Kardagi

Abstract

According to the accounts provided in the chronicles of the conversion of Kartli, in the 370s the noblemen had a church built in Mtskheta and donated soplebi and kardagebi to them.

Sopeli (in plural soplebi) means a village in modern Georgian, but in old Georgian it denoted the world, universe, earth, land, country, heaven, estate… The word kardagi (in plural kardagebi) is used only in this chronicle and is a loanword from Middle Persian. The Middle Persian word kartak (in plural kartakan) itself is derived from Old Persian root krt (= cutting) and its basic meaning is a ‘piece’, ‘part’.

The aim of the article is to find out which sense the author of the Georgian chronicle intended in these words.

Given the context it must be concluded: 1. ‘sopeli’ is not ‘kardagi’, and ‘kardagi’ is not ‘sopeli’; 2. Like kardagi, here sopeli cannot denote a specific material property, as it is impossible to believe that noblemen donated, although different, but only two kinds of assets to the church: the property of the church which was usually enriched through donations embraced all the spheres of economy and everyday life.

The term ‘kartak’ features in Middle Persian and Parthian versions of the trilingual inscription (ŠKZ) of the second Sassanian Shahansha of Iran Shahpuhr carved on the wall of the tower of Kaabah of Zoroaster in 262 and in inscriptions of Iranian Magupat Kartir of the same period, which tell about founding of Zoroastrian temples and establishing the liturgy of commemoration of souls.

It is the context related to religious activities that the term kartak is mainly used in the matakdan i hazar datastan – Sassanian collection of verdicts, which was compiled in the sixth century. The collection reveals that in Sassanid Iran there operated a special state body – chancellery, which discussed problems related to religious funds for commemoration of souls and was referred to as divan-i-kartak (kartakan).

The founder of the fund for commemoration of souls usually had a fire temple or a fire altar built in an existing temple at their own expense, provided its maintenance and allocated property certain part of whose income was designated to ensure regular performance of soul commemoration liturgies and other ceremonial activities at this altar on behalf of the founders and the persons named by them. This property remained in the ownership of the founder and his successors, and only the part of income declared in the written form beforehand was used for the temple.

It is improbable that this Iranian practice would not have spread across Georgia, where, as it is documented, many Zoroastrian temples operated, especially in the Sassanid epoch. It is also understandable that the name of such a fund was also introduced from Iran.

Apparently, this traditional Iranian practice of temple donation was borrowed by Christian church in the fourth century, which received its legal right only in 313 through Edict of Milan, and it was formally recognized in Georgia in the second quarter of the fourth century.

In conclusion, I believe that sopeli (soplebi) was the property, an estate totally donated to the church built by noblemen unlike kardagi, which was the kind of donation only part of the income of which was used for the liturgy of commemoration of souls of donors and their family members, while the property itself remained in hereditary possession of the donor.

The article suggests that although the term ‘kardagi’ disappeared from Georgian language, ‘sopeli’ changed its meaning; however, the old practice of church donation survived in Georgia until the Late Middle Ages with the names ‘samtsirvelo’ and ‘satsinamdzghrvro’.