Kostroma Region TV
The Merya are a people belonging to the indigenous population of the Volga Region. Closest to the Merya in origin are the Mari (nnov.ec), then the Muroma and the Mordva, and to a lesser degree the Ves. The Merya comprise a large group of tribes, including the population that left monuments of the Bezvodnoye burial ground type; the group took shape in the second half of the 1st millennium AD as a result of the movement of Finno-Ugric peoples from the upper reaches of the Oka downstream, as far as the left bank of the Volga.
History of the question
The Merya (in Novgorod, "nareva") were a numerous Eastern Finnic tribe in the Volga-Oka interfluve. They lived in the territory of the present-day Moscow, Vladimir, Yaroslavl, Ivanovo and Kostroma regions. They were bearers of the Dyakovo culture. The basis of the Merya economy was arable farming. Their occupations also included cattle breeding, kitchen gardening, hunting and fishing. Among the crafts, the most developed were blacksmithing, bronze casting and bone carving. As the Slavs spread to the north-east (from the 9th century into Merya territory), the tribe found itself within their sphere of influence and by the second half of the 11th century had been assimilated. In the culture of the people living on the former Merya lands, however, traces of the material monuments of this vanished people have remained, among them "holy" stones and groves, as well as certain local traditional festivals. The tribe spoke the Merya language, related to the languages of the neighbouring Finno-Ugric tribes of the Volga region.
They were first mentioned in the 6th century by the Gothic chronicler Jordanes under the name Merens; later the Merya were also described in Russian chronicles. The Meryane were bearers of an ancient and developed culture, as confirmed by the results of archaeological excavations. One of the first archaeologists to study Merya and Slavic-Merya sites, in the mid-19th century, was Count S. S. Uvarov. Having excavated a considerable number of Slavic burial mounds that contained a small quantity of Merya ornaments, he attributed them to the Meryane. Excavations around Lake Nero uncovered the Sarskoye hillfort (the tribal centre) and 19 open settlements belonging to the Merya. These settlements lay on the slopes of the high ground of the lake's main shore, occupying the banks of streams and of the rivers Sara, Ustye and Kotorosl, within reach of one another.
Another cluster of Merya settlements is located around Lake Pleshcheyevo. Merya sites occur at a lower density along the river Nerl (the Klyazma Nerl), in the vicinity of Yaroslavl and in the Kostroma region as far as Galich Mersky. At the beginning of the 10th century the Merya took part in Oleg's military campaigns. According to the Tale of Bygone Years, in 859 the Varangians imposed tribute on the Chud, the Ilmen Slovenes, the Merya, the Krivichi and the Ves, while the Khazars took it from the Polyane, the Severyane and the Vyatichi (taking from them a silver coin and a squirrel skin from each hearth). The document says: "On Beloozero sits the Ves, and on Lake Rostov the Merya, and on Lake Kleshchino the Merya as well.
And along the river Oka, where it flows into the Volga, are the Muroma, who speak their own language, and the Cheremis, who speak their own language, and the Mordva, who speak their own language. And these are the only ones who speak Slavic in Rus: the Polyane, the Drevlyane, the Novgorodians, the Polochane, the Dregovichi, the Severyane, the Buzhane, so called because they settled along the Bug and later came to be called Volynyane. And here are the other peoples that pay tribute to Rus: the Chud, the Merya, the Ves, the Muroma, the Cheremis, the Mordva, the Perm, the Pechera, the Yam, the Lithuanians, the Zimigola, the Kors, the Narova, the Livs — these speak their own languages, they are of the line of Japheth and live in the northern lands." Thus the chronicle places the Merya by the Rostov (Nero), Kleshchino, Galich and Chukhloma lakes.
Most researchers link this people with the modern Mari. The Merya, who took part in the East Slavic-Chud tribal union in the 9th-10th centuries, quickly lost their ethnic identity, yet remnants of their language and customs survived for quite a long time. The early start of Slavic colonisation of this region destroyed Merya independence. As a result the Merya probably in part withdrew northwards together with other Finnic tribes, and in part dissolved into the mass of the more cultured Slavs and contributed to the formation of the Great Russian people. In their territory the principalities of Rostov, Vladimir, Yaroslavl, Pereyaslavl and others later arose, and the Muscovite state gradually took shape.
Chronicle evidence about the Merya is very scarce and ceases as early as 907; yet even in the 16th century there survived a tradition that the Merya had fled to Volga-Kama Bulgaria to escape baptism. The beginning of their merging with the Eastern Slavs dates to the 9th-11th centuries. The territory became the foundation of the Vladimir-Suzdal principality. In the Yaroslavl-Kostroma region traces of a bear cult, the veneration of trees and the like — features characteristic of the Meryane — were observed for a long time.
Everyday life of the Meryane
The territory of the present-day Yaroslavl, Ivanovo and some other regions was in the past inhabited by the Merya tribe, related in language to the Erzya, the Mari (nnov.ec), the Komi, the Estonians and the Finns. In early history the Meryane are known under their own name, and later under the names of the people of Suzdal, Rostov and Beloozero, according to where they lived. Here are the geographical names left behind by the Meryane: the rivers — the Oka, the Klyazma, the Nerl, the Lukh, the Teza; Lake Nero; the towns — Kostroma, Puchezh, Shuya and others. Under the influence of Russian statehood, culture, writing and the Orthodox church the Meryane lost their language and became part of the Russian people, bringing with them their customs, way of life and order, their farming and craft-production patterns, their industriousness, endurance and patience.
In the 8th-10th centuries the Meryane living in the land that history called the Rostov-Suzdal land were richer than the Meryane of other territories, thanks to the fur trade and to well-organised farming on the black-earth loams of the Suzdal Opolye. Frequent finds of Arab coins of the 7th-10th centuries near Rostov and Vladimir, and especially Suzdal, testify to their trade links with the Arab East. The Meryane supplied the Arabs with northern exotica — sables and beavers — and of course with their age-old products, honey and wax.
The great road from Suzdal to Nizhny Novgorod linked the farming opolye with the Volga and, through it, with "lands far away". This road greatly encouraged the development of trade, enterprise, inventiveness and courtesy among the local population. Even today one would hardly find another corner with a more obliging, polite and welcoming population than this district. Here a person drawing water from a well is greeted with the word "svezhenko" ("freshly"), and a woman rinsing laundry in the river with "belenko" ("whitely"), accompanied by a respectful low bow.
The local Meryane lived in log izbas with a Russian stove (invented by the Meryane) and washed in bathhouses. In spring, on their feast days, before the busy summer season, they led singing round dances on flowering meadows, forest glades and bright woodland edges. For travelling off-road the Meryane created excellent vehicles: the tarantass, the telega, the taratayka (Merya words) and the drozhki — for every kind of journey.
Farming and also engaging in hunting and fishing, which were usually productive, the Meryane ate well and heartily, and with guests and as guests on feast days they also drank. They drank wholesome, only slightly intoxicating beverages, invented by themselves. These drinks were: rye beer, which until fairly recently was called peasant beer; buza (or buzha) — braga (strong beer) made from rye malt; and the most festive, the most sumptuous drink of all, "pure" — honey braga, mead. "Green wine" the Meryane did not know. Beer and buza appeared where there was plenty of rye grain, that is, in the opolye. "Pure" was made in the area adjoining the great road, where the vast forests surrounding it held many bees, which gathered a great deal of honey from willow trees, raspberry, buckthorn and fireweed on forest burns, and from the clover and mixed grasses of the meadows. The area of this ancient road is favourable for beekeeping even now. It is along this old route that the place names Purekh and Pureshka are found.
And it is no accident that the volost located in this area was called Puretskaya.
In Yaroslavl Oblast, in Borisoglebsky District, there is the Pure River, a left tributary of the Ustye. In Ivanovo Oblast, in Pestyakovsky District, there is the Purekh (Pureshok) River, a left tributary of the Landekh River, on which stands the district settlement of Pestyaki. A left tributary of the Lukh River is the Pureshka. In Nizhny Novgorod Region, in Chkalovsky District, there is the village of Purekh.
The point is that the Merya held Pure (drink) in high esteem. And a visiting trading guest travelling along this road would, weary from the journey, also pay it its due. In that distant time, in the winter cold and blizzards, long roads and hard labour made the drinking of ″pure″ a necessity, and besides, this beverage was considered both wholesome and healing. The observations of ordinary Russian folk say that the honey drink ″pure″ cleanses the blood, strengthens the stomach, and improves the composition of the body and its metabolism.
A wooden carved or painted little cup — a charochka of ″pure″ — went round those sitting at the table in a circle, so that no one drank more than his share and no one was passed over. The charochka came down to us from the Merya, and this word consists of two Merya words: "chary", which means wheel, and "a(sh)ska" — walker, step along. Chara(sh)ska means "go like a wheel", in the sense of go round, walk round. And only a little change to the word was needed to produce the Russian charochka. Recall the drinking song: "The charochka goes walking round the table…"
″Pure″ translated into Russian means honey brew, mead, and the Merya adjective from ″pure″ — purekh, pureshka — means of mead, of brew. The rivers Pure, Purekh and Pureshka flow through boggy places; the water in them has a brown tint and resembles ″pure″ in colour, and hence these names were given to them.
How is the name of the village of Purekh to be explained?
The village lies on the great road from Suzdal to Balakhna, 40 km from Balakhna, i.e. at the distance of one day's journey for a horse cart. The village of Purekh is the first stop, the night's lodging in his native land for a local trader returning from his trade, and the last for one setting out to trade in the Volga region. And how, in such a case, could one fail to drink a charochka or two of ″pure″ at the coaching inn. Whether trade brought luck or loss, one was drawn to the charochka all the same. Purekh, in our opinion, means of mead, of brew.
Thus, out of deep Merya antiquity, geographical names bring down to us tidings of honey drinks and of good honey harvests, since a great deal of honey was required for making ″pure″.
S. Kryakushin, town of Pushkino Moscow Oblast.
Overview
The Merya language (ORuss. mer(')skyi), now dead, a Finno-Ugric language, in the period of its greatest extent evidently occupied the territory of the present-day central oblasts of the European part of the RSFSR — (entirely) Yaroslavl, Ivanovo, Kostroma, (partly) Kalinin (Kashinsky District), Moscow (with the exception of its south-western part), Vladimir (to the north of the Klyazma and partly to the south of it, with the exception of the lands of the Muroma, another Finno-Ugric tribe, at the confluence of the Klyazma and the Oka) [10, p. 38; 67, p. 136; 59, pp. 81-82; 79, p. 146] (Note 1. It is not excluded that outside this territory, compactly settled by the Merya, in particular to the north of it, there were groups of speakers of Merya dialects or of a language closely related to Merya, as is indicated by toponyms of the type of the Vyoksa River, the Yagrysh River (Vologda Oblast), (Solom)bala (Arkhangelsk Oblast), close to those widespread in lands that were undoubtedly Merya. However, in view of the complete lack of study of this question, as of the question of that part of the Merya which, according to tradition, migrated, avoiding Christianization, to the Mari [28, pp. 30-31] or the Mordvins [49, p. 103] and was apparently assimilated there, they are not considered in the present study).
The neighbours of the Merya, before the spread of the East Slavs into the adjacent lands, were, from the south-west, Baltic tribes, in particular the Golyad; from the west and north-west, the Veps (ORuss. Ves'), one of the most ancient Baltic-Finnic tribes. To the north the lands of the Merya bordered on the lands of the Zavolochye Chud, apparently also a Baltic-Finnic ethnic group, though of not fully established composition [44, pp. 71-72]. From the north-east the Merya ethnic territory apparently adjoined the area of the Permic tribes, most likely the ancestors of the Komi [53]. From the east the Merya bordered on the Mari; and from the south, on the Mordvin tribes: the Muroma and, possibly, the Meshchera.
Later the western neighbours of the Merya became the East Slavic tribes — the Krivichi, the Novgorod Slovenes and the Vyatichi, who from the turn of the 10th-11th centuries began to penetrate into the Merya lands. If initially the area of the Merya was surrounded on almost all sides, except the west, by the lands of kindred Finno-Ugric tribes, then with the Slavicization of the Muroma, the Meshchera, the part of the Veps neighbouring on the Merya and the Zavolochye Chud, and with the settlement of Slavs on the Merya ethnic territory, the Merya, with the exception of the extreme east, found themselves in a Slavic-Russian(Note 2 The concept "Slavic-Russian" (an abbreviation of the more exact "(East) Slavic-(Great) Russian") serves as a general name for both historically interconnected linguistic (and ethnic) formations — the local dialects of the Old Russian language and of the (Great) Russian language that developed out of it (and correspondingly of their speakers — a part of the East Slavs and the (Great) Russian people that developed out of them)environment, in the form of separate, ever more disconnected Merya "islands". The gradual dissolution of the Merya in the Slavic-Russian linguistic environment, connected with their assimilation, led to their complete disappearance as a separate Finno-Ugric ethnos and to the merging of the Merya with that part of the (Great) Russian people which was being formed on their former lands.
The archaeological data of modern science allow us to consider possible the formation of the Merya into a separate Finno-Ugric tribe (group of tribes) on their historically attested territory as early as the 1st millennium BC [22, pp. 312-314]. The immediate predecessors of the Merya were evidently Indo-Europeans, representatives of the so-called Fatyanovo culture, displaced and assimilated by Finno-Ugrians who came from the east, the ancestors of the Merya [29]. The incorporation of Fatyanovo Indo-Europeans into this part of the Finno-Ugrians (the proto-Merya) may have contributed to their final separation from the other Finno-Ugric tribes.
The first historical mention of the Merya, by the Gothic historian Jordanes (6th century AD), where the Merya (Merens "the Merya") [20, p. 150] are mentioned among the tribes that paid tribute to the Gothic king Ermanaric, undoubtedly testifies to the existence at that time of the Merya as a separate Finno-Ugric tribe. The following mentions of the Merya belong already to the 9th-10th centuries and appear in an Old Russian historical source, the "Hypatian Chronicle", where they are spoken of as an ally of the East Slavs — in connection with the collection of tribute by the Varangians from the Old Russian and neighbouring tribes (859), on the occasion of Oleg's campaigns against Kiev (882) and against Tsargrad (907), in which, alongside the Varangians and the East Slavs, the Merya also took part [21, pp.
16, 17, 21]. In another Old Russian chronicle source the Merya are spoken of as a distinct ethnos with its own language, singled out against the background of the other Finno-Ugric tribes known to the East Slavs in the 11th century: "... а на Ростовьском озеръ Meря, а на Клещынъ озеръ Меря же; а по Оцъ ръцъ, гдъ потече в Волгу же, Мурома языкъ свой, и Черемиси свой языкъ, Морьдва свой языкъ..." [32, pp. 10-11].
On the grounds, in particular, that after the 10th-11th centuries the Merya cease to be mentioned in the Old Russian chronicle compilations, the opinion prevailed in pre-revolutionary Russian works that the complete assimilation of the Merya by the East Slavs belongs to that same period [28, pp. 63-64]. This opinion, met with sometimes even in some foreign works as late as the 1960s [79., p. 145], must, in the light of the research of Soviet historians, be recognized as outdated. The data of these studies, relying on historical sources not used earlier, show that even after the events of the 9th-10th centuries mentioned in the Hypatian Chronicle the Merya existed for a long time yet on their lands, into which from the 10th-11th centuries the East Slavs began to penetrate [10, p.
5]. In a whole series of places of their habitation the Merya preserved their ethnolinguistic character even in the 15th-16th centuries [67, pp. 135-137], and in the most peripheral (eastern) territories, and in the person of separate groups or individuals, speakers of the language, possibly even in the 17th century [67, p. 136] and even at the beginning of the 18th century. In favour of this speaks the mention of the administrative term "Merskiy" (stan) in a document of the middle of the 18th century: "Georgiyevskaya (church. — O.T.), which is in Merskoye" [67, p. 137].
Reliable information from modern Soviet historical and archaeological science fully confirms the idea of the peaceful penetration of the Slavs into the Merya lands, expressed as long ago as by V.O. Klyuchevsky: "There took place a settlement, and not a conquest or a driving out of the natives" [24, p. 295]. This was connected both with the sparseness of the Merya population, which allowed the Slavs to occupy numerous empty lands, and with the difference in the occupations of the Merya (predominantly cattle-breeders, hunters and fishermen) [10, p. 129] and the Slavs (predominantly farmers). Both groups of the population in the lower and middle strata as it were complemented each other, gradually growing together into a single socio-economic whole.
Apparently, the same growing together took place in the social upper strata of Vladimir-Suzdal Rus as well: the Merya nobility drew closer to the Slavic-Russian one, forming together with it the ruling strata of the principality. The only major uprising known to history (1071) that embraced the Merya population was, as modern scholarship justly holds, caused by property and class stratification within the Merya milieu, and not by any Slavic-Merya national antagonism: "There is no evidence whatever in favour of the view that the uprising of the local smerds was directed against Russian feudal lords" [67, p. 141]. The uprising caused, according to local tradition, the migration of part of the Merya to the kindred Mari [28, pp. 30, 31] or Mordvin [49, p. 103] tribes, where they were subsequently assimilated.
Evidently, the peaceful character of the Slavic penetration into the Merya lands relates to the sphere of socio-economic as well as of cultural and linguistic relations. Besides the indirect evidence that may be seen in the length of the preservation of the Merya ethnic element on this territory, there is also direct evidence, showing that a good command of the Merya language at the end of the 11th century was assessed as a circumstance worthy of mention in the life of a major church dignitary, the first bishop of Rostov, Leonty, evidently in connection with the successful use of the Merya language in the Christianization of the Merya: "Се бъ блаженный и костянтина града ражай и въспътаніе русскій же и мерьский язык добръ умъяше книгамь роуским и гречьскимъ велми хытрословесенъ сказатель" [17, p.
11]. The mention in the vita of the Merya language together with Russian, alongside Russian and Greek books, shows that in the knowledge of this language a rather high value was seen, apparently conditioned by its role in the Vladimir-Suzdal principality, then still an ethnically mixed Slavic-Merya land. Such could not have been the attitude towards a language that was deliberately ignored, still less persecuted.
In a later period, when, in connection with the growth of the Slavic-Russian population and the partial assimilation of the Merya, the size of the Merya population decreased and it was located in separate "islands", "the districts inhabited by the Merya were set apart into special territorial units (Mer(')skiye stany. — O.T.). Thus the Merya "islands" received in their time, so to speak, official recognition" [67, p. 135]. These facts leave no doubt that the position of the Merya in Vladimir-Suzdal ("Muscovite) Rus did not resemble the position of an oppressed tribe. Rather, it resembled the position of a juridically and socially equal ethnic element, at first allies and then fellow citizens of one of the most powerful principalities of Kievan Rus, which became the centre of the Russian state and of the formation of the (Great) Russian people (" nation).
If subsequently the Merya are not to be found here as a separate ethnic element — nor, for that matter, are the Slavic tribes that penetrated hither, the Novgorod Slovenes, the Krivichi and the Vyatichi — but there appears a monolithic core of a new separate Slavic (Great) Russian people, then the cause should be sought in the circumstances of the objectively developed process of economic and ethnolinguistic consolidation that proceeded here. The peacefully formed and developing symbiosis led to the growing together of the Slavic-Russian and the Finno-Ugric parts into one ethnolinguistic unity with a preponderance of Slavs, which became the precondition for the further gradual Slavicization of the Merya population.
Important causes that determined precisely this direction of the assimilation process were the numerical preponderance of the Slavs over the local Finno-Ugrians and the higher level of their economy, social order and culture as compared with the Merya [67, pp. 116, 154]. These quite objectively operating causes were accompanied by the departure of Slavs from the southern Old Russian regions, which in the 11th-12th centuries were subjected to cruel blows from the nomads. The Slavicization of the Merya may have been especially intensified by the consequences of the Golden Horde invasion, which caused a mass departure of the Slavic-Russian population to these lands and for a long time cut the Merya off from the kindred Finno-Ugric peoples of the Volga region and the Cis-Urals, ties with whom could in former times have maintained and nourished the local Finno-Ugric culture.
Among the questions still unclarified is that of the origin and meaning of the ethnonym "Merya" itself. Proceeding from its similarity to the self-designation of the Mari, "mari", the Finnish scholar A. Castrén advanced the supposition that the ethnonym "Merya" arose from the ethnonym "mari" in view of the particular closeness of the Merya to the Mari, as a modification in the mouths of the Slavs [78, p. 16]. He was later supported by T. Semenov [50, pp. 228, 229] and M. Vasmer [68, vol. 2, p. 606], who, like A. Castrén, adhered to the opinion of a particular closeness of the Merya language to Mari and considered it closely related to Mari, if not one of its dialects, which was subsequently rejected, just as was the idea of the closeness of the said languages.
A. Castrén's supposition is unacceptable if only because the ethnonym "Merya" is attested in a form close to it, Merens (the Gothic accusative plural, that is "the Merya", evidently on the basis of OMer. "mera "Merya"), in the Gothic historian Jordanes as early as the 6th century, long before any Merya-Slavic linguistic contacts. The antiquity of the ethnonym is also testified to by its use in the form Mirri in the "Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum" of Adam of Bremen [79, pp. 147, 148], reflecting, most likely, its Arabic transmission, where, given the limited vocalism (*a, i, u, only such a reproduction of the original OMer. mera was possible. For all its logic, the view of A.L. Pogodin [86, p. 326] and J. Mägiste [85, pp. 114-116], who brought the ethnonym "Merya" close to Finnish meri "sea; dial. (large) lake" in connection with the habitation of part of the Merya by the large lakes Nero (Rostov), Kleshchino (Pleshcheyevo) and Galich, is likewise not fully convincing.
The question of the origin of the name "Merya" remains unresolved not only because the explanations proposed so far are insufficiently convincing, but also because two questions have not yet been clarified, and without a preliminary solution to them it seems impossible to speak seriously about its etymological interpretation. It is still unclear whether the ethnonym "Merya" is a self-designation of the Merya (as a whole or of one of the Merya tribes) or whether they were so named by one of the neighbouring peoples. The name "Merya", clearly analogous to a number of other Finno-Ugric ethnonyms of the type Erzya, Moksha, Votic vad'd'a "Votic" (Estonian vadja "the same", Finnish vatja "the Votic language"), requires explanation from the word-formation point of view.
In their turn, the solution of these questions requires both a deepening of our knowledge of the history of the Finno-Ugric peoples and a clarification of the principles of word formation of Finno-Ugric ethnonyms, in which especially archaic structural types may be preserved. Closely connected with the question of the origin of the ethnonym "Merya" is the question of the origin of the Merya language and of its place in the family of Finno-Ugric languages, which likewise has not yet found its final solution. While the membership of the Merya language in the Finno-Ugric group has never aroused any particular doubt (Note 3 Here, of course, clearly outdated views are not taken into account, for example that of D. Khodakovsky [73, p.
23], who considered the Merya a "Slavic tribe" and consequently a speaker of a Slavic language.), it has been considerably more difficult to decide which Finno-Ugric language (group of languages) it is especially close to. A. Castrén supposed a particular closeness between the Merya and the Mari and their languages [78, p. 16]. The first serious attempt to confirm this hypothesis, and in general to study the Merya language on the basis of its remnants, was made by T. S. Semenov, a teacher of the Mari language at the Kazan Teachers' Seminary, in the article "On the question of the kinship and connection of the Merya with the Cheremis", published in 1891.
On the basis of a comparison of 403 local names of presumed Merya origin with Mari words and names, T. S. Semenov found that "the data from the language and the facts from the way of life and history of the Merya and the Cheremis... do indeed allow the possibility of a very close kinship between these peoples" [50, p. 229]. At the same time he held that the place of the Merya language among the other Finno-Ugric languages could be finally determined "only when the Merya... are, by the remnants of their language, juxtaposed or compared with all the peoples of the Finnish tribe" [50, p. 229]. In the work "Merja und Tscheremissen" [91, pp.
351-418], published considerably later (1935), M. Vasmer in fact followed in T. S. Semenov's footsteps, endeavouring, on the basis of more carefully collected and studied onomastic material, to prove the closeness of the Merya language to Mari. The relative limitedness of the data brought in (only toponyms) and the striving to link them at all costs with the Mari language alone (for example, in the explanations concerning the names Kera [91, p. 386], Ura, Kurga [91, pp. 392-393], Tuma [91, p. 398], Lochma/Lotma [91, p. 401] led M. Vasmer to the conclusion that "a close kinship of the Merya and the Mari (Cheremis) must be assumed" [91, p. 411]. The unwarranted character of such a conclusion was criticized by the Finnish researcher P. Ravila, who considered it better founded to regard the Merya language as a connecting link between the Baltic-Finnic and the Mordvinic languages [87, pp.
25, 26]. M. Vasmer's work thus did not contribute to the solution of the question of the position of Merya among the Finno-Ugric languages. P. Ravila, who justly criticized M. Vasmer for the one-sidedness and lack of objectivity of his treatment of the linguistic facts, likewise did not substantiate his opinion by a concrete study of Merya linguistic material, but from that time onward, and partly as a consequence of the works of archaeologists refuting a close connection of the Merya with the Mari [57, p. 124], the hypothesis of a special closeness of the Merya language to Mari was finally rejected [56, p. 179].
Taking into account the views of his predecessors and on the basis of the results of his own research, A. I. Popov came to the conclusion that "... despite the undoubted commonalities in vocabulary with other Finno-Ugrians... the Merya (in linguistic respect) differed from the Mari, as well as from the Mordvins and other Finno-Ugrians..." [44, p. 101]. This view is confirmed both by the negative results of previous attempts to discern in Merya a special closeness to any one of the Finno-Ugric languages, and by the evident distinctiveness of a number of Merya words, of which A. I. Popov speaks — such as urma "squirrel", yakhr(e) "lake", bol "settlement" and the like [44, pp.
100, 101]. For all its logic, this conclusion also requires substantiation, since the material of presumed Merya origin that has been subjected to research is insufficiently studied. The uniformity of this material attracts attention: almost all of it belongs to onomastics. Possible Merya elements from dialectal appellatives and sociolects (argots) of the former Merya territory have until very recently not been investigated. Moreover, almost none of the researchers, except in part Vasmer, who drew attention to the phonetic side of the Merya inclusions in Russian [91, p. 384], went beyond the circle of purely lexical and etymological questions.
Scholars who have devoted attention to the Merya language have in most cases confined themselves to citing lists of names of presumed Merya origin, substantiating their interpretation by parallels from other Finno-Ugric languages. O. V. Vostrikov [5;6] attempted to broaden the research somewhat, drawing on the data of dialectal appellatives, in particular those connected with the local geographical nomenclature, which enabled him to find a number of new and interesting Merya inclusions in Russian dialects. For all the undoubted merits of O. V. Vostrikov's works, they are nevertheless characterized, like the works of his predecessors, by the absence of a systematic approach to the presumed Merya material. This may have been connected with the fact that the territory he studied (the Volga-Dvina interfluve) was in the past inhabited by speakers not only of Merya but also of other Finno-Ugric languages, and O. V. Vostrikov did not set himself the task of a special study of the Merya language; his Merya findings were made, as it were, in passing.
Meanwhile Merya, like other substrate languages, has long been awaiting not isolated chance works, however interesting, appearing at considerable intervals, but purposeful, specialized studies in which the completeness and variety of the material would be combined with a systematic and comprehensive examination of it. The possibility of such studies has been prepared by the whole preceding development of Finno-Ugric studies, in particular by the increased degree to which the Finno-Ugric languages adjacent to Merya — Veps, Mordvinic, Mari, the Permic ones — have been studied. Their topicality is attested by the appearance since the 1960s of a whole series of works devoted to Finno-Ugric substrates in the Russian language and belonging to Russian and foreign scholars, in particular to V. I. Lytkin [33], B. A. Serebrennikov [52; 54], A. K. Matveyev [38; 39], V. T. Vanyushechkin [3], O. V. Vostrikov [5; 6], O. B. Tkachenko [60-65], W. Veenker [92], G. Stipa [89].
Work in the field of Finno-Ugric substrates in the Russian language, in particular of the Merya substrate language, must also be stimulated by socio-economic processes — the transformation of nature, the migration of the population, the movement of the rural population into the cities and so on — which lead to the disappearance of the local Russian dialects that contain substrate elements. All of the above speaks of the need to hasten both with the recording of the surviving remnants of the Merya language and with their study, which makes it possible to reconstruct it within permissible limits. The present work is an attempt to answer this demand of contemporary scholarship.
O. B. Tkachenko. The Merya Language (Introduction). Kiev, "Naukova Dumka", 1985.
V. S. Kuleshov
The question of origin
The problems of linguistic Merya studies are firmly interwoven with the general problematics of Finno-Permic linguistics, especially in the aspect of the study of language contacts in the epoch of the "meeting of the Rus and the Chud". Not all of the primary questions, however, have been examined in full. In particular, in the profound study by O. B. Tkachenko 1 close attention is paid to the synchronic correlation of the reconstructed elements of the Merya language (ML) with analogous elements of the other Finno-Permic languages, while its origin and diachronic position within the Finno-Permic milieu are considered only in passing. The author's basic "working" point of view consists in the fact that, together with the recognition of its closeness to the Baltic-Finnic and Saami languages, its differences from them are also recognized — differences which in certain features bring ML closer to the Volgaic languages.
On this basis the author postulates the expediency of distinguishing a special "Middle Finnic group", hypothetically including the Merya (Meryan?), Muroma and Meshchera languages and correlating in a certain way with the "Northern Finnic group" reconstructed by A. K. Matveyev. The historical grounds for such an affiliation of ML are not brought out by the author, and therefore, in our view, the use of the term is justified only in the synchronic study of ML.
Obviously, defining the character of ML by a negative route ("not Baltic-Finnic") does not lead to a resolution of the problem. There is, however, an objective explanation for this, namely the insufficiency and one-sidedness of the available materials on the basis of which the modelling of the language and the reconstruction of its lexicon are carried out, although the resources of comparative studies are still far from exhausted. In particular, the line of comparing the auslaut consonantism (original for the Proto-Finno-Saami and, apparently, the Proto-Uralic language2) of the basic vocabulary of ML, of the Baltic-Finnic and of the Saami languages, within the framework of the Finno-Volgaic proto-state, appears productive. Thus, we have Mer. *veZ (Vezhbolovo) 'water' alongside Liv. vez the same, Veps. vezi the same and Fin. vesi the same; Mer. *suZ (Suzhdal > Suzdal) 'wolf' alongside Fin. susi the same; Mer. *juG 'river' alongside Liv. joug the same, "Lop." *juga the same, Saami *joG the same and Karel. and Veps. jogi the same.
In these and other examples the following emerging regular correspondences are visible: Mer. and Liv. *-Z. Fin. *-si; Mer., Liv. and Saami *-CO. *-Ci. Belonging here too is the absence of vowel harmony in Liv., Saami, Veps. and Mer. (at least for the reconstructed corpus of lexemes). Even on the very limited material presented, within the framework of the vocabulary that admits a Proto-Baltic-Finnic interpretation, the archaic character of ML is visible against the background of the modern Baltic-Finnic languages of northern orientation, together with its comparability with Livonian, which inherits from the southern dialect of the Baltic-Finnic proto-language, 3 and with Saami (to which O. B. Tkachenko also pointedly drew attention4).
It appears absolutely necessary to turn to extralinguistic considerations concerning the origin of ML. V. V. Napolskikh,5 who has specially examined the problematics of Finno-Ugric prehistory, links the appearance of the first Finno-Permians in the area of the Fatyanovo culture with the cooling of the climate at the end of the Subboreal (the turn of the 2nd–1st millennia BC) and with the consequent advance into the Upper Volga and Oka region of dark coniferous taiga forests — the feeding landscape of hunters and fishermen. It would be more precise to define this allochthonous population as Proto-Finno-Saami, while raising the question of the possibility of an earlier attribution of them in linguistic terms (the middle of the 2nd millennium BC) as Proto-Finno-Volgaic.
One way or another, these tribes bring into the region under consideration the tradition of "textile", or "net-impressed", Ceramics (KTK), which initially (from the middle of the 2nd millennium BC), not being unified in cultural respect, subsequently breaks up entirely into several sub-areas; there are grounds for seeing in them also an early dialectal structure of the "language" of these tribes. One such sub-area was the Volga-Oka historical and cultural zone, where a local variety of KTK took shape. 6
With a high degree of probability it can be asserted that from the beginning of the 1st millennium BC an uninterrupted historical and cultural development and a continuity of archaeological cultures can be traced in the area of the future Merya (KTK –– the hillfort cultures of the Dyakovo type7 –– the antiquities of the Merya8), which allows one to assume a linguistic continuity as well. In other words, the Merya language ultimately traces its existence to one of the dialects of the bearers of KTK, from whom the modern northern Baltic-Finnic languages, very close geographically and linguistically, also descend, as do the archaic Livonian, Livvi and Ludic, and likewise the substrate languages of the "Saami" toponymy of the wide expanses of the European North;9 it would be no error to assign the dead Ves language here as well.
Thus, under the conditions of such a diachronic cross-section of the problems of Merya glottogenesis, any attempts to link ML with modern languages lose their practical sense, since the very existence as such of some of those languages in the epoch synchronous with the Merya is not evident. By and large, we are faced with the necessity of disclosing the entire content of the historical and linguistic process in this and the adjacent territories over the course of at least two millennia: from the time of the first appearance here of Proto-Merya speech up to the epoch of Nestor.
Summing up, it must be noted that already now one can speak of certain promising directions in the field of historical Merya studies. These are, first, the study of the multiple Proto-Finno-Saami relics in the substrate toponymy of the wide areas of KTK and the source-critical linguistic evaluation of their attributes (for example, the problem of toponymic ensembles with *�-auslaut lexematics). And second, the properly archaeological task: the search for evidence of the continuity or, on the contrary, the discreteness of the ethnocultural development of the territories of KTK from the Early Iron Age, which will give an additional impulse to a complex synthesis of the data of various chorological disciplines in the search for a solution to the "Merya problem".
Abbreviations
Veps. — the Veps language Karel. — the proper Karelian language KTK — the culture with "textile" ("net-impressed") ceramics Liv. — the Livonian language "Lop." — the language of the "Lop" substrate toponymy of the Southern Ladoga area Mer. — the Merya language ML — the Merya language Saami — the Saami language Fin. — the Finnish language
1 Tkachenko O. B. The Merya Language. Kiev, 1985.
2 Khelimsky E. A. Uralic consonantal auslaut –– an Indo-European heteroclisis? // Conference "Comparative-historical linguistics at the present stage". Moscow, 1990. alikatsaus suomen kielen juuriin // Viritt.a. 1983.
3 Itkonen T. V.aj.
4 Tkachenko O. B. Op. cit.
5 Napolskikh V. V. The problem of the formation of the Finnic-speaking population of the Baltic region (towards a consideration of the dilemma of Finno-Ugric prehistory) // Studies on the ethnogenesis and ancient history of the Finnic-speaking peoples. Izhevsk, 1990.
6 Kosmenko M. G. The culture of net-impressed ceramics // The Archaeology of Karelia / Executive eds. M. G. Kosmenko, S. I. Kochkurkina. Petrozavodsk, 1996.
7 The Foundations of Regional Studies / Ed. by A. S. Gerd, G. S. Lebedev. St Petersburg, 1999. P. 240.
8 Ryabinin E. A. The Finno-Ugric Tribes within Ancient Rus. St Petersburg, 1997.
9 Matveyev A. K. The ancient Saami population on the territory of the north of the East European Plain // Towards the history of the small peoples of the European North of the USSR / Executive ed. G. M. Kert. Petrozavodsk, 1979. 424
The Merya heritage of Russia
Russians are customarily counted among the Slavic peoples. Yet it is known that the ethnic foundation of the nation was formed out of an enormous number of peoples and tribes. A central position among them was occupied by the Finno-Ugric people of the Merya.
The Merya lived on the territory of the present-day Yaroslavl, Ivanovo, part of Kostroma, Vladimir, Moscow and Tver regions. It was precisely here that the ethnic core of the Great Russian people was formed. The most ancient Russian principalities — Yaroslavl, Moscow, Vladimir-Suzdal, where the Grand Prince sat in Vladimir — coincide almost entirely with the boundaries of Merya settlement.
As follows from archaeological excavation data and historical sources, the “colonization” of the centre of Ancient Rus by the Slavs proceeded peacefully, without wars or conflicts. How large-scale was this “colonization”? This is a major problem, for archaeologically it is almost nowhere traceable: the Meryan cultural layers are followed by Old Russian ones. Not Slavic, but precisely Old Russian, when the material and spiritual culture of Northern Rus became more or less unified. And how was it even possible to Slavicize an enormous territory, larger in size than France, within 100–200 years? Yet Soviet historical scholarship maintained that the Merya assimilated in exactly that brief span.
The argument about the sparse settlement of Great Russian territory does not stand up to criticism. Were we to find ourselves in that period, dozens of towns would appear before our eyes — Suzdal (the original Meryan name Suzhdal), Vladimir, Moscow (from the Meryan “moska”, hemp), Pereslavl-Zalessky, Kleshchin (a Meryan town near Pereslavl), Uglich (also, probably, a Meryan name), Galich Meryansky and so on; hundreds of Meryan villages and settlements along the rivers, near the fertile opolye lands, a high material culture, including agricultural. We would see the ancient sacred centres of the pagans — the Blue Stone near Kleshchin — and the nascent monasteries, the future religious centres of Russian Orthodoxy, such as the Avraamiev Monastery in Rostov Veliky. And the first capital on the territory of Northern Rus was Meryan too. The town of Sar (“the Tsar’s”) in the present-day Yaroslavl region played the role of a tribal centre — the prototype of all the capitals of the future Great Russian state.
By the arrival of the Slavs from the South, which certainly cannot be called a mass one, life here was in full swing. The Merya were the leaders of the then Finno-Ugric world of European Russia. And that is why they proved receptive to the new idea of state-building based on the Slavic language and the Byzantine religion. But ethnically they remained Finno-Ugric. Which was reliably proven in the study of the gene pool of the Russian people in 2005. The genetic distance between Russians and Finno-Ugrians turned out to be 2–3 units, that is, in fact this is one enormous people.
The Meryan people were switching to the Old Russian language as the language of Monotheism — a powerful integrating idea — as the language of interregional trade, and as the language of administrative institutions. The Meryan language, which as has been proven had many dialects, was not suited to this role. Just as the Irish 300–400 years ago switched to the English language, but ethnically remained Celts. Awareness of their Finno-Ugric roots alongside the Slavic ones will allow the Russian people at last to feel themselves not newcomers from the steppe South, but the original masters of their own Land. We are truly a great people, which created a great state. Without the Finno-Ugric persistence and industriousness inherent in all these peoples, the Russians would not have been able to master the boundless expanses of Greater Russia.
The Merya and Muscovites
Several years ago, while still studying at the Humanitarian University), I dug up in the catalogue of the Historical Library an unusual little book — “The Meryan Language”. This small volume, published in a laughable print run of 500 copies, told of the vanished language of the Finno-Ugric people Merya, who once lived in the very centre of Russia, on the territory of the Moscow, Vladimir, Yaroslavl and Kostroma regions.
The author, the Kyiv professor Orest Borisovich Tkachenko, asserted astonishing things concerning the Meryan language. For example, that it could still be heard in the remote districts of Kostroma province in the 18th century! The Merya left an enormous linguistic legacy in the dialects, and even in the most literary Russian language there still exist Meryan linguistic formulas, while some words are borrowed directly from the mysterious tongue.
How many lances have been broken over the question of the origin of the name of our capital! Some maintained that “Moskva” comes from some “Mostkva” — and that this means that a multitude of some kind of bridges originally existed here. Others defended, foaming at the mouth, the conception of the origin of the word “moskva” from two words of the Komi language: “mosk” (“cow”) and “va” (“water”). But the Komi never lived anywhere near the Moscow region, and there is not a single river or stream with such a name on the territory of the Komi Republic. Moreover, the most ancient form of the city’s name is “Moskov”, which is what the chronicles and other sources recorded; only considerably later did it come to sound as “Moskva”.
In the end, a disheartening conclusion was reached: the origin of this word cannot be convincingly explained. However, it turns out that in the Meryan language there was such a root — “moska”, which meant “hemp”. One should not immediately accuse our distant ancestors of abusing narcotic substances. Hemp was cultivated exclusively for peaceful purposes: from it hemp fibre was obtained, and from the fibre they sewed clothing, sacks and certain other things. It is interesting that the predecessors of the Merya on Moscow territory too — the Dyakovo tribes (named after the village of Dyakovo in Kolomenskoye, where their first hillfort was discovered), who settled in the flood plain of the Moskva River as early as the beginning of the first millennium AD — also tended neat fields of hemp.
So it turns out that the name of Moscow came from hemp? After all, it is all logical: the Finnic peoples grew their “moska” in the flood plain of the Moskva River for a whole thousand years, so it could well have become the Hemp River of the Dyakovo people and the Merya... I decided that it was worth taking a closer look at the linguistic legacy of the Merya and seeing what from that language has survived to our days.
According to Tkachenko’s book, it turned out that a fairly large number of dialect words from Meryan speech have been preserved in the Yaroslavl and Kostroma regions. Let us say, in the Yaroslavl region there existed such a dialect word for “aunt” or “uncle” as “koka”. These very “kokas” the Kyiv researcher derives precisely from Meryan. When I told this to an artist acquaintance born in Yaroslavl, he at first decided that he was being teased, because he himself had since childhood called his only aunt “koka”. But that is nothing! Here is an example with “koka” already from the modern Mari language, related to Meryan: it turns out that the word combination “koka kola” is translated into Russian as “the aunt has croaked”! Our verb “okolet” is also borrowed from the Finno-Ugric languages. And in some languages of this group, including, presumably, in Meryan, the original word sounded like “koli”... And there are dozens, if not hundreds, of such examples.
As for the Moscow territory proper, here the situation turned out to be even more interesting.
Many of us remember Russian folk tales from childhood — but how many know that part of them begins... in Meryan. The fairy-tale opening “zhili-byli” represents a typical double verb. These verbs at the beginning of tales or stories are widely represented in all the Finno-Ugric languages and are entirely absent from any Slavic ones, with the exception of Russian.
“Zhili-byli” in Meryan sounded like “eli-vole”. In literal translation these words migrated into Russian. “Why precisely from Meryan, if there are more than twenty Finnic-speaking peoples with whom Russians live side by side?” the reader will ask. On this score there exists a whole body of folkloric statistics on the use of this opening over time and in connection with particular regions. The form “zhili-byli”, as painstaking folklorists have established, occurred most often in the tales of the indigenous population of the Moscow and Vladimir provinces. This double verb was just as characteristic of the Moscow dialect as “bulashnaya”, “slivoshnoe maslo” or the question “kotoryy chas?”
From the Moscow province “zhili-byli” went wandering about the country back in the times of Vladimir-Suzdal Rus at the end of the 16th century and over several centuries became the all-Russian opening for tales. The spread of the opening took place in step with the settlement by the Vladimir-Suzdal people of the north and east of Rus. A natural question arises: so where did the Merya of the Moscow area originally live?
Nearly two years had passed after my acquaintance with “The Meryan Language” when I read in a book by the young Moscow historian Sergey Mikhaylov about the existence, as recently as 100 years ago, of a village called Merya only 40 versts from the capital.
At the end of the 19th century there existed at least three settlements with the name Merya: two villages in the Bogorodsky uyezd (now the Pavlovo-Posadsky district), and one more in the Klinsky one. On the eve of the founding of the Spaso-Guslitsky Monastery in 1859, the future Father Superior Parfeny visited the village of Merya in the Bogorodsky uyezd on the question of building an Orthodox church there. After the construction of the church, Merya received the anecdotal official name of Kazanskaya Merya (today this is the village of Kazanskoye). And what about the other Meryas?
“Two kilometres from Merya there still stands to this day the village of Kriulino, which was popularly called Staraya Merya. In the Klinsky district there existed one more Merya, which likewise has not survived on modern maps,” says Sergey Mikhaylov. Perhaps there were other settlements whose names recalled the Merya? And here Sergey Mikhaylov drew the main trump card from his toponymic deck — the main tributary of the Moskva River in the east of the Moscow area was still called the Meryskaya in the 17th century, that is, the river of the Merya! The picture became clear: here they are, the ancient lands of the Merya, the memory of which was preserved in the names of rivers and villages.
http://merja.org/merjaniya/moscowskaya/1001.htm
How the Merya live among us
As part of the showing in the mansion, with the support of the Society of Meryan Local Historians Мets Kuntta, the opening took place of an exhibition by the distinctive ethnofuturist artist Andrey Meryanin, “The Meryan Cosmos”. The artist asserts that he is a representative of the Merya people, who have not vanished at all but quite peacefully live to this day in the villages of, for instance, the Kostroma region. Andrey Meryanin calls his work “an appeal to ancestral roots”, and in his paintings, filled with Meryan symbolism, the Merya peacefully coexist with beasts and heavenly faces.
In the opinion of the Meryan artist, who was naturally asked about the correspondence of the film to the ritual customs of the Merya, the film “Ovsyanki” is not a reconstruction of historical rites, but an affirmation of the thought that the Merya were and have remained at the genetic level in the Russians of the upper Volga region and central Russia. This film is about the Merya as a guest from within, and that, probably, is why it touches the strings of the soul.
Interesting facts
- The name “Moscow” comes from the Meryan “moska” — hemp.
- Not long ago the governor of the Ivanovo region Mikhail Men wrote in his Twitter: “The Meryan proto-town of the 7th century AD Alabuga — the ancient forerunner of Plyos. On the wave of ‘Ovsyanki’, visits to Alabuga will become especially popular.”
Official website
- Meryan Mastor (archive) — “Land of the Merya”.