long forms, containing the letters inside the parenthesis, or in the short forms that do not contain them. The rules for using them are
2548-703: The word nart means 'giant'. Some of the characters who feature prominently in the sagas are: The first Westerner to take note of the Nart stories was the German scholar Julius von Klaproth , who traveled to the Caucasus during the first decade of the 19th century. The earliest written account of the material is attributed to the Kabardian author Shora Begmurzin Nogma , who wrote in Russian in 1835–1843, published posthumously in 1861. A German translation by Adolf Berge
2600-402: Was invited to teach the Abkhazian language, and from 1925, this mission was continued by Dimitri Gulia and Simon Janashia . Abkhaz is generally viewed as having three major dialects: The literary language is based on the Abzhywa dialect. Below is a classification of Abkhaz dialects according to Chirikba (1996): In some form or the other, all dialects are richer in phonemes than
2652-985: Was often thought to have originally been the Welsh goddess Modron or Irish the Morrígan . Many of these identifications come from the speculative comparative religion of the late 19th century and have been questioned in more recent years. William Shakespeare was interested in the legendary history of Britain, and was familiar with some of its more obscure byways. Shakespeare's plays contain several tales relating to these legendary kings, such as King Lear and Cymbeline . It has been suggested that Shakespeare's Welsh schoolmaster Thomas Jenkins introduced him to this material. These tales also figure in Raphael Holinshed 's The Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland , which also appears in Shakespeare's sources for Macbeth . Other early authors also drew from
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#17327579369752704-577: Was published in 1866 ( Berge 1866 ). The stories exist in the form of prose tales as well as epic songs. It is generally known that some of the Nart corpora have an ancient Iranian core, inherited from the Scythians , Sarmatians , and Alans (the latter being the ancestors of the Ossetians ). However, they also contain abundant local North Caucasian accretions of great antiquity, which sometimes reflect an even more archaic past. The Ossetes consider
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