Van

[Arpa]

Van, Avan and Arshakavan

 

Does anyone know the history of Arshakavan and the eventual inference thereof?

 

You know well that there will be sequels to this.

 

In the meantime let's see what we get.

[Armen]

As far as I know it was built by the order of king Arshak the Second to glorify his name. As no people were moving there for permanent residence, he declared that all theivs, prostitutes and people who wish to escape their masters were welcomed in the city. Shorly, Arshakavan was full of all kinds of funny people.

 

A count from Kamsarakan family who was angry because lot of his peasants (non-"azat"s) escaped to that place destoyed the city and killed almost everybody when Arshak was away from the country for some reason.

 

I would call that Kamsarakan guy the First Armenian Police Sherif

Edited July 29, 2004 by ArmenSarg

[bellthecat]

Hmmm .... in the myths of any other country a place like "Arshakavan" would have become like some sort of golden, arcadian paradise. And even in the Armenian story didn't everyone there live very happily and peacefully with each other?

[Armen]

Actually the historian (I think it was Pavstos Byuzand/not sure) who described the event seems to be critical of count Kamsarakan

[Armen]

Yes, guys the Arshakavan story is in Byuzand's "History of Armenians". I just found that Eddy Arnavoudian has a article on Buzand's work where he mentions Arshakavan.

[bellthecat]

Let's have a new Arshakavan.

[Armen]

Bell, I think you need to visit Bangkok

[Arpa]

Armen, I am not surprised at your respone since that version is the most common, so much so that "Arshakavan" has become synonymous with Sodom and Gomorra in popular Armenian culture.

 

In another thread , Russian Oligarchs, Anileve wrote the following. (highlights mine)

That's why they regularly organize rallies calling back the communism regime. It's ironic that Russians were always in need of some strong central leadership, monarchy or dictatorship as long as they were stern, however in the same time anarchy has been firmly planted in the Russian soil from the beginning. I think that communist party leaders have realized that they are being outnumbered by capitalism. Putin, I think besides his KGB background is a typical businessman. How is the corruption rate in Russia?

 

Where and from whom did the Russians learn such "anarchy"?

Don't tell me.

 

When Arshak II inherited the throne there was such turmoil and lawlessness . THe powerful church on the one side and the "feudal lords" (we call them "nakharars") on the other, each having demarcated their separate and independent "kingdoms" were not only sucking the very blood of the peasantry, remember that the word "pagan" is the base for "peasant". And yes, many of the peasantry were still pagans and subject to severe persecution from all sides, be the hierarchy or the feudal lords. In the mean time the land of Armenia was being ravaged from all directions, Persians and Romans, who, as the cliche goes wanted the land with or without the natives, much rather without.

Arshak tried every trick he knew to unite the country and put an end to the "anarchy" with little success. He was not only rebuffed by the nakharars , his life became jeopardized whereby he had to flee and take refuge at Aragatsotn. There was about 10 years of tranquility in Armenia when Persia and Rome were fighting each other, during which time Arshak , with the cooperation of Catholicos Nerses I have it built many schools, government sponsored rest homes, orphanages and churches. This may have irritated the nakharars even more and caused them to increase their persecution and disobedience even more. Having given up on the feudal lords' cooperation and unity Arshak decide to be build a whole new city (van/avan) and named it Arshakavan.

 

Here is the popular version as cited by Armen above. From the book History of Armenia by Michael Chamich; "ON this being publicly known, the city was soon stocked with debtors, murderers, robbers and every description of bad and dishonest characters. In a short time they became extremely numerous, yet no notice was taken of their actions however flagitous they were".

 

Above I highlighted the word "debtors".

 

Here is the other version.

 

Arshakavan; Town in Mets Hayk, in Gogovit in the region of Ararat. Built by Arshak II towards late 350AD when conditions in Armenia were extremely critical. He felt that the only way to liberate the country from external danger was in internal unity (vs anarchy?). When his attempts were with no positive result he too it upon himself to start a whole new system of government, he built the city known by his name and invited all the downtrodden and persecuted( does it remind you of the Statue of Liberty?). With royal edicts he invited all the "servants " (of the feudal lords), all those persecuted for a variety of reasons, all "debtors", i..e victims of usurers, and the landless peasant. The city increased in size quickly , and of course became threat to the sovereignty of the lords and the hierarchy. An anathema of huge proportions!? The nakharars were very unhappy and when their attempts to destroy the city became to difficult for them they applied for the help of the Persians (Shapuh) who, naturally, happily obliged and razed the city to ruins massacring everyone except the nursing babies which they took along as spoils of war.

 

Arshak II totally devastated fled and took refuge at the fortress of Ani, where he was eventually besieged by the Nakaharars aided by the Persian forces once again captured. Fleeing yet once more he took refuge in the Caucasus where he was protected and kept by the Georgians.

 

Anarchy must be in our genes. Even today we cannot stand the fact of having one central and supreme leader for the whole nation. Not even that leader may have been ordained by God Himself, we must have at least two Catholicoi and scores of "nakharars".

 

Note: Of course the main topic of this is Van and Avan which we will come back to in the meantime we can talk all we want about Arshakavan.

[Arpa]

Let's have a new Arshakavan.

How about Stepanavan?

There already is one.

[Arpa]

And now we come to van and avan .

We saw from the above that -avan means town as in Arshakavan, Stepanavan etc.just like Johnstown or Jamestown. In some languages it is burg/berg/burgh etc. and even abbreviated to ton as in Kingston, Kensington...

Yes, avan does mean town in Armenian, to be exact, it actually means big village. At times it is even used to mean village. It is supposed to be common with Pahlavi "avahana" or the Sanskrir "avasana" based on the root word of "vas", to live, to inhabit, therefor- habitation.

As to van, this is what we get. Again a habitation but with a twist, it is commonly used as a temporary place as in "ijevan/otevan" hotel/inn . We also see it used in the plural form as "vanq" which is usually translated as a convent. The origin seems to be based on "vas" as in the Iranian "vahana" or "vasana". One fine distinction. Van is correctly spelled ve-ayb-nu where as avan is spelled ayb-hyun-ayb-nu even if in modern post-Soviet orthography this distinction is absent.

Is "avan" as in Arshaka-avan a conjugative form of "van", i.e. instead of Arshak-van we write and pronounce Arshak-a-van?

 

This will take us to Van.

It is a well accepted theory that the name of the city and the lake Van comes from the Urartuan Biainili. It is a well known fact that V and B are interchangeable, examples being Bahram/Vahram , Basil/Vasil etc. Hence we see how the B in Biainili can turn into a V but what about the rest of the name?

Let's reverse the story and see if itis not possible that Van was actually named by Armeninas and some people who either could not pronnounce the V or had no characters for it interpreted it as Bian(inil)?

In fact the original name is supposed to be Tushpa as named by the Urartuan King Sartur,or Tosp in Armenian.

=========

You can ignore the following. :)

So, if avan means town then would avanak mean small town like O little Town of Bethlehem?

Amot!!

[Armen]

Armen, I am not surprised at your respone since that version is the most common, so much so that "Arshakavan" has become synonymous with Sodom and Gomorra in popular Armenian culture...

Arpa jan, I didn't want to surprise you I wrote what I knew.

 

Sorry, but I couldn't get what were you saying in the rest of your post.

[Stormig]

Arpa, I was thinking... Are there other examples of cities in Europe that end with -gart... Such as Stuttgart? It struck me how it resembled Mardagert, Eleshgert, etc.

[Nakharar]

I can enlighten you on that. It's simply another ending of the word garten in German. The literal translation for Stuttgart is Studgarden.

[Stormig]

I'm sure there must be a few more examples of -gart/-gard, unless it all ends up in the same place.

[Nakharar]

I can think of Swedish and Danish towns with that ending. Holmgard etc. But then gard means ford or crossing in those languages.

[gamavor]

all theivs, prostitutes and people who wish to escape their masters were welcomed in the city.

 

Sounds like kind of medieval USA!

[Armen]

Sounds like kind of medieval USA!

Specifically somewhere in California

[Arpa]

How about Stepanavan?

There already is one.

Hey Steve,

Remember we were gonna create an avan in your name?

 

Here it is. Click on Stepanavan and...

Enjoy!

http://www.armenianow.com/2004/july30/home/

 

In the meantime, this thread, as always is taking a skewed direction. It was meant to discuss "anarchy" (to mean "without and against an arch/arqa/king"), and biased and corrupted histriography.... anyway. I will try and bring it back to its intended purpose.

[Arpa]

Arpa jan, I didn't want to surprise you I wrote what I knew.

 

Sorry, but I couldn't get what were you saying in the rest of your post.

I had forgotten about this.

Armen I owe and explanation and an apology.

When I said "I was not surprised" I did not mean to be glib or disrespectful. What I meant was that you had furnished exactly what I was expecting. That version of the story. In fact I had given both versions where Arshakavan was described as a safe haven for the oppressed and persecuted , and the other, more popular version, that it was a magnet for all the riffraff, criminals, thieves and of course prostitutes. The reason I brought up Sodom and Gomorrah is that that story has more than one version too. The most polular one, in fact the only known one is as depicted in the Bible. The other almost unknown side is that Sodom and Gomorrah were rival and rebellious cities, (and probably they did not subscribe to Jehovah) to the central government so to speak and at times they were threats to its supremacy. What happened there was a war, yet what is known is that those people were defying God and insulting Him so it was His command that they be destroyed. In fact if you read carefully every act of war in that book is based on God's command to go and punish certain people. As to the cited reasons for the action, i.e. insult to God iniquity, sin . All these would not be sufficient to gain a consensus and enough support for war, therefore a surefire weapon had to be used...sex, perverted sex in particular. Mankind has known this for quite sometime. Nothing stirs the passions of the masses as allegations of sex, specially perverted. In the latter case it was homosexuality hence the word "sodomy".

Armenians are not particularly ignorant to the tactic either. If you read about the Palulicians you will note that no matter how the central powers, including the church tried to discredit them it did not work until they came up with the tried and tested technic. This is known as demonization. Once a thing or a person is demonized, dehumanized it is very easy to destroy it/him. This was done by dehumanizing the Paulicians by alleging the most disgusting (sexual) practices, such as bestiality, "persian style sex", and the most disgusting of disgusting- incest when they alluded that mothers and sons, fathers and daughters were doing unmentionable things.

This is not a lost art by any means, it is still practiced on small scale as well as in wholesale. The Turks did it, they had to first dehumanize the Armenian and demonize them, they used religion in the former and alliances with the "enemy" in the latter. Once this was done the rest was easy. I will not get into modern politics except to throw a keyword-WMD, weapons of mass destruction. You know the rest.

 

Coming back to Arshakavan, as you can see in the two versions of the story, it was a classic case demonization, once you reduce one to a demon and an undesirable person, an enemy of the state and, Aramazt mi arastseh an enemy of the church ....

We also used such words as "anarchy" which was meant to attract comments on itself. What was "anarchic" in the story of Arshakavan is that Arshak, having seen that the country was torn apart by the nakharars, with each of them virtual (petit)kingdoms, to force them to unite under one king, arqa, monarch(mind this word, it means "one king") he built the city to have all the slaves, the serfs, the persecuted and dispossessed to find safe haven and protection thereby depriving the nakharars of their most valued possessions, the slaves. Of course, as we can see it backfired, mainly because the nakharars used that old art od demonization and won the church to their side.

Is anarchy a thing of the past? And this is what I intended to direct the thread. No it is not a thing of the past. In the Armenian case it has never been a thing of the past and it is being practiced even today. Do we have nakharars today? I'm sure some of you are much better versed in this matter and you can cite them by name. Armenians and Armenia have always been anarchic, i.e. without an arqa/king, a monarch, a one central and sovereign king.

 

This got to be too long, I'll leave it here with one final thought;

I have heard it said that the secret to (qualified) success and our endurance for this long is partially due to the fact that we did not have one central state but many statelets whereby the enemy could not subdue us by conquering just one (capital) city and hence the countryside which were maintained and defended by all those petit kings, nakharars eluded the enemy.

[Armen]

Oh, I misunderstood you, Arpa. No, need for appologies...

Thanks for the informative explanation. As far as our historians are concerned I believe modern Armenian scientists, like Armen Aivazian, and writers, like Eddy Arnavoudian, as well as some foreign historians will gradually bring us to normal scientific assesment of our history. We just need more time. For example it is clear to me now that Pavstos Byuzand is one of the most honest ones.

However, I disagree with you as far as the unity of Armenians is concerned. I am a believer and I try to cognize our history and mission from other souces, e.g. our national epos. It gives a codified account (as any other epos of any nation) of our development and mission. You could clearly see in the epos the "anarchy" period of Armenian psyche: David brings wild animals to the city. That's where we are now.