TRANSLATION AND PUBLISHING ACTIVITIES OF ORTHODOX EDUCATORS IN THE MARI LANGUAGE (SECOND HALF OF 19th – BEGINNING OF 20th CENTURY)

Radik R. ISKHAKOV

УДК 94(47).281.93

ББК 63.3 (2)5

Key words

Orthodox translations, the Mari language, Kazan, printing, educational activities, written tradition, N.I. Ilminsky

Abstract

In the second half of the 19^th century, as a result of evolvement and development of the religious and educational movement and changes in the state policy in the field of school education and missionary activities, the Mari people formed their own written tradition based on the Cyrillic alphabet, translated editions of textbooks and religious and moral literature begin to appear. Translation and publishing activities of Orthodox educators became an important stage in the formation of the Mari national book. The first translators who worked on the basis of new approaches developed by a Kazan scholar-orientalist and an Orthodox missionary N.I. Ilminsky, were teachers of the Mari confessional schools, who came from the Mountainous side of the Mari territory.

In the post-reform period, with the development of a primary schools network with a bilingual teaching system, appearance of educational institutions with a pedagogical profile and formation of a layer of Mari intelligentsia, the work on the compiling translations becomes systematic, brings real results – dozens of publications of educational and liturgical literature in the Mari language appear, the written language becomes normalized. Translation activities became a scientific and literary “school” for the first generation of the Mari creative intelligentsia. While working on translations, the Mari literary language was “refined”, its lexical base was accumulated, and general syntactic rules were developed. This made it possible for the Mari literature to flourish during the Soviet period.

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Information about the author

Radik R. Iskhakov – Doctor of Historical Sciences, Head of the Center for the Study of History and Culture Tatar-Kryashens and Nagaibaks, Sh. Marjani Institute of History of Tatarstan Academy of Sciences, Russian, Kazan (ishakovist@gmail.com).