266 



AUM EN I A N I.ITEH ATUKE. 



of a Frcni'liman (Annul, .lauln-rt) through Artueniu 

 mill Persia, in 18O5 (i.) 



AKMK.MAN LITKHATURK. The Armenians, one of the 

 most uucient nations of tlie civilized world, have 

 inaiiiUiiiietl themselves as a cultivated people amidst 

 nil those revolutions which barbarism, despotism, and 

 war have occasioned in Western Asia, from the days 

 of Assyria, Greece, anil Rome, down to the period of 

 .Mongolian, Turkish, and Persian dominion. During 

 so many ages, they have faithfully preserved, not 

 only their historical traditions, reaching back to the 

 period of the ancient Hebrew histories, but also their 

 national character, in a physical and moral point of 

 view. Their first abode, mount Ararat, is, even at the 

 present day, the centre of their religious and political 

 union. Commerce has scattered them, like the Israel- 

 ites, among all the principal nations of Europe and 

 A sia (with the exception of China); but this disper- 

 sion and the mercantile spirit have not debased their 

 cliaracter; on the contrary, they are distinguished 

 by superior cultivation, manners, and honesty, from 

 the barbarians under whose yoke they live, and even 

 from the Greeks and Jews. The cause is to be found 

 in their creed, and in their religious union. The cul- 

 tivation of the Armenians is a proof of the salutary 

 influence of a well-ordered Ctiristian church on the 

 mord and intellectual developement of a nation, 

 which lias preserved its history, and, with it, its na- 

 tional character. They owe this in particular to the 

 bible, which is freely distributed among the people 

 by the clergy, in translations that are esteemed valu- 

 able in theological literature. This is done not only 

 ttt Etschmiazim, the principal monastery of the Ar- 

 menians, the chief seat of their church, the abode of 

 their patriarch (catAolicus), and, at the si me time, the 

 seminary of their teachers, where many bibles are 

 printed, and whither every pious Armenian must 

 perform a pilgrimage at least once during his life, 

 but also in the other dioceses of the Armenian patri- 

 archs, archbishops, and bishops at Sis (Ajas), in Cara 

 mania, Constantinople, Jerusalem, and other places. 

 Some time since, a society for the distribution of 

 Armenian bibles was formed in the Armenian church 

 in Russia, the archbishop of which has his seat in an 

 Armenian monastery at Astrachan. With the biblical 

 literature of the Armenians is connected their theolo- 

 gical, historical, and mathematical literature. It is 

 as old as the conversion of the people to Christianity, 

 and sheds much light on the ancient people of the 

 East Hence it has recently found many assiduous 

 students in Paris. According to their natural histo- 

 rians, the name Armenia is derived from Aram, the 

 seventh king of the first dynasty, who, about the year 

 1800 B. C., gave a settled character to the kingdom. 

 The Armenians call themselves Haji, after Haico, 

 the father and patriarch of the people, a contemporary 

 of Belus. With him commences the Armenian his- 

 tory, about 2100 B.C.,and closes with Leo VII., who 

 fled from his country, when invaded by the barbarians, 

 and died at Paris, in 1393. The kingdom shared the 

 fate of Asia Minor and Persia. To return to its an- 

 cient literature. But before we speak of Armenian 

 authors and their works, we must mention one fact 

 concerning the language, which is important, namely, 

 that the language of literature is not that of ordinary 

 life and business. The former is called Haican, from 

 Haico, the reported progenitor of the nation; the 

 latter Armenian. This appears, however, to be a 

 modern distinction, the relative condition of the two 

 languages being now what that of all the languages 

 derived from the Latin was during the middle ages, 

 when French, Italian, Spanish, or Portuguese were 

 but so many corrupt jargons, each in its own country 

 called emphatically the vulgar tongue, in which 

 scholars never thought of writing. The most learned 



Armenian antiquaries do not pretend to trace tliei'- 

 literature further back than about 150 years before 

 the ( liristian em, when two Parthian brother princes. 

 Arsaces and Valarsuccs, reigned over Persia and 

 A rim nia. The latter monarch, being a lover of let- 

 ters, was inquisitive touching tin- circumstances of 

 his kingdom in time jmst, anil employed Marabas 

 Catina to write a history of Armenia. Marabas 

 obeyed, collecting his materials from old Persian 

 documents preserved at Nineveh, and laid open to 

 his examination by Arsaces, king of Persia, as well 

 as from other sources. He completed his task down 

 to the very period at which he wrote, and the work 

 is said to have earned for him the title of the Arme- 

 nian Herodotus. He was followed by some hali- 

 dci/.i a historians and heathen theologians, if we may 

 so designate believing writers upon mythology, and 

 by a multitude of others, altogether forgotten. Hut 

 even of the commemorated few, and of the Armenian 

 Herodotus himself, the names and the nature of their 

 works is all we know, or can hope to know. Their 

 productions have long been lost, but have not thus 

 become quite valueless, inasmuch as they were the 

 sources whence later Armenian writers, who have 

 survived, compiled their works. The authors who 

 lived in the fourth century of the Christian era are 

 the first whose writings have been preserved. Chris- 

 tianity then prevailed in Armenia ; her writers were 

 princes and prelates ; and this is esteemed what the 

 abbot of San Lazzaro calls the first, and we should 

 rather term the beginning of the golden age of litera- 

 ture, a period, be it remembered, when classical 

 literature was fast decaying. But the fifth century 

 was the real golden age ot Haican literature, which 

 thus, for a while at least, seems to have thriven iu 

 proportion as classical splendour faded away. This 

 century was fruitful in authors, and was furtlier dis- 

 tinguished by two events important to the pro^n -s 

 of learning. The Armenians liad till then had no 

 alphabet of their own, indifferently using Greek, 

 Syriac, and Persian diameters. Early in the fifth 

 century, Mesrop Masdoty invented an appropriate 

 Haican alphabet of thirty-eight letters, still called, 

 in honour of the inventor, Mesropian, and employed 

 as capitals, since others, of more convenient form, 

 have supplanted them in common use. About the 

 same time schools were, by the favour of the Arme- 

 nian sovereign, instituted throughout Armenia, and 

 the scholars there trained exerted themselves in pro- 

 ducing Haican versions of the Bible, and of the 

 master-pieces of Greece and Rome. To these cir- 

 cumstances we may probably ascribe the great de- 

 velopement of native talent that ensued. One of the. 

 most distinguished authors who now appeared was 

 archbishop Moses Chorenensis, or Chorenabyi, ac- 

 cording to the Armenian formation of a surname for 

 the birthplace. Besides innumerable invaluable 

 translations, he wrote a history of Armenia (relying 

 for the early part upon Marabas, and many others, 

 of whom the names only have descended to modem 

 times), a treatise upon rhetoric, and a treatise upon 

 geography, all of which, together with some homi- 

 lies, have been preserved, as well as some hymns 

 still habitually sung in the Armenian church service. 

 A number of his smaller works have entirely or par- 

 tially perished ; and of Moses Chorenabyi's Commen- 

 taries upon Haican Grammar only a few fragments 

 remain, inserted as quotations in the productions of 

 later and more fortunate writers. Moses' History of 

 Armenia was printed in England, in the first half of 

 the last century, by the sons of the celebrated W. 

 Winston, and most judiciously with a I-atin version, 

 as at that time no Englishman, and only two conti- 

 nental scholars, understood Haican. In the sixth 

 century Haican literature first remained stationary, 



