1841] On the Laws and Law-books of the Armenians. 247 



most valuable information. If the Mechitharistic Society* of Venice 

 be disposed to publish a correct edition of the code of Mechithar Ghosh, 

 and of the book of laws prepared under the auspices of the Armenian 

 king, Johannes the Bagratian, — authentic copies of which are preserv- 

 ed in the extensive library of that learned body, — they will certainly 

 confer a very heavy obligation on their countrymen generally, but 

 more particularly on the Armenians located within the pale of the go- 

 vernment of British India. An approved and unexceptionable edition 

 of these two statute-books of the Armenians, cannot but be most 

 servicable to the judges of the Sudder Dewany Adawlut, who will be 

 entirely guided by them as by an unerring criterion in their decisions 

 on causes and questions arising from hereditary gifts and testamentary 

 bequests of the Armenians residing under the jurisdiction of the 

 Mofussil courts. But in the absence of printed Armenian law-books, 

 questions of succession to property, in cases in which the litigants were 

 known to be Armenians, have been invariably referred in writing by 

 the judges of the Company's courts to such of the Armenian bishops 

 as happened to sojourn or itinerate in this part of British India, during 

 the period of their triennial or septennial episcopal visitation, which 

 they performed in accordance with the written and acknowledged 

 authority with which they were respectively invested by the pontificate 

 of Etchmiatchin,")* near Erevan, in the province of Ararat, the arch- 

 bishoprickj of Julpha in Ispahan, and the patriarchate of Jerusalem, § 



* This veteran Society was established in the year 1717, and its members have been 

 pre-eminently successful in the revival and cultivation of the classical literature of 

 Armenia, by the publication of numerous philosophical, philological, and scientific 

 works of sterling merit. The members of this Society lead a strictly monastic life. 

 The following lines are extracted from the life of its zealous and patriotic founder : — 



iC \pb1buiuuiufbu ujta pjitn pn/jipp% 

 ^^fiibrwitrnL. 'fc ihtuiuu typli^Jfb > 

 QtuppuJinuflku/b fltrpuiuuiujjjt-nj 

 \yfufi[&uiputj i\utpr^tuu{kruip^b z " 



" Fuit hoc monasterium totum tempore Mechithar Petri ex Sebaste I. Abbatis 

 extructum. A. D. 1740." 



-f* *J» tiui[3-nuqfrbnuujpu/bt;'b upnj \fQdputb-'bli s 



+ Quin-UM^hnps^iuputhlfh ^nuqujjnu s 



& 'Y ^lutnpfiuipt^utnufbl^h \?pnuuuiqkdp x 



2 H 



