Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Pshavi

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a view of pshavi from google earth
(the valley running north-south on the left-hand side is that of the pshavis aragvi river;
the 12 villages of pshavi are in the perpendicular valley, running east-west)
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the turn to pshavi off the main road north from tbilisi towards barisakho and khevsureti
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I recently (June 2009) went to Pshavi for the first time, in the company of Thomas Wier, an aspiring linguist here in Georgia to study kartvelian dialects (Tush, Pshav, Khevsur, Mokhevian, etc.). We were meant to go with someone from the Arnold Chikobava Institute of Linguistics in Tbilisi, but this being Georgia, it never happened, and Thomas and I decided to head up to Pshavi on our own.
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Although we got no further than the village of Shupakho, we did get to meet Lazare Elizbarashvili, the
khevisberi (or "Valley Elder") of the Sacred Shine of Iaqsar.
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lazare elizbarashvili, the valley elder of shuapkho and guardian of the shrine of iaqsar
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the sacred shrine of iaqsar (hidden in the trees up on the right)
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Iaqsar is the khati of the village of Shuapkho, a pagan divinity (winged, in some narratives) in the Pshav-Khevsur pantheon, the sworn brother of Kopala, like him a slayer of devi, devils.
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To download the locations of the 12 villages of Pshavi for Google Earth, please click here, and download the ".kmz" file.
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Here is a recording of Lazare Elizbarashvili's father Ioseb, his predecessor as khevisberi of the Sacred Shrine of Iaqsar, officiating during the feast (dgheoba) of Iaqsar in the 1980s.
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(This prayer was recorded from Mirian Khutsishvili's ethnographic film Pshavi.)
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