If you were to hand a native English speaker a copy of Beowulf in its original Old English, they would likely stare at it in bewilderment. Even Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, written in Middle English during the late 14th century, requires a gloss, a dictionary, and a good deal of patience to decipher. Languages are generally fluid entities, evolving rapidly over centuries due to migration, conquest, and natural phonetic drift. A gap of 900 years usually renders a language unrecognizable to its modern descendants.
Yet, in the Caucasus, the Georgian language defies this rule.
If you hand a teenager in Tbilisi a copy of The Knight in the Panther’s Skin (Vepkhistqaosani), written by Shota Rustaveli around the year 1200, they can not only read it aloud but understand the plot, the emotions, and the majority of the vocabulary. While it is certainly elevated and poetic, the distance between Rustaveli’s Georgian and the language spoken on the street today is remarkably small.
This epic poem serves as more than just a literary masterpiece; it is a linguistic time capsule. It helped stabilize a language, codify a grammar, and preserve a national identity through centuries of invasion and turmoil.
The Golden Age and the Linguistic Anchor
To understand the anomaly of the Georgian language, one must look at the era of Queen Tamar (c. 1160–1213). This was Georgia’s “Golden Age”, a renaissance that predated the European Renaissance by centuries. It was a time of immense political power, architectural achievement, and philosophical inquiry.
Shota Rustaveli, believed to be the treasurer to Queen Tamar, wrote The Knight in the Panther’s Skin as an ode to this era. The poem is massive, consisting of over 1,600 quatrains. It tells a complex story of Avtandil and Tariel, two knights searching for the kidnapped Nestan-Darejan. On the surface, it is a tale of courtly love and chivalry. Underneath, it is a treatise on Neo-Platonic philosophy, friendship, and gender equality.
From a linguistic perspective, Rustaveli achieved something extraordinary: he anchored the language. In many cultures, dialects diverge because there is no single, accessible “high standard” that penetrates all levels of society. In England, the language of the court changed from French to English; in Georgia, Rustaveli’s poem became the standard.
How the Poem Preserved the Grammar
How exactly does a single poem keep a language from drifting for nearly a millennium? The answer lies in the unique structure of Georgian poetry and its integration into daily life.
The Power of Shairi
Rustaveli wrote in a specific meter called shairi. This consists of sixteen-syllable lines with a specific rhythm and rhyme scheme. The rigid structure of the shairi acts as a mnemonic device. It locks the vocabulary and syntax in place because changing a word would break the rhythm.
For centuries, the poem was not just read; it was memorized. Until the early 20th century, it was a traditional part of a Georgian bride’s dowry—not solely to own the book, but often with the expectation that she knew large portions of it by heart. When an entire population memorizes a massive text, the grammatical structures within that text become the permanent blueprint for the language.
A Bridge Between Eras
Linguists classify the language of the poem as “Classical Middle Georgian.” However, the transition from Old Georgian (used in early scripture) to New Georgian (modern speech) is much smoother than the English shift.
- Morphology: The complex verbal system of Georgian—known for its polypersonalism (where the verb indicates the subject, direct object, and indirect object simultaneously)—was fully developed and crystallized in Rustaveli’s work. Modern speakers use these same structures today.
- Vocabulary: While Persian and Arabic loanwords are present in the text (reflecting the cosmopolitan nature of 12th-century Tbilisi), the core Georgian lexicon has remained intact. Words for heart, love, friendship, and betrayal remain unchanged.
Aphorisms: The Language of Daily Life
Another reason for the poem’s linguistic endurance is its quotability. Rustaveli was a master of the aphorism. Hundreds of lines from the poem have detached themselves from the text to become common idioms used in the Tbilisi markets, corporate boardrooms, and family dinners.
Consider the famous line regarding the equality of the sexes (referring to lion cubs):
“Lekvi lomisai stsoria, dzu iyos tunda khvadia.”
“The lion’s whelp is a lion [equal], be it female or be it male.”
Or this reflection on generosity:
“Rasatsa gastsem shenia; rats ara, dakargulia.”
“What you give is yours; what you keep is lost.”
Because these phrases are idiomatic staples of modern Georgian communication, they force the speaker to engage with 12th-century syntax daily. It creates a continuous loop where the past reinforces the present.
The Modern Cultural Dialogue
For the linguistics enthusiast visiting Georgia today, the legacy of Rustaveli is palpable. It is not just that the main avenue in Tbilisi is named after him, or that his face appears on the 100-Lari note. It is that the language represents a stubborn survival.
During the 19th century, when the Russian Empire annexed Georgia, and later during the Soviet era, there were immense pressures to Russify the region and relegate Georgian to a domestic, dying dialect. The existence of a high-culture literary masterpiece that rivaled Dante or Shakespeare was a shield. It proved that Georgian was a language of science, philosophy, and art.
Today, the readability of The Knight in the Panther’s Skin is a point of immense pride. It connects the modern Georgian hipster in a techno club to the medieval courtier in a way that few other cultures can claim. They share the same jokes, the same proverbs, and largely, the same tongue.
Educational Impact
In Georgian schools, the poem is mandatory reading. Unlike Western students who might struggle through Shakespeare with the help of “No Fear” translations, Georgian students engage directly with the text. They may find some archaic phrasing challenging—similar to how we might find the King James Bible slightly formal—but it is never foreign to them.
Conclusion
Languages are usually defined by change. We embrace the evolution of slang, the simplification of grammar, and the absorption of loanwords. However, Georgian offers a fascinating counter-narrative: the power of stability.
Shota Rustaveli did not just write a story about knights and tigers. By capturing the zenith of his culture’s expression in verse, he built a linguistic fortress. He ensured that 900 years later, a nation could look into the mirror of the 12th century and still recognize its own voice.