There have been disputes about the authenticity of the Veles book since the publication of its first excerpts. The overwhelming majority of scientists are sure that in the 50s the world was presented with a gross fake for a historical monument. But there are also defenders of its authenticity.
Novgorod "Magi"
The book, or rather a collection of tablets with text scratched on wood, was allegedly created by the Novgorod "Magi" in the 9th century. Some of these plates split over time, the other part was lost before their discovery by Yu. P. Mirolyubov, and after the outbreak of the war the priceless artifact disappeared.
However, there is no photograph showing the boards. There are only two images of the lost relic, and both are drawings on paper. Scientists suggest that the forger did not know that birch bark was used for writing in Novgorod, and the boards of the declared dimensions (38 by 22 cm and 0.5 cm thick) are extremely laborious to make and store.
The Magi told about the times of the settlement of the Slavs from India, the appearance of different tribes, the faith of the ancient Russians and their relationship with other peoples. But the chronology of the "Veles Book" is extremely inconsistent. These are approximately two periods - IX-VIII centuries. BC e. and from the III century. n. e. A comparison of the same events mentioned on different tablets demonstrates the complete lack of a single story. For example, in one part it is said that one and a half thousand years before Dir, the ancestors of the Russians settled in the Carpathians, where they lived for 500 years. The other part speaks of Askold, a contemporary of Dir. It states that 1,300 years have passed from migration from the Carpathians to Askold.
Also, the "wise men", apparently, were churched. It is not possible to explain the abundance of biblical quotations to anything else. The famous phrases “this secret is great”, “be like children”, “both now and ever and forever and ever” could not be in the everyday vocabulary of Novgorod pagans.
The weakest point of the "Veles book" is its language. Rather, a mixture of languages. The linguistic "compote", analyzed in detail by O. V. Tvorogov and A. A. Zaliznyak (the world's largest specialist in Novgorod documents), demonstrates the artificiality of the "Veles Book". Zaliznyak wrote in one of his articles: "To admit that" Veles's book "was written in the 9th century is like believing that in Rome during Caesar's era, some people knew how to write in French."
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The text is based on a modified Cyrillic alphabet, and many of the letters are of later styles. It is written with the stylization of the Devanagri system used to write Sanskrit texts. And this is no coincidence: one of the main ideas of the "Veles Book" is the assertion that the Slavs came from India. However, Devanagri could not have been an ancient writing system, because it arose only at the beginning of the second millennium AD.
The author actively used the so-called false forms - words constructed with the wrong use of grammatical forms of different Slavic languages. So, the Polish "en" in a chaotic manner began to replace "y", "y", "i", "e" even in those words in which there is nothing like this in Polish: "renba" (fish) - in Polish ryba. And many of the familiar grammatical forms in the 9th century did not exist at all, and there are many of them in the text.
Grammar is a logical system. In the "Veles Book" segments similar to suffixes and endings are arbitrarily attached to the roots, they have no clear functions. Sometimes they form strange combinations of indicators from different times and persons. The most popular segments are "she", "te", "hom", "ste", "sha". That is, in the 9th century, such a text could not appear. It was created much later.
Yuri Mirolyubov
The man who found the tablets from a certain White Guard Colonel Isenbek, in all likelihood, was the author of the grandiose hoax. Mirolyubov tried to write a "true" history of the Slavic people. He was especially attracted by the "Word about Igor's regiment", from where many words that are not found in any other written monument were transferred to the "Veles book" - "Kayala", "the land of Troyan", "resentment arose", "Dazhbozhi vnutsi", etc. …
Perhaps, when constructing the plot, Mirolyubov relied on the hypotheses of the historian D. Ilovaisky, who identified the Roxolans, which the Greeks and Romans spoke of, with the Russians. In the "Veles Book" ancestors appear under the name of Borusks or Ruscolans. Ilovaisky also mentioned the Borusks when he spoke of Prussia, the name of which he traced to Porus and the Borusks.
It was important for Mirolyubov to prove that the ancestors of the Slavs professed Vedism, knew Sanskrit, and because of Christianization they lost the ancient epic, writing and knowledge about their history. Mirolyubov in his writings often lamented that there were no sources about ancient times, and very little is known about the mythology of the Slavs.
Its main informants were a certain "Prabka Varvara", "Zakharikha" and some other residents of the idyllic Ukrainian village of Yuryevka, allegedly so far from all communication routes that it preserved ancient beliefs and traditions. They were the ones who once told about "Indra", "Firebog", "Svarozhichi" and other gods. Mirolyubov understood all the precariousness of such constructions - he needed an old text to which he could safely refer to. In 1952, he already wrote about the ancient writing: “Once an old grandfather on a farm to the north of Yekaterinoslav assured us:“In the old days, people knew literacy! A different literacy than now, and they wrote it with hooks, the gods led the line, and under it they sculpted hooks and knew to read from it."
In the work "Russian pagan folklore: Essays on everyday life and customs", completed in 1953, Mirolyubov blurts out, stating that Isenbek had found some "boards" and that he allegedly did not have the opportunity to study them in detail. However, later he began to insist that he devoted 15 years to working with tablets.
But soon after the publication of the first fragments of the "Veles Book" Mirolyubov began to distance himself from the text, returning to references to old women - "informants". He suggests addressing all questions about the “ancient monument” to A. Kuru, who allegedly translated it into modern Russian and published articles about it for several years. A. Kur (General Kurenkov) published the magazine "The Firebird", where the "Velesov Book" appeared for the first time.
Most likely, Mirolyubov was frightened by accusations of falsification. No one was able to check the testimonies of Ukrainian old women who shared legends decades ago. And the fake "Velesov Book" as the main source of theories would completely devalue them.
Alexander Sulakadzev
There is a hypothesis that the Veles Book was based on an exhibit from the collection of the 19th century forger Sulakadzev. It was put forward by L. P. Zhuravskaya, who carried out the first paleographic study of this text.
Sulakadzev made fake manuscripts or artificially made them more ancient than real ones. He owns, for example, the text "Perun and Veles broadcasting in Kiev temples to the priests Moveslav, Drevoslav and others." Even Derzhavin believed in its authenticity: in 1812 he translated a passage and provided a facsimile of a part of the manuscript (cliché from a copy). The outlines of the letters in it resemble the letters in the photograph, allegedly of a tablet with a fragment of the Veles Book.
Sulakadzev composed a pseudo-antique language and an alphabet that resembled runes, invented the names of gods, mythological and historical subjects.
The catalog of Sulakadzev's library also contained texts recorded on a tree: “Patriarsi. All carved on beech planks in number 45 "," About Kitovras; fables and blasphemies. " There was a note to the last: "On beech boards, carved and tied with iron rings, 143 boards in number, 5th century in Slavic".
If Sulakadzev really made them, and not only intended, then there is a possibility that Mirolyubov had one of the fakes or was familiar with it. However, the main text of the "Veles Book" was written directly by Mirolyubov.
