დაჰმანი. DAHMAN

Abstract

In “Life of David, King of the Kings”, written in the first half of the 12th century, Elghazi, the leader of the great army of Seljuk invaders, is described by the chronicler in Kartlis Tskhovreba as a formidable enemy – “a man dahman-i(i-marker of nominative) and mraval-ghone (“clever, resourceful”). The word dahmani, used as an epithet by the historian, does not occur frequently in Old Georgian and the example cited above is practically the only known one. S. Qaukhchishvili in his edition of Kartlis Tskhovreba (in 1955) explained the meaning of this word as “cunning, sly”. But M. Brosset, the first editor of Kartlis Tskhovreba, had already remarked in a footnote in his French translation of the text (in 1849) that the word dahman could be “l’ancien Persan tahman,héros”. Brosset’s conjecture, though a rather vague one, should be considered plausible. Lexical elements of Iranian origin are numerous in Old Georgian; however, tah(a)m –“brave,valiant”, is attested in several languages of the Iranian group and the exact form to which the Georgian dahman (with the change of t to d) may be affiliated is not quite clear. It should also be added that tahamtan, the epithet of Rustam in “Shah-Nameh” is found in “Rostomiani” (the Georgian version of the famous Persian epic) in various forms: taamtan, tamtan,tamtam. In Matiane Kartlisa (another part of Kartlis Tskhovreba) the chronicler informs the reader that Klde-Kari, the rocky fortress of the great feudal lord, Liparit, was inaccessible, because it was defended by his chancelor, Anamor. One group of manuscripts – MQm – adds to this name a reading which seems to make no sense: kaci da iamani. In other manuscripts this reading is omitted, neither has it been noticed in publications. One may conjecture that the correct form used by the author was kaci dahmani,a laudatory term praising the brave defender. The text in the manuscripts of the Georgian main historical narrative source is unfortunately very corrupted by ignorant scribes in the process of repeated copying and dahmani, “brave, courageous” – a word misuderstood by them, should find its rightful place in the text of Matiane Kartlisa.