Ethnology.—Of the three main groups into which the Caucasian races are now usually divided, the Georgian is in every respect the most important and interesting. It has accordingly largely occupied the attention of Orientalists almost incessantly from the days of Klaproth. Yet such are the difficulties connected with the origin and mutual relations of the Caucasian peoples that its affinities are still far from being clearly established. Anton von Schiefner and P. V. Uslar, however, arrived at some negative conclusions valuable as starting-points or further research. In their papers, published in the Memoirs of the St Petersburg Imperial Academy of Sciences and elsewhere (1859 et seq.), they finally disposed of the views of Bopp and Brosset (1836), who attempted on linguistic grounds to connect the Georgians with the Indo-European family. They also clearly show that Max Müller’s Turanian theory is untenable, and they go a long way towards proving that the Georgian, with all the other Caucasian languages except the Ossetian forms a distinct linguistic family absolutely independent of all others. This had already been suspected by Klaproth, and the same conclusion was arrived at by Fr. Müller and Zagarelli.
Uslar’s “Caucasian Family” comprises the following three great divisions:
| 1. Western Group. | Typical races: | Circassians and Abkhasians. |
| 2. Eastern Group. | Typical races: | Chechens and Lesghians. |
| 3. Southern Group. | Typical race: | Georgians. |
Here the term “family” must be taken in a far more elastic sense than when applied, for instance, to the Indo-European, Semitic or Eastern Polynesian divisions of mankind. Indeed the three groups present at least as wide divergences as are found to exist between the Semitic and Hamitic linguistic families. Thus, while the Abkhasian of group 1 still at the agglutinating, the Lesghian of group 2 has fairly reached the inflecting stage, and the Georgian seems still to waver between the two. In consequence of these different stages of development, Uslar hesitated finally to fix the position of Georgian in the family, regarding it as possibly a connecting link between groups 1 and 2, but possibly also radically distinct from both.
Including all its numerous ramifications, the Georgian or southern group occupies the greater part of Transcaucasia, reaching from about the neighbourhood of Batum on the Black Sea eastwards to the Caspian, and merging southwards with the Armenians of Aryan stock. It comprises altogether nine subdivisions, as in the subjoined table:
| 1. The Georgians Proper, who are the Iberians of the ancients and the Grusians of the Russians, but who call themselves Karthlians, and who in medieval times were masters of the Rion and Upper Kura as far as its confluence with the Alazan. | ||
| 2. The Imeretians, west of the Suram mountains as far as the river Tskheniz-Tskhali. | ||
| 3. The Gurians, between the Rion and Lazistan. | ||
| 4. The Lazis of Lazistan on the Black Sea. | ||
| 5. The Svanetians, Shvans or Swanians, on the Upper Ingur and Tskheniz-Tskhali rivers. | ||
| 6. The Mingrelians, between the rivers Tskheniz-Tskhali, Rion, Ingur and the Black Sea. | ||
| 7. The Tushes or Mosoks | About the headstreams of the Alazan and Yora rivers. | |
| 8. The Pshavs or Ph’chavy | ||
| 9. The Khevsurs | ||
The representative branch of the race has always been the Karthlians. It is now pretty well established that the Georgians are the descendants of the aborigines of the Pambak highlands, and that they found their way to their present homes from the south-east some four or five thousand years ago, possibly under pressure from the great waves of Aryan migration flowing from the Iranian tableland westwards to Asia Minor and Europe. The Georgians proper are limited on the east by the Alazan, on the north by the Caucasus, on the west by the Meskes hills separating them from the Imeretians, and on the south by the Kura river and Kara-dagh and Pambak mountains. Southwards, however, no hard and fast ethnical line can be drawn, for even immediately south of Tiflis, Georgians, Armenians and Tatars are found intermingled confusedly together.
The Georgian race, which represents the oldest elements of civilization in the Caucasus, is distinguished by some excellent mental qualities, and is especially noted for personal courage and a passionate love of music. The people, however, are described as fierce and cruel, and addicted to intemperance, though Max von Thielmann (Journey in the Caucasus, &c., 1875) speaks of them as “rather hard drinkers than drunkards”. Physically they are a fine athletic race of pure Caucasian type; hence during the Moslem ascendancy Georgia supplied, next to Circassia, the largest number of female slaves for the Turkish harems and of recruits for the Osmanli armies, more especially for the select corps of the famous Mamelukes.
The social organization rested on a highly aristocratic basis, and the lowest classes were separated by several grades of vassalage from the highest. But since their incorporation with the Russian empire, these relations have become greatly modified, and a more sharply defined middle class of merchants, traders and artisans has been developed. The power of life and death, formerly claimed and freely exercised by the nobles over their serfs, has also been expressly abolished. The Georgians are altogether at present in a fairly well-to-do condition, and under Russian administration they have become industrious, and have made considerable moral and material progress.
Missionaries sent by Constantine the Great introduced Christianity about the beginning of the 4th century. Since that time the people have, notwithstanding severe pressure from surrounding Mahommedan communities, remained faithful to the principles of Christianity, and are still amongst the most devoted adherents of the Orthodox Greek Church. Indeed it was their attachment to the national religion that caused them to call in the aid of the Christian Muscovites against the proselytizing attempts of the Shiite Persians,—a step which ultimately brought about their political extinction.
As already stated, the Karthli language is not only fundamentally distinct from the Indo-European linguistic family, but cannot be shown to possess any clearly ascertained affinities with either of the two northern Caucasian groups. It resembles them chiefly in its phonetic system, so that according to Rosen (Sprache der Lazen) all the languages of central and western Caucasus might be adequately rendered by the Georgian alphabet. Though certainly not so harsh as the Avar, Lesghian and other Daghestan languages, it is very far from being euphonious, and the frequent recurrence of such sounds as ts, ds, thz, kh, khh, gh (Arab. غ), q (Arab. ق), for all of which there are distinct characters, renders its articulation rather more energetic and rugged than is agreeable to ears accustomed to the softer tones of the Iranian and western Indo-European tongues. It presents great facilities for composition, the laws of which are very regular. Its peculiar morphology, standing midway between agglutination and true inflexion, is well illustrated by its simple declension common to noun, adjective and pronoun, and its more intricate verbal conjugation, with its personal endings, seven tenses and incorporation of pronominal subject and object, all showing decided progress towards the inflecting structure of the Indo-European and Semitic tongues.
Georgian is written in a native alphabet obviously based on the Armenian, and like it attributed to St Mesropius (Mesrop), who flourished in the 5th century. Of this alphabet there are two forms, differing so greatly in outline and even in the number of the letters that they might almost be regarded as two distinct alphabetic systems. The first and oldest, used exclusively in the Bible and liturgical works, is the square or monumental Khutsuri, i.e. “sacerdotal”, consisting of 38 letters, and approaching the Armenian in appearance. The second is the Mkhedrūli khēli, i.e. “soldiers hand”, used in ordinary writing, and consisting of 40 letters, neatly shaped and full of curves, hence at first sight not unlike the modern Burmese form of the Pali.
Of the Karthli language there are several varieties; and, besides those comprised in the above table, mention should be made of the Kakhetian current in the historic province of Kakhetia. A distinction is sometimes drawn between the Karthlians proper and the Kakhetians, but it rests on a purely political basis, having originated with the partition in 1424 of the ancient Iberian
