Re: [tied] Walachians are placed far North the Danube in Nestor (10

I hasten to agree with GKn that the "Povest' vremennych let"
or "Primary Chronicle" is a highly politicized document. Its purpose
is to provide the historical and mythical underpinnings of the Kievan
state. It abounds in war propaganda, notably against the Derevljane
whose alleged paganism and tragi-comical defeat at the hands of Ol'ga
(the mother of all Olga's) is decribed with such relish.


That being said, there is no denying that the PVL contains quite a
bit of interesting factual material. Unless I'm mistaken it is the
only medieval Slavic source to betray some memory of the pivotal role
of the Avars in the Slavic past. And there is more of that.


But it is also a difficult text. The earliest surviving manuscript
dates from the late seventies of the fourteenth century and offers
garbled readings in many places, which have to be corrected on the
basis of even later manuscripts. To make things worse, the text
existed in two radically different versions from an early moment on.
The semi-sacred character of the PVL during much of the Soviet Period
did not exactly encourage fundamental research and it is only
recently that scholars (notably Aleksej Gippius) have begun sorting
out the mess.


Note that the only thing I wanted to say was that even if we take the
PVL at face value its evidence is quite powerless to prove the
continuity thesis.


Willem