KARAJICH

karajich, vuk stefanovich (1787-1864), the father of modern servian literature, was born on the 6th of november 1787 in the servian village of trshich, on the border between bosnia and servia. having learnt to read and write in the old monastery tronosha (near his native village), he was engaged as writer and reader of letters to the commander of the insurgents of his district at the beginning of the first servian rising against the turks in 1804. mostly in the position of a scribe to different voyvodes, sometimes as school-teacher, he served his country during the first revolution (1804-1813), at the collapse of which he left servia, but instead of following karageorge and other voyvodes to russia he went to vienna. there he was introduced to the great slavonic scholar yerney kopitar, who, having heard him recite some servian national ballads, encouraged him to collect the poems and popular songs, write a grammar of the servian language, and, if possible, a dictionary. this programme of literary work was adhered to by karajich, who all his life acknowledged gratefully what he owed to his learned teacher. in the second half of the 18th and in the beginning of the 19th century all servian literary efforts were written in a language which was not the servian vernacular, but an artificial language, of which the foundation was the old slavonic in use in the churches, but somewhat russianized, and mixed with servian words forced into russian forms. that language, called by its writers "the slavonic-servian," was neither slavonic nor servian. it was written in old cyrillic letters, many of which had no meaning in the servian language, while there were several sounds in that language which had no corresponding signs or letters in the old slavonic alphabet. the servian philosopher dositey obradovich (who at the end of the 18th century spent some time in london teaching greek) was the first servian author to proclaim the principle that the books for the servian people ought to be written in the language of the people. but the great majority of his contemporaries were of opinion that the language of servian literature ought to be evolved out of the dead old slavonic of the church books. the church naturally decidedly supported this view. karajich was the great reformer who changed all this. encouraged by kopitar, he published in 1814 (2nd ed., 1815) in vienna his first book, _mala prostonarodna slaveno-serbska pyesmaritsa_ ("a small collection of slavonic-servian songs of the common people"), containing a hundred lyric songs, sung by the peasant women of servia, and six poems about heroes, or as the servians call them _yunachke pesme_, which are generally recited by the blind bards or by peasants. from that time karajich's literary activity moved on two parallel lines: to give scientific justification and foundation to the adoption of the vernacular servian as the literary language; and, by collecting and publishing national songs, folk-lore, proverbs, &c., to show the richness of the servian people's poetical and intellectual gifts, and the wealth and beauty of the servian language. by his reform of the servian alphabet and orthography, his servian grammar and his servian dictionary, he established the fact that the servian language contains thirty distinct sounds, for six of which the old slavonic alphabet had no special letters. he introduced new letters for those special sounds, at the same time throwing out of the old slavonic alphabet eighteen letters for which the servian language had no use. this reform was strenuously opposed by the church and many conservative authors, who went so far as to induce the servian government to prohibit the printing of books in new letters, a prohibition removed in 1859. karajich's alphabet facilitated his reform of orthography, his principle being: _write as you speak, and read as it is written_! hardly any other language in the civilized world has such a simple, logical, scientific spelling system and orthography as the servian has in karajich's system. his first grammatical essay was published in vienna in 1814, _pismenitsa serbskoga yezika po govoru prostoga naroda_ ("the grammar of the servian language as spoken by the common people"). an improved edition appeared in vienna in 1818, together with his great work _srpski ryechnik_ (lexicon serbico-germanico-latinum). this dictionary--containing 26,270 words--was full of important contributions to folk-lore, as karajich never missed an opportunity to add to the meaning of the word the description of the national customs or popular beliefs connected with it. a new edition of his dictionary, containing 46,270 words, was published at vienna in 1852. meanwhile he gave himself earnestly to the work of collecting the "creations of the mind of the servian common people." he travelled through servian countries (servia, bosnia, herzegovina, montenegro, dalmatia, syrmia, croatia), and the result was shown in a largely augmented edition of his _srpske narodne pyesme_, of which the first three volumes appeared at leipzig in 1823 and 1824, the fourth volume appearing at vienna in 1833. _popular stories and enigmas_ was published in 1821, and _servian national proverbs_ in 1836. from 1826 to 1834 he was the editor of an annual, called _danitsa_ (the morning star), which he filled with important contributions concerning the ethnography and modern history of the servian people. in 1828 he published a historical monograph, _milosh obrenovich, prince of servia_; in 1837, in german, _montenegro and montenegrins_; in 1867, _the servian governing council of state_. he supplied leopold ranke with the materials for his _history of the servian revolution_. he also translated the new testament into servian, for the british and foreign bible society (vienna, 1847). karajich died in vienna on the 6th of february 1864; and his remains were transferred to belgrade in 1897 with great solemnity and at the expense of the government of servia. (c. mi.) kara-kalpaks ("black caps"), a mongolo-tatar people, originally dominant along the east coast of the aral sea, where they still number some thousands. they thus form geographically the transition between the northern kirghiz and the southern turkomans. once a powerful nation, they are scattered for the most part in astrakhan, perm, orenburg, in the caucasian province of kuban, and in tobolsk, siberia, numbering in all about 50,000. these emigrants have crossed much with the alien populations among whom they have settled; but the pure type on the aral sea are a tall powerful people, with broad flat faces, large eyes, short noses and heavy chins. their women are the most beautiful in turkestan. the name of "black caps" is given them in allusion to their high sheepskin hats. they are a peaceful agricultural folk, who have suffered much from their fierce nomad neighbours. karakorum (turkish, "black stone debris"), the name of two cities in mongolia. one of these, according to g. potanin, was the capital of the uighur kingdom in the 8th century, and the other was in the 13th century a capital of the steppe monarchy of mongolia. the same name seems also to have been applied to the khangai range at the headwaters of the orkhon. (1) the uighur karakorum, also named mubalik ("bad town"), was situated on the left bank of the orkhon, in the talal-khain-dala steppe, to the south-east of ughei-nor. it was deserted after the fall of the uighur kingdom, and in the 10th century abaki, the founder of the khitan kingdom, planted on its ruins a stone bearing a description of his victories. (2) the mongolian karakorum was founded at the birth of the mongolian monarchy established by jenghiz khan. a palace for the khan was built in it by chinese architects in 1234, and its walls were erected in 1235. plano carpini visited it in 1246, rubruquis in 1253, and marco polo in 1275. later, the fourth mongolian king, kublai, left karakorum, in order to reside at kai-pin-fu, near peking. when the khan arik-bog declared himself and karakorum independent of kublai-khan, the latter besieged karakorum, took it by famine, and probably laid it waste so thoroughly that the town was afterwards forgotten. the exact sites of the two mongolian capitals were only established in 1889-1891. sir h. yule (_the book of marco polo_, 1871) was the first to distinguish two cities of this name. the russian traveller paderin in 1871 visited the uighur capital (see turks), named now by the mongols kara balghasun ("black city") or khara-kherem ("black wall"), of which only the wall and a tower are in existence, while the streets and ruins outside the wall are seen at a distance of 1(3/4) m. paderin's belief that this was the old mongol capital has been shown to be incorrect. as to the mongolian karakorum, it is identified by several authorities with a site on which towards the close of the 16th century the buddhist monastery of erdeni tsu was built. this monastery lies about 25 m. south by east of the uighur capital. north and north-east of the monastery are ruins of ancient buildings. professor d. pozdneev, who visited erdeni tsu for a second time in 1892, stated that the earthen wall surrounding the monastery might well be part of the wall of the old city. the proper position of the two karakorums was determined by the expedition of n. yadrintsev in 1889, and the two expeditions of the helsingfors ugro-finnish society (1890) and the russian academy of science, under dr w. radlov (1891), which were sent out to study yadrintsev's discovery. see _works (trudy) of the orkhon expedition_ (st petersburg, 1892); yule's _marco polo_, edition revised by henri cordier (of paris), vol. i. ch. xlvi. (london, 1903). cordier confines the use of karakorum to the mongol capital; pozdneev, _mongolia and the mongols_, vol. i. (st petersburg, 1896); c. w. campbell, "journeys in mongolia," _geog. journ._ vol. xx. (1903), with map. campbell's report was printed as a parliamentary paper (_china no. 1, 1904_).