The great thought of Catherine II continued

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The collection of Catherine II's draft works on the Comparative Dictionary are kept in the Imperial Public Library (where they came from her study in the Hermitage), these are 54 large sheets, covered by the hand of Catherine I, on each sheet one Russian word is translated into all the languages in the same order, with each list consisting of two columns: on the left side there are languages, on the right a translation of the word, written, like everything else, in Russian letters.

The following two philological notes have come down to us, written in French by the Empress's hand. Here is one of them:

“About the first children's sounds, it should be noted that they express: 1) vowels, 2) then the movement of the lips follows, such as: dad, mom, 3) teeth are with teeth, such as: aunt, uncle, etc. Then, as the organs develop - 4) guttural and whistling letters.

Another note entitled Three Rows of Words:

1. "Words, primary, expressing general concepts, concepts taken in the broadest sense, after which any analysis stops, these are the words: great, strong, beautiful, sea, earth, spirit."

2. "Derivative words expressing the shades of these concepts, such as: greatness, strength, beauty, sea, earthly, air."

3. “Words composed of others, such as: (grand-pere), fortification, decorate, overseas, underground, airy. And so in each language they try to find out which words were primary, which derivatives, which complex ones and, collecting them in this way, made up numerous groups of them."

What reasons prompted Catherine II to take up such an unusual business? Due to her duty as Empress, Catherine II received and was present at receptions of foreign ambassadors and all kinds of delegations. The translators translated the words of foreigners into French, which prevailed at the Russian court, and into Russian for a large retinue of administrators. Observant, possessing an excellent memory and a fine ear, Catherine II drew attention to the fact that many words of different peoples sound the same. The phonetics of both foreign words and Russian very often coincides with some languages of the peoples of Central Asia, whose retinues very often turned to the court with trading enterprises, whose natives have long lived in Russia

Catherine II was especially interested in the bold idea that all languages could be deduced from one copean language, so to call it the Proto-language of peoples. it, but here, the Empress thought, one can find a significant number of all languages used on the globe, and, moreover, many such languages that are still unknown to scientists. In addition to this tempting thought, Catherine could be prompted by a desire to do something for science that would far exceed the means of a private person.

Most significantly, a letter from Pallas to Zimmermann, signed on May 9th, therefore the Empress's instructions to Pallas were probably given in April, then she revealed her thoughts about the search for the Proto-Language. Even before the end of May, the academician hastened to publish in French, for the information of the whole of Europe, an announcement about the conceived dictionary, printed separately, all the more curious as it expresses the thoughts of the Empress herself. Therefore, an excerpt from this announcement by Pallas deserves to be quoted here:

“The witty and deep research of many scientists of our century about the affinity and origin of languages belonging to peoples very distant from each other, and information about the ancient history of man, extracted by many worthy historians from these studies,give now a special charm and a more decisive direction to science, which to superficial minds, until now seemed dry, ungrateful and even barren and empty. Looking through the work of Courtes de Gebelin, one is amazed at the brilliant conclusions that the author was able to draw from this material, and one cannot help but regret that such a hardworking person could not apply the same methods to all languages of the world. By analyzing and happily comparing those that he had the opportunity to examine, no one would doubt that an acquaintance with the languages of inner Asia would lead him to new discoveries! even more interesting."

Forgotten civilization. Information about the First civilization of modern mankind is carefully hidden and can be gleaned only with the help of Assyrian cuneiform texts. A third of which is written in the Turanian language. According to the German and English philologist, Max Müller, a specialist in general linguistics, Indology, mythology, as well as Karl Bunsen, a famous German writer, historian, specialist in the philology of Oriental languages, ancient history and theology, the inhabitants of Turan were excellent blacksmiths and were the first to develop the famous degree of culture. From them came the Turanian languages with a special wedge-shaped writing.

The present era in the reading of cuneiform letters was the discovery of an entire library in the excavations of Nineveh. Providing scientists with rich written material. As you know, Layard discovered, in the Kuyundzhik hill, on the site of ancient Nineveh, the remains of the palace of Assurbanipal (Sardanapala) IV, the last of the Assyrian conquerors.

In one of the halls, a whole library was found, consisting of square brick tiles, covered on both sides with small and compressed wedge-shaped writing.

The vast majority of the tiles now preserved in the British Museum contain fragments of an extensive grammar encyclopedia. This encyclopedia of grammar consists of seven parts:

1) Chaldeo-Turanian dictionary, with an explanation of words in Assyrian. It was supposed to serve as a guide for reading the Chaldean scholars and religious treatises, as well as the root civil laws, which were written, in the original, also in Chaldean.

2) Dictionary of synonyms of the accredited language.

3) Assyrian grammar, with examples of conjugations.

4) Table of signs of wedge-shaped writing with the designation of their ideographic and phonetic meaning.

5) Another table of the same signs indicating the hieroglyphs from which they originated.

6) Dictionary of special expressions, mostly ideographic, found in ancient inscriptions. These inscriptions were thus of archaeological interest to the Assyrians.

7) Tables of examples of grammatical structures and ambiguous expressions, -ideographic and phonetic.

The greatest scholars have used these precious aids in the same way that accyrian scholars once used them - and the reading of cuneiform letters has gone from that time on with rapid strides forward.

After philology, the second place in the Sardanapal Library was given to mathematics and astronomy. Judging by the fragments of several arithmetic treatises, one might think that Pythagoras, from Mesopotamia, borrowed his famous multiplication table. Many tiles contain astronomical observations: tables of the risings of Venus, Jupiter, Mars, moon phases, calculating the diurnal motion of the moon, predicting lunar and solar eclipses. It turns out that much in modern astronomy has its origins in the Turanian and Chaldeo-Assyrian civilizations, for example, the division of the ecliptic into twelve equal parts and, apparently, the signs of the zodiac themselves, the division of the circle by 360 degrees, degrees by 60 minutes, minutes by 60 seconds; division of a day into 24 hours, hours into 60 minutes, minutes into 60 seconds. In general, among the Assyrians, the unit of measure was the number 12, with its divisions and multiplications.

The Assyrians or Turanians own the invention of the gnomon (sundial. Most of the measures from Mesopotamia passed to Western Asia, and from there to the Greeks, with the preservation of even the very names, of course in a modified form.

If English and French scholars studying Assyrian cuneiform emphasized grammar in the found library in such a way, this could mean that for Assyrian scholars the analysis of Turanian knowledge was so important that they concentrated such a set in the library. This means that the settlers from Turan had great knowledge, which historiography is silent about.

The second source of information about the Turanian civilization is Zendavesta or the teachings of Zorotustra, two-thirds of which are also written in the Turanian language and their own script. Researchers Zendavesta identify the time of the appearance of the Indian Vedas with the time indicated in Zendavest, the affinity of the Turanian language with Sanskrit, the concept of gods. A number of personalities are noted with the same name in the Vedas, as the person of Fima or Yima, the forefather of the Turanian tribes. The life time of this Fima is depicted as a happy era, when the earth knew neither grief nor disease, there is a complete identity of the Turanian with the ancient Indian - customs and rituals.

But all these traces of the initial unity of views among the Western Aryans of Asia with the Eastern date back to pre-historical times. Since then, there has been a division between these tribes, who once lived together, and Zendavesta provides evidence that this division was at least partly based on religious motives and grounds that the mutual alienation of the tribes had religious reasons. Among the Apian researchers, obviously, there could be no doubt about the primacy of the Indian Vedas, and the times of Zendavest were equated to the times of Cyrus and Alexander of Macedon.

Zendavesta tells about the beginning of the migration of peoples from Turan:

“There, carry the seeds of free and pack animals, people, dogs, birds and burning red fires. After that, make this garden the length of a horse-race in all four corners for the dwelling of people and the milk of endowed cows. There let the birds live in a permanently golden place, where their food will never be depleted. There, arrange dwellings, floors, columns, courtyards and fences, There, transfer the seed of all men and women who are bigger, better and more beautiful on this earth than others. Transfer there the seed of all kinds of cattle, which on this earth are bigger, better and more beautiful than others. Transfer there the seed of all kinds of trees, which on this earth are the highest and most fragrant of all. Transfer there the seed of all the foods that are sweetest and most fragrant on this earth. Let all this be in pairs and inexhaustible. May there be no quarrel, no annoyance, no disgust, no enmity, no begging, no deceit, no poverty, no sickness, no long teeth, no face that would not be commensurate with the body, none of the signs of Agramaine printed by him on people.

Make nine bridges at the top of this country, six in the middle, and three at the bottom. Bring the seed of a thousand men and women to the upper bridges, to the middle six hundred, to the lower three hundred. At this garden, make one high door and one window that would even shine inward. And Yima stepped fifth on the ground, struck with his hands and cultivated the garden as he was ordered."

This legend is obviously based on the memory of the resettlement from the most extreme northeastern border to the southwest in Iran. With the resettlement, agriculture, worship, civilization and human prosperity spread, for these people led the happiest life in the surroundings cultivated by Fima. During his reign, animals did not die. There was no shortage of water, fruit trees and food. During his brilliant reign there was no frost, no heat, no death, no unbridled passions, all this was the creation of the Daevs. People seemed to be “fifteen years old, that is, they enjoyed eternal youth.

These Turanian peoples constituted a single civilized tribe, divided not by nationality or race, but only by their place of residence in the city-states. Zendavesta lists only a few of the sixteen beautiful lands created by Ahura Mazda, and the same number of plagues created by Angra Mainyu, including: Sogdiana, Margiana, Bactria, Apia, Arachosia, etc.

In the book of Zendavesta in the first part of Vendidad, in the translation of James Darmesteter, I found several more names of cities in Turan: Ayriyan, Sogdhi, Bakhdhi, Mouru, Haray, Urvoy, Khnent, Harakh, Getumant, Chahra, Semirechye.

(THE ZEND-AVESTA, PART I, THE VENDIDAD, TRANSLATED BY JAMES DARMESTETER

Sacred Books of the East, Volume 4. Oxford University Press, 1880.)

Open on the Internet - maps from a satellite, the zone of Central Asia, even now, after millennia, traces of the old channel of the Amu Darya through the center of the Kara-Kum desert are clearly visible on the map. See the scan in the title of the article.

7000 - 8000 millennia ago, it was from Turan that the dispersal of mankind across the continents began, part of the tribes went to the north - the Ural Mountains, Siberia. The evidence of this is the Orkhon - the Yenisei script, and even traces have been left from North America.

Peter Kalm, in his travels across North America ("Reise nach dem nordlichen America" n. III, p. 416), also mentions a large stone found by Verandier during his 1746 voyage from Canada to discover the South Sea, for 450 German miles from Montreal, in which another stone was inserted, a foot wide and an arm long, covered all over with carved letters, the same or similar to those depicted in the books of the Dutchmen N. Witzen and F. Stralenberg, from among them discovered in Siberia. This stone was taken out and brought to Canada, then sent to the French Minister Morena.

Other tribes across the Caucasus, through the Ural-Caspian lowland began to populate empty, wild Europe …