The Forgotten Researcher Of Svaneti (Evdokia Kojhevnikova-Gugushvili)

Abstract

Academican Nicholas Marr visited Svaneti four times (1910-1914), but he left not only the works about Georgian languages and culture, but he founded the ethno-linguistic school together with talented Georgian philologists. We can recall Karpez Dondua, Ioseb Kipshidze, Ioseb Megrelidze, Shota Dzidziguri, Mose marjanishvili (“Kartveluri Sityvari” written by the latter is not published, but the manuscripts taken from this work have long been shared by the famous specialists), to have the clear understanding on his students.

“During my travel in Svaneti I was distanced from the other parts of the world not only by high mountains, harsh ranges and deep valleys of Caucasus but the decades of culture … I felt in the atmosphere of the pagan culture of “Urartu” epoch” - was written by Marr. ("Èç ïîåçäîê â Ñâàíèþ“, Ñ.-Ïá., 1913). Despite being very short in time, he managed to travel “ Switzerland of Caucasus - Svaneti, poor but rich with religious celebrations” on a horse back, he even fixed the old folk songs while being on the horseback, in order not to lose the precious time.

He became very close to his hosts - blagochen Besarion Nijaradzethe -father of the Svanetian churches and the priest Arsen Oniani who were teaching in junior schools founded by themselves (in the times of N. Marr the part of locals couldn’t speak Georgian, not to mention Russian, Russian language speakers were very rare).

The significant scholar managed to publish the ethnographic notes of A. Oniani, also the Svanetian songs, tales, parables, incantations and small botanical dictionary in Petrograd 1917 which was in flames of revolution in that period, but we didn’t find the song lyrics collected by B. Nijaradze during 1879-1884 which was about to publish, as promised by the Russian imperial academy. (The relevant manuscript corrected by its editor N. Marr is still kept in St. Petersburg institute of oriental arts.

So we are in debt of N. Marr and his students or Svanetian hosts. One of them is Evdokia Kojhevnikova, student of the faculty of ethnography at Petrograd university, she went to Svaneti in 1927 for enterprise-field practice with the advice of her teacher and with his present - photo camera, as N. Marr said if she wanted to become the real ethnologist she should have go to Svaneti and study the language as well.