Trilingual Edition of the Vles Knyha Manuscript

Vles Knyha is an ancient manuscript, inscribed on wooden boards, consisting of a set of patriotic discourses. This work is also a brief recorded tale of a clan of Slavens, which during various eras called itself Rushtis, Rosh, Rusiches, or Ruses. They migrated to the Karpathians in Europe from Seven Rivers in northern India. The contents of this manuscript imply that the boards may have been written at three different times, from the 4th to the 9th Century AD, and later were copied. Events described go back to mid-seventh Century BC and their themes incorporate beliefs and customs, mode of life, history, warfare, and legends. Vles Knyha is the only known indigenous written record of the Slavens' ancient past. This manuscript, containing over 22,000 words, is probably written in an early Slavenian (proto-Slavic?) language. To date almost all scholars who have studied and commented on the Vles Knyha manuscript have been either of Russian or Ukrainian ancestry. Lack of participation in the research of the texts by different scholars can be attributed, mainly, to the language barrier. The main purpose of this trilingual publication, therefore, is to provide non-Slavic scholars with a complete and easy access to the entire text of Vles Knyha in English. In addition to providing the entire 22,000-word manuscript in English, this edition contains significant timesaving features, aimed at easing research and comparative studies by ethnographers, linguists, and historians, and also for easy reading by interested non-professionals. The main unprecedented feature of this work is an extensive fully-indexed dictionary (in a separate volume), which defines and locates every word in the text, and by a question mark ("?") points out where further research may be in order.