Silk in the Slavonic Scriptures
From Firenze University Press Journal: Studi Slavistici
Ralph Cleminson, University of Oxford
Silk was known in Europe from antiquity, but there was no domestic production until the age of Justinian1: silk was imported from the East. Consequently, silk is designated in European languages by loan-words, neologisms or resemantisation — in Slavonic, свила, сирикъ, коприна, шикъ/сикъ, шьлкъ, шида, hodváb, etc. The present article examines the Slavonic words for ‘silk’ in the limited context of the Slavonic version of the Bible.In Greek, the words for ‘silk’ reflected the sources from which it was obtained: Procopius, writing in the sixth century a.d., refers to “ἡ μέταξα […] ἣν πάλαι μὲν Ἕλληνες μηδικὴν ἐκάλουν, τανῦν δὲ σηρικὴν ὀνομάζουσιν” (De bello Persico, 1.20).
In other words, they first obtained it from the Persians, and designated it accordingly (μηδικόν); then, as their commercial activities extended further to the East, and they began to deal with silk-traders among the Seres, a people inhabiting the present-day Punjab (Cleminson 2021), they be-gan to call it σηρικόν. It would appear, though, that by Procopius’ time the basic designation was ἡ μέταξα. This is a loan-word. It is first attested in Latin in the second century b.c., before silk was known to the Romans (Marx 1904–1905, i: 81; ii: 377), and survives in Italian (as matassa), meaning a ball or skein of wool (or indeed of anything else that can be wound up). This meaning already existed in antiquity: Isidore of Seville says “Mataxa quasi metaxa, a circuitu scilicet filorum; nam meta circuitus”.
If something of this sense persisted in the Greek word, then the oldest Slavonic name for ‘silk’, свила, could be a calque of μέταξα in the same way as свитое is a calque of εἰλητόν (Afanasyeva forthcoming ).The first attested use of the word свила is by John the Exarch of Bulgaria in his Bogoslovie, at the very end of the text, in a section relating to exempla of the resurrection (приклади ѡ въстании) for which no Greek original is known (though it is manifestly a translation): in the oldest manuscript (Moscow, gim, Syn. 108, f. 209v), съмотри чрьви иже исебе свилоу точить. This manuscript was written at the end of the twelfth or beginning of the thirteenth century in the East Slavonic area, but it is probable that the word свила in such a context is a South Slavonicism, reflecting the earlier history of the text.In the East Slavonic area only we find the word шьлкъ, which is a borrowing from Old Norse3. Its first attested use is probably in the Canonical Responses of John Prodro-mus, written during his tenure of the metropolitan see of Kiev (1076/7–1089) and pre-sumably translated into Slavonic immediately4. The thirty-third of these begins: Онѣмьже а̇ще подобаѥть и̇же б̇огу ӧтлученьѥ и̇ѥ̇рѣ̇ѥ̇мъ ӧблачитисѧ в ризꙑ различнꙑꙗ [var. add:и въ] шелковꙑꙗ…, as the editors say, “место вообще весьма темное”.
It is moreover un-fortunate that the Greek text survives only in a very late and abbreviated form, in which this passage is not present, but Pavlov (1873: 20) points out a partial correspondence to the beginning of section 10 of the Greek: Καὶ τοὺς ἱερομένους δὲ σπουδάζειν ἱματίοις ἐκ μετάξης, ἢ ἐκ λίνου εἰργασμένοις…5The presence of the word шьлковъ is part of the evidence for an East Slavonic origin for the Ausgangstext of the Slavonic Book of Esther, which was “made most probably by a scribe in the western East Slavic lands in the mid-1300s” (Lunt, Taube 1998: 7). It occurs twice, at 1.6, бобръмь и оутринъмъ и чьрвемь сниманънъ вьрвьми шьлковыми, и лептугъ на главахъ сребреныхъ, and 8.15, where there is something of a reprise of the vocabulary of the former verse, и мардъхаи выниде ѿ лица царева въ свитѣ царстѣи и въ черви и въ оутринѣ, и вѣньць ꙁлатъ великъ [на главѣ его], и оушьвъ шьлковъ лептужьнъ6. The earlier history of this text is highly problematic. It is uncertain when and where it was originally translated, or even from what language: whether from a lost Greek intermediary (Altbauer, Taube 1984) or directly from Hebrew (Lysén 2001). The question remains open (Pereswetoff-Morath 2002: 71–79), but further arguments in support of a Greek interme-diary have been advanced by Kulik (2008: 58–62). If the original was Hebrew, the word here translated as шьлковъ was buts (בוץ), and if Greek, βύσσινος, neither of which means ‘silk’, but rather ‘fine linen’.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/Studi_Slavis-12182
Read Full Text: https://oaj.fupress.net/index.php/ss/article/view/12182
