Nomina sacra im Altkirchenslavischen bis zum 11. Jahrhundert by Ute SillReview by: H. LeemingThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 52, No. 129 (Oct., 1974), pp. 609-611Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4206952 .

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Reviews Sill, Ute. Nomina sacra im Altkirchenslavischen bis zum iI. jaahrhundert.

Forum Slavicum, no. 40. Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Munich, 1972,

viii + i86 PP. Tables. Bibliography.

IN this painstaking work the author has collected the abbreviations of religious terms met in Old Church Slavonic texts up to the end of the i ith century. Apart from the manuscripts of the OCS canon she has sur-

veyed some South-Slavonic and East-Slavonic sources which one might hesitate to regard as OCS. After some notes on earlier work and the pres- ent state of research Sill gives bibliographical sketches of the sources (pp. i i-6i). These are for the most part well-known manuscripts in standard editions but also include various inscriptions from coins, seals and gravestones. In an investigation of this type it would have been pre- ferable if the originals had been scrutinised, but we presume that they were inaccessible to the author. Some of the editions are of Glagolitic texts transcribed into Cyrillic and, while the editors may be eminent scholars, this is no guarantee against human error. One of the sources, namely the thirteen sermons of Gregory of Nazianzus, was not available even in the unsatisfactory edition of A. Budilovich. In this case Sill drew her material from an earlier article by Budilovich. A notable omission is the Archangel lectionary of 1092, a facsimile of which was published in I912. Sill explains that this, and also the facsimile of the Ostromir lectionary, were not available.

It was perhaps because of the inaccessibility of other grammars of OCS that the author refers us to Nina Yelkina's Staroslavyanskiyyazyk (Moscow, I960) for additional bibliographical information. Without in any way criticising Yelkina, whose grammar is an excellent piece of work, it could be pointed out that there are more informative sources for this purpose.

In a short historical review of the development of the early Slavonic states Sill does not mention Pannonia, possibly because she does not con- sider that it deserves the title of state, or possibly because it was not eth- nically Slavonic, in which case one might ask whether it was a principal- ity of the Avars. But whatever the ethnic allegiance of Kocel', Pannonia did play an important role in the early evolution of Slavonic literacy and this should not be forgotten.

The main body of the book consists of tables containing the abbreviated forms written in clear Cyrillic letters from thirty-three sources for the fol- lowing words: bog", gospod', douch", dous'a, ot'c", nebo, clov6k', David", Israil', Ierousalim", Iusous' [sic], Chr'st", syn", s"pas", kr'st", mati, svqt" [sic], cr"ky, glagolati, cesar', angel", evangelie, apostol", sr"d'ce, blagosloviti, vladyka, prorok", molitva (this appears in the index as m9cennik"), sln'ce, deva and rozd'stvo; -I cite these words in accordance with the author's transcription. Gram- matical cases are shown in separate columns; derivatives and fully written out forms are also shown. Each table is accompanied by a commentary. It will be seen that the material has been treated with the greatest care and that the author has attempted to produce a definitive work. Review- ing the Novgorod birch-bark documents she tells us that of 403 only 4I

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6io THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

contain abbreviations of nomina sacra. Of these only one ascribed to the i ith century contains a word under discussion, i.e. OtbCb, but it is not abbreviated, nor does it appear here in a religious sense. None the less there is a space reserved for the Novgorod birch-bark documents in each table and the father of Gostjata duly makes his bow.

There are two schools of thought regarding these abbreviations. One, represented by Ludwig Traube, followed by Sill, sees the beginnings of the tradition in the Judaic practice of writing the ineffable name of Yah- weh with the vowels omitted. Greek Christian scribes in turn abbreviated not only OEo's 'God', but also several other religious terms such as KVpLOS'

'Lord', 7m6Ev,ua 'Spirit', o1'pavo's 'Heaven'. It was on the Greek model that the writers of Old Church Slavonic abbreviated the corresponding words in their own vocabulary. A second theory has recently been vigorously stated by Witold Manczak ('Staro-cerkiewno-slowianski skrot IS', International Journal of Slavic Linguistics and Poetics, XII, The Hague, I969), who was prompted by Leszek Moszynski's article on the OCS form of the name Jesus to consider the problem in the light of Zipf's law, of which he has become a leading champion. This attributes economy of utterance to frequency of usage. The OCS nomina sacra, according to MaAczak, are not abbreviated because of some mystique which attaches to them, but as a result of their frequent occurrence. In the same way abbreviations in modern textbooks of linguistics or chemistry would be of the commonest words in the relevant terminology. It is frequency of usage, not sentiment, which impels us to write ?, lb., yd., while spelling out in full cowrie-shell, pood, arshin.

Manxczak challenges the classification as nomina sacra of several abbre- viated words, e.g. b[o]gatyj which has a secular connotation although it is a derivative of a religious term. He submits persuasive explanations for numerous anomalies which puzzled an earlier investigator, G. Cremos- nik. Why is mati less subject to abbreviation than OtbCb or synb? Because it occurs less frequently. Why are b[ogo]vi, dat. sing., and b[ogo]mb, instr. sing., not shortened to two characters, like the nominative singu- lar? Because they are less frequent. Again the plural cases of bogb are written out in full not because they refer to heathen deities unworthy of abbreviation, but because they do not occur as frequently as the singular. Manczak supplies a statistical table to show that even the length of the abbreviation is determined by frequency of usage. Here one cannot accept that the two-letter i[su]s is shorter than the four-letter i[erusa]l[i]mb solely by reason of relative frequency (4I8 times against 25). The differ- ing lengths of the unabbreviated words and the need to avoid obscurity should also be taken into account. In any case the saving in writing materials is greater in the latter instance. The figures show a slight varia- tion depending on whether the vowel u is written as a single or double character. They are a saving of 5o-6o% in the first case as against 6o- 64% in the second.

Sill rejects MaAczak's interpretation, insisting that his supporting evidence in the form of parallels from modern usage is quite unacceptable in a discussion of early Christian practice. His choice of material, for

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REVIEWS 6ii example from Polish railway time-tables, she characterises as arbitrary (willkiirlich). In Maniczak's defence one might say that if he regards Zipf's law as a linguistic universal he has every right to cite analogies from any available source. While favouring the linguistic rather than the mystical theory, I incline to another view, namely that the wish to save precious writing materials was the prime consideration. Sill admits this factor in her comment on g[lago]lati, while also pointing out that the noun from which this verb is derived could be regarded as a nomen sacrum when it referred to the Word of God.

Sill's photographed typescript is neat and her Cyrillic letters are clear, thoughjazykb appears forjfzykb in the citations from the Marianus Codex (p. I6o). The materials quoted on pp. 57, 59 include some suspicious characters and forms: aikovo (p. 57) is surely for iakovo; rabe (p. 59) with e for e is not a form one would expect in an inscription from i I th-century Kiev. It would perhaps have been wiser to omit the second inscription on p. 57 with its chaotic spelling and distorted letter shapes attributed by N. P. Likhachev to a Greek who did not know Russian very well. The author comments here that the shape of the letter 8 without its base is a Graecism. Is it not rather a barbarism or a solecism or downwright cacography? London H. LEEMING

Dolgorukaya, N. B. Das Journal, edited and introduced by Alois Schmu- cker. Slavische Propylaen, no. I 12. Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Munich, I 972. xxxviii pp. + original pagination.

'PRINCIPAL inducement for the author to undertake this work', wrote James Arthur Heard in the introduction to his Life and Times of Nathalia Borissovna, Princess Dolgorookov (London, I857), 'was his desire to portray, however feebly, one of the most beautiful and striking examples of female Self-devotion and Constancy to be found in the history of any nation. . .' (p. iv). Heard spoke for a considerable number of posthumous admirers, Russian, French and English, of the undeniably long-suffering Princess. And like his young contemporaries, V. P. Ostrogorsky (author of 'Knya- ginya Natal'ya Dolgorukaya', Detskiye chtenEya, Moscow, I870, no. 3) and D. L. Mordovtsev (compiler of the notably banal Russkiye zhenshchiny XVIII-ogo veka, St Petersburg, I874), he keenly felt the strengths and dis- appointing weaknesses of Princess Dolgorukaya's long celebrated journal: it was so very brief, ignored the last years of its authoress's life, and was so painfully unforthcoming on personal and even national matters.

Alois Schmiucker, in his detailed notes to this most useful re-edition of the 1913 (V. Maykov) text of Dolgorukaya's Svoyeruchnyye zapiski-is in- tensely conscious of the problem. And, in fairness to that careful editor, it must be said that his introduction, 'Das Journal der Fuirstin Natalija Borisovna Dolgorukaja' (pp. vii-xxxviii), represents a marked advance on previous efforts to collate all that is known about the Princess. Schmuicker is familiar with all aspects of what we may perhaps term the 'Siberian

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