The origin of this manuscript is shrouded in mystery. "Veles's book" (aka "Vlesov's book" or "Veles's book") is one of the most controversial historical documents in the world. 35 wooden plaques, about five millimeters thick and about 22 by 38 centimeters in size, had holes for fastening with a strap.
These tablets contained prayers and stories about the oldest Slavic history. But only one person saw the original of the book, who at one time told about it. Can it be considered a genuine historical document?
War trophy from an unknown estate
All information about the history of the "Veles Book" comes from the emigrant, author of works of art and researcher of Slavic folklore Yuri Petrovich Mirolyubov.
According to his version, in 1919, during the Civil War, Colonel of the White Army Fyodor (Ali) Isenbek in the destroyed estate of the princes Donskoy-Zakharzhevsky (according to other sources from the same Mirolyubov - Neklyudov-Zadonsky or Kurakin), located either in Orlovskaya, then whether in Kursk province, I found old wooden plaques covered with unknown inscriptions.
The text was scratched or cut with something, then rubbed with brown paint, and then covered with varnish or oil.
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Isenbek took the boards and did not part with them all the years of the war. In emigration, he settled in Brussels, where he showed the manuscript to Yu. P. Mirolyubov.
He, realizing the value of the find, decided to preserve it for history. Isenbek forbade taking the boards out of the house, even for a short time. Mirolyubov came to him, and the owner locked him in the house to copy the manuscript. The work lasted 15 years.
On August 13, 1941, Isenbek died of apoplectic stroke. Belgium by that time was already occupied by the Nazis. According to Mirolyubov's recollections, the Gestapo confiscated the tablets of the Veles Book and handed them over to the Heritage of Ancestors (Ahnenerbe) organization.
After 1945, the Soviet command took possession of part of the Ancestral Heritage archives, they were transported to Moscow and classified. There is still no access to these documents. It is possible that the tablets of the "Veles Books" survived and are kept in this archive.
According to Mirolyubov, he managed to copy about 75% of the text of the tablets. But, unfortunately, there is no documentary evidence that anyone else, apart from Mirolyubov, saw them.
It is surprising that neither Isenbek nor Mirolyubov took photographs of the manuscript - after all, photocopying would take 15 minutes instead of 15 years (later Mirolyubov presented the only random photo of one of the tablets). In addition, Mirolyubov announced the existence of the "Veles Book" after Isenbek's death, when he could neither confirm nor deny this fact.
Life of the Slavs
The extant text includes six chapters. The first tells about the campaign of the ancient Slavic tribes from Semirechye, the second chapter describes the journey of the Slavs to Syria, where they are captured by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar.
The third chapter is devoted to the legends about the origin of the Slavic tribes, the fourth and fifth talk about the wars with the Greeks, Romans, Goths and Huns who came to conquer the territory of Russia. And finally, the sixth chapter tells about the time of troubles when the Rus were under the yoke of the Khazar Kaganate. The book ends with the arrival of the Varangians, who became princes in Russian cities.
Study and first publications
In 1953, Yuri Mirolyubov moved to the United States and introduced the rewritten texts to the publisher A. A. Kura (former Russian general Alexander Alexandrovich Kurenkov), who began to publish them in the magazine "Firebird". The first article was titled "Colossal Historical Sensation."
Historians and linguists have paid attention to Veles's book. In 1957, the work of S. Lesnoy (pseudonym of S. Ya. Paramonov, a Russian émigré who lived in Australia) "The History of the" Russ "in an Uncorrupted Form" was published, where several chapters are devoted to this manuscript. It was S. Lesnoy who named the find "Velesova book "(according to the first word" VLESKNIGO "on the tablet number 16) and claimed that these are genuine texts written by the Magi - servants of the god of wealth and wisdom Veles.
Of the documentary evidence, historians have only Mirolyubov's notes and a photograph of one of the tablets presented by him. Nevertheless, if the tablets are real, we can say that the ancient Russians had their own written language even before the arrival of Cyril and Methodius.
However, the official science doubts the authenticity of the Veles Book.
Examination of photography and text
In 1959, an employee of the Institute of the Russian Language of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR L. P. Zhukovskaya examined the photograph of the tablet. Its results were published in the journal "Questions of Linguistics". The conclusions read: the photograph was actually not taken from a tablet, but from a drawing on paper! With the help of special radiation, traces of folds were found in the photo - is it possible to bend a wooden board?
The question involuntarily arises: why did Mirolyubov need to give out a photo of a paper copy as a photo of a tablet? And did these tablets really exist?
The historical information provided in it, which is not confirmed by any other sources, can also be an argument against the authenticity of the "Veles Book". The description of the events is very vague, Roman and Byzantine emperors or generals are not named by name. The book is clearly lacking in accuracy and facts.
The manuscript is written in a special alphabet, which is a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet. But at the same time, it contains outlines of individual letters that are not characteristic of either the Cyrillic or the Greek alphabet. Supporters of the text's authenticity call this alphabet "Velesovitsa".
L. P. Zhukovskaya, and later O. V. Tvorogov, A. A. Alekseev and A. A. Zaliznyak carried out a linguistic analysis of the text of the manuscript - and independently of each other came to general conclusions. First of all, this is undoubtedly the Slavic vocabulary, but its phonetics, morphology and syntax are chaotic and do not correspond to the available data on the state of the Slavic languages in the 9th century.
Moreover, various linguistic features are so contradictory to each other that the language of the manuscript can hardly be any natural language at all. This is most likely the result of the activities of a falsifier who is not too versed in the structure of Old Slavic dialects and dialects. Some features of the phonetics and morphology of the text (for example, hardening of sibilants) clearly relate to later linguistic processes.
There are other oddities as well. The names of the Indo-Iranian gods are presented in their modern form (in the Slavic languages, Indra, for example, would look like Yadr, Surya - like Syl, etc.). The texts use historical and geographical terms that arose at a later time (this can be checked from the books of Greek or Oriental authors).
That is, the language expertise confirms the conclusions about falsification: the one who made the "Velesov book" purposefully set the task of creating the effect of obscure antiquity. He arbitrarily added or removed endings, discarded and replaced vowels, and also made phonetic substitutions on the pattern of Polish, Czech and Serbian words, and in a significant part of cases with errors.
Author
Naturally, the question arises: who could be the creator of this falsification?
Colonel Ali Isenbek himself? But he, as you know, was not at all interested in publishing the texts, moreover, he did not want them to be taken out of the house at all. And is it possible for a military officer who has no philological training to come up with a new language and write a work at a high level of folk epic?
L. P. Zhukovskaya connects the forgery with the name of the collector and falsifier of Slavic antiquities A. I. Sulakadzev, who lived in the early 19th century (1771-1829), a famous collector of manuscripts and historical documents, known for numerous fakes.
In the catalog of his collection of manuscripts, Sulakadzev mentions a certain "Composition on 45 beech boards of Yagip, Ghana, 9th century smerd." True, the "Velesov Book" consists of a smaller number of tablets, but the time in both cases is the same. It is known that after the death of the collector, the widow sold the collection of fake manuscripts at bargain prices.
The majority of scientists (OV Tvorogov, AA Alekseev and others) agree that the text of the Veles Book was forged by Yu. P. Mirolyubov in the 1950s - especially since he was the only one who supposedly saw the aforementioned tablets. And he just used the manuscript both for money and for the recognition of his own glory.
And if not a fake?
Supporters of the authenticity of the "Book of Veles" (B. I. Oleg, about whom the book says nothing).
These scholars believe that in their significance the tablets are not only comparable with the famous chronicle "The Tale of Bygone Years", but also surpass it. After all, "Veles's Book" sets out the events from the beginning of the 1st millennium BC. Thus, Russian history becomes richer by about 1500 years!
Any researcher of manuscripts knows that almost all of them have come down to us in later copies and reflect the linguistic layers of the times of rewriting. The same "Tale of Bygone Years" exists in the list of the XIV century - and also contains some linguistic changes in this time period. And the "Book of Veles" should not be evaluated only in the linguistic context of the 9th century.
The main thing is that it gives scientists the opportunity to trace the early history of the Russian people. And if the authenticity of the tablets is proven, this story will rise to a new, higher level.
Nikolay MIKHAILOV