The president of the country step by step makes understand that the government should do its best to develop the Armenian sciences. The building adjacent to the Matenadaran, which is being built according to architect Artur Meschyan’s project, will be furnished with the most modern scientific facilities and will serve for this purpose of developing the Armenian sciences. It doesn’t matter how modern the facilities are, the science will not develop properly unless the government realizes the need and supports strongly. I took this interview from a scientist, who even though does not have a mobile phone, can be found easily at any time. Mr. Paruyr Muradyan, doctor and professor of historical sciences, spends most part of the day at the library of the Matenadaran.
– Mr. Muradyan, it is more than 50 years that the Matenadaran serves as a scientific center. There are over 15.000 manuscripts in the Matenadaran. How many of these manuscripts have been described so far?
– Only a small part of this capacity has been described and analyzed in scientific works. About 1.500 manuscripts have been examined. The Matenadaran insitution, which is wrongly said that has a history of 50 years, is the first scientific research center established since the beginning of the Soviet era which was established based on these manuscripts in Echmiadzin. In 1959 the Matenadaran was officially established as a scientific research center by the state. The responsibilities were enalrged as well and the Matenadaran was responsible for keeping, maintaining, recovering, examinig, translating, publishing and taking care of the mansucripts. It happened 50 years ago. The Matenadaran became an institute due to Levon Khachikyan (famous professor of Armenian scientists, academician) and this building was given to the institute during his times.
– After becoming a scientific research center how did the Matenadaran differe from the other institutes of Armenian sciences under the umbrella of the national acasdemy of sciences?
– The difference was that it had all the manuscrips in the depositary. The manuscripts we have significantly differ from many manuscripts in the world. The arabic manuscripts are more, in Vatican they have more latin manuscripts, but the difference is the fact that the Armenian manuscriots and art was developed exclusively int he Armenian environment despite the fact whether it was in the fatherland or diapsora in other countries. It means that these are exclusively national art despite of being done in another place or being translated. The entire western world used to write latin. This language was the language of the church, accordingly manuscripts as well. Not only the Greek people but also the ones under their influence used to write in their language. The Islamic world used to write in Arabic. So the Armenian language was written exclusively in the Armenian environment. Now these manuscripts are living an era of research and maintenance. The Matenadaran was established to keep the old manuscripts and repair the ones that have been injured during so many years and are the bearers of the pain of the nation during many years. Second, we should already recognize what is written in the manuscripts and what values we are dealing with. Most part of our manuscripts are not digitalized. We cannot evaluate the content until we fully investigate the manuscripts.
– In order to be able to evaluate the content one needs to have a huge scientific potential. We have good specialists. You are teaching at the university and definitely you see many young people who are interested in the Armenian sciences. The model of a scientists waiting for transport in cold winter is not so attractive for students.
– Unfortunately… I will cite a phrase from the Bible: “A lot of people have titles, but only few of them are selected”. I know few students who really want to learn the Armenian sciences. It is the fault of the teachers and lecturers of universities as well. Only 1.500 pieces of our manuscripts are described so far and these were published in a manual recently. In 60s debates were launched about describing manuscripts, but these were originated artificially. In the end of the 19th century we had the list of Armenian manuscripts of Vienna described by Hakobos Tashyan. It could be considered a classic example of manuscript description. Only few scientists were ready to present their lives to this science which need a lot of work and few titles. That is why there were people who made debates over this issue in order to be able to escape from this work. And they did so. Levon Khachikyan did some work like inventory and published a fat list of manuscripts to make it clear what kind of work was expecting us. With his friends Khachikyan started investigating the manuscripts. He passed away in 1982 and the four volumes published so far, including the fifth volume published recently, are a result of the work of his team. However it is a pity that these volumes did not have an owner to take care of during the past 25 years.
– Do you mean that nothing has been done since 1982?
– Since 1982 the management of the Matenadaran either did not attach importance to this work or adapted this need with some issues. Only recently, after the new director took the office, these 25 volumes that were waiting to be published were eventually published. For example, the entire collection of Jerusalem was described by Archbishop Norayr Pogharyan.
– We are missing also some research in the religious manuscripts; I mean both the original and translations, because most part of the manuscripts are religious.
– In the Soviet times religious manuscripts were not encouraged. When Khachikyan raised the issue of re-publishing the Holy Bible in the academy of sciences, many people opposed to this suggestion. And he had to call this work as “Translation monuments” in order not to use the word “Holy Bible”. After Khachikyan his work did not develop because there were no people to continue his work.
– There were no people in the Matenadaran but we have five institutes involved in the Armenian sciences, we have faculties in universities as well.
– There were some individuals. For example, Hakob Anasyan was a loyalist of the Armenian sciences, Vazgen Hakobyan did a lot of work too, but they did not have followers. There are other people too, but they are not so popular and people don’t understand their works. In our universities the education does not give so much knowledge to be ready for this work. They need dozens of years to become professional.
– Maestro Tigran Mansuryan says the real artist is the one who does his work even when he is too much rich or too much poor. Do we have scientists who can comply with the logic? Definitely one of these people was Hrachya Acharyan who would create his vocabulary anyway.
– We can’t say that such people will not be born anymore, but immorality has penetrated into the sector of science as well. Look, Acharyan’s bust was on Mashtots avenue at the building where he lived, and it is about 4-5 years that the head was stolen and a metallic stick is hanging out instead of his head. Do not the people, academy of sciences or the university have money to repair the monument? Or they can generally take it out from there. Yes, I am complaining that the salary is low, but it does not matter for a real scientist. The immorality of grabbing titles has penetrated into the science as well; we see that in the academy certain people may be given titles who don’t even know what the science is. Nowadays we don’t have a specific state program of Armenian sciences. Every institute does what they want. The state provides money but does not direct what specifically should be subject to research. We don’t have critics either and everything may be published easily. Hence it is not the strategy of scientists to publish books. For this purpose we should unite all institutes of Armenian sciences and establish one institute, unite the scientists and give them salaries, and the others will get stipends and send to them to work at home because they don’t do anything in the academy. In a word, the ones who really want to support the Armenian sciences should not be sufficed with external imitation only. For me the liberation of the Matenadaran is not the new building but going out of the stagnation of twenty five years and realizing what the real goal and purposes are. Let’s hope and believe.