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Scythians and Avesta in an Armenian Vernacular Paternoster, and a Zok Paternoster

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Scythians and Avesta in an Armenian Vernacular Paternoster, and a Zok Paternoster SCYTHIANS AND AVESTA IN AN ARMENIAN VERNACULAR PATERNOSTER, AND A ZOK PATERNOSTER A short poem in Middle Armenian, of the genre called hayren that is most frequently associated with the famous sixteenth-century minstrel Nahapet K¨uc¨ak1, seems to be a folk version of the Lord's Prayer, or a composition based upon the latter. In several manuscripts, the poem is situated in a cycle of similar short hayrens entitled Ya¥ags hogwoy ew siroy otanawor e bans, “This rhymed logos is about the soul and love”, or Hayren e astic{ kargaw, hogwoy ew siroy “There follows an ordered cycle of hayrens of the soul and love.” The poems in these cycles often stand alone as individual compositions, and there is no strong thread of character, plot or theme linking together that might suggest their author or authors intended them originally as a unified work. Still, that possi- bility ought not to be dismissed entirely. Transmission of Biblical learn- ing about Creation, or the life of Christ, in vernacular language and poetic genre, is a salient feature of medieval and early modern Armen- ian literature2; and most recently Theo Van Lint has demonstrated in a 1 The Turco-Persian epithet k{uc{ak, “little”, was still used in the modern dialect of Akn to mean a shamelessly amorous boy, and it seems most likely to have had this mean- ing as the minstrel Nahapet's takhallus. But the “young” swain who sang of passion out- lived the title. In his own compositions he claims to have lived to the age of 100; and per- haps the version of the Paternoster we consider here, if indeed it was his, is a product of his twilight years. Nahapet was a native of Xarakonis, east of Van, and according to one legend the wife of the Sultan had an ailment in her breast that only crying could cure. Only Nahapet's singing wrung tears from the lady; and the heir was saved. The poet asked that his reward be permission to sing in Istanbul for twenty days. Ms. 347 of the Armenian Church of the Holy Cross on A¥t{amar informs us that he could compose in both Armenian and Turkish: his singing so impressed the Sublime Porte that seven mosques, seven churches, and seven bridges were built between Constantinople and Xarakonis. His songs remained famous: the ashugh Yakob, from Mat¥avank{ village near Arces, learned early in the twentieth century a hayren of Nahapet sung to him by his own master in the craft. See ™UKASYAN 1957, pp. 3-8. 2 Garegin YOVSEPEAN's collection of folk texts, P{srank{ner zo¥ovrdakan banahiw- sut{iwnic{, Tiflis, 1892, contains, for example, material from the apocryphal Infancy Gospels in prose tales recited in the dialect of Moks. My article Grace from Van, in press in the Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies, considers a prayer before meals that takes the form of a magical historiola — similar in structure to the incantations against the child-bearing demon Al in Armenian talismanic scrolls — that was recited to me in June 1995 by an elderly woman from Avanc{, the port of Van. The same article considers also an Armenian night-time prayer invoking supernatural protection upon the home, which was published recently in a memorial book of the Armenians of Sebastia (Tk. Sivas): there are palpable similarities in this case to Grigor Narekac{i's prayer (Matean 92 J.R. RUSSELL Leiden thesis that Kostandin Erznkac‘i probably meant a number of his own lyric compositions to be connected together as a unified cycle with religious instruction and edification as its ennobling intent. Mnac‘aka- nyan published two versions, with insignificant variations: a composite text (with the variant in brackets) reads3: Hayr mer, or yerkins es du,/ Barjrut{iwn k{ez ku vayele:/ Ew surb e¥ic{i anun,/ Arak{eal ew bann i Hore:/ Zinc{ zAharoni gluxn,/ Or ca¥kanc{ iw¥ovn oceal e:/ Kam c{o¥ Ahermon lerin,/ [I] Sukaw learn buseal e:/ Oc{ garunn jur k{uze,/ Oc{ asunn t{o[a]rmelu e,/ Hanc{kun ca¥ik ov teser?/ Zararacs sen ku pahe:/ Nora ca¥ikn ov ase?/ Erb nora anunn Yisus e. “Our Father who art in Heaven,/ Lofty height becomes Thee;/ And holy be the name/ Sent [or, Apostle], and the Logos from the Father./ Like the head of Aaron/ That is anointed with the oil of flowers,/ Or the dew of mount Hermon,/ It has sprouted on mount Sukaw./ It needs no water in springtime,/ Nor will it wither in autumn./ Who has seen such a flower?/ It maintains the crea- tures in prosperity./ Who will say its flower,/ When its name is Jesus?” The hayrens that follow have no particular relevance to these lines, though one, in Mnac‘akanyan B/32, appears at least to pursue the biog- raphy of Jesus, drawing a didactic conclusion, however, that is either bit- terly sardonic or wildly misguided: Lav kal zays bans i mtit,/ Mitk{ ara ˆw a¥vor andice:/ Tern e i yiwrmen xoc{er:/ Patrast ler i xist sirele:/ Zxosk{t al am haync{ xose,/ Or k{o janc{ mah c{gorce:/ Galu jayn or lsen sunk{-/ Ert{an hetn, or gnay ku gze. “Keep these words well in mind,/ Think and ponder good./ The Lord got himself wounded, of his own accord,/ Be prepared (for such results) from ardent loving./ Also speak your piece in such a way/ That your voice does not cause your death./ When dogs hear the sound of someone approaching,/ They follow, and rend the man who goes.” There is a second, appreciably different version of the Paternoster text, which omits the first three lines that paraphrase the Lord's Prayer, o¥bergut{ean, “Book of Lamentation” chapter 12) against nocturnal terrors. But the tenth- century scholar and mystic seems himself to have employed the patterns and images of folk poetry in some of his meditations, so the interchange between formal and vernacular strata of language — and of class and religion, too, to a great extent — was mutual and of long standing. 3 MNAC{AKANYAN 1995, text A/82, lines 373-386; A/83, 413-426; and B/32, 13-26. The first text was published by A. TEWKANC{, Tiflis, 1882, in a cycle on pp. 27-45, with attribution to Nahapet K{uc{ak. The second is in Ms. 30 of the Armenian Church of the Holy Archangel of Palat{; the third, from Ms. 805, National Library, Berlin. For provision of Mnac{akanyan's book at Paris, and for generous hospitality during the time there in which the work on this article was begun, I am happy to record my gratitude to the Armenian Prelacy, New York and His Eminence Archbishop Mesrob Ashjian; and to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University, for the generous provision of a grant for travel. ARMENIAN VERNACULAR AND ZOK PATERNOSTER 93 but adds an important and fascinating detail to the rest of the poem4: Zinc{ zAharoni zgluxn or ca¥kanc{ iw¥ovn oceal e,/ Kam c{o¥ Hermoni lerin or Sinay k{a¥c{r c{o¥eal e,/ Kam zhamasp{iwr ca¥ik: Sukawet learn buseal e,/ Oc{ garunn jur k{uze, oc{ asunn t{ormelu e:/ Hanc{gun ca¥ik ov teser? zararacs sen ku pahe:/ Nora ca¥ik ov ase? erb nora anunn Yisus e. “Like the head of Aaron that is anointed with the oil of flowers/ Or the dew of mount Hermon that sweet Sinai has bedewed,/ Or the flower hamasp{iwr on mount Sukawet it has sprouted./ It needs no water in springtime, nor will it wither in autumn./ Who has seen such a flower? It maintains the creatures in prosperity./ Who will say its flower, when its name is Jesus?” The hamasp{iwr, literally “all spreading/scat- tering”, perhaps recalling the mythical primeval plant of the Zoroastrian scripture, the Tree of All Seeds, is a magical flower of Armenian lore. Researchers identify it variously as false clove, or campion, or lychnis orientalis; but, like the mandrake, it is endowed by popular religion with supernatural attributes wholly beyond the ken of botany. Mxit{ar Herac{i describes it as having one root with twelve shoots, each bearing a flower of a different color. It glows by night for those who seek it. The poet Yovhannes T{lkuranc{i wrote, “The hamasp¨iwr among the flowers/ Was the one said to be the mother of wisdom,/ Which cures scabby lep- rosy/ And appears on Ascension Day.” In Armenian popular belief, the barrier that separates heaven from earth is drawn aside on the night pre- ceding this feast for Christ, at whose death the pargod (“curtain”, a loan from Parthian, as is Arm. varagoyr, “idem”) of the Temple was rent. Christ had in diverse ways removed all the other veils that separated Adam's children from God's footstool: by the fact of the Incarnation, the triumph over death, the bodily ascent. So Armenians would place blossoms of the horot-morot flower in a pot of water, guard it overnight in silence, and then tell fortunes — the wisdom of heaven presumably having come down into the magic mixture. The flower is named, of course, after the Zoroastrian yazatas who preside over plants and waters, Haurvatat and Am¢r¢tat: so the hamasp¨iwr here is drawn into that Zoroastrian-Christian magical context5. The poet Frik wrote of the flower, “This is the hamasp¨iwr flower, that saves men from death;” and a medieval text on the subject declares, “If you put it to your ear, you will hear heavenly voices and speech, and you will understand all the languages of men and will know the tongues of animals, beasts, and birds.
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