page_title: Daredevils of Sassoun
section_title: Publications and translations
hierarchical_section_title: Daredevils of Sassoun / Publications and translations
caption_attribution_description: Հայերեն: «Սասնայ տուն» պատկերապատման գրքի կազմը, որը պատմում է Սասնայ ծռեր դիւցազնավէպի Սանասարի և Բաղդասարի մասին։ Նկարազարդումները՝ Քրիստ Կարապետեանի։ Թեհրանի հայոց դպրոցների կենտրոնական հոգաբարձութիւն, Թեհրան, 1982։ English: Book cover of Sasna Tun (House of Sasun) comic book, telling the story of Sanasar and Baghdasar, part of the epic of Daredevils of Sassoun. Printed by Tehran Armenian Schools' Central Committee, Tehran, 1982.
context_page_description: Daredevils of Sassoun is an Armenian heroic epic poem in four cycles.
  In the initial decades following the discovery of the epic in the late nineteenth century a general consensus emerged attributing its theme to the struggle of four generations of Sason's warriors against Muslim rule in the 8th to 10th centuries. The pioneers of this interpretation of the epic were the philologist Manuk Abeghian in Armenia and academic Joseph Orbeli at the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad, who argued that there are no characters in the epic that could be attributed to a historical person from before the 10th century.
  The historicist school held its sway until the Armenian philologist Grigoryan first in an article, then in a book argued following an incisive analysis of the epic, "it is indisputable that the roots of the epic go back deep into the centuries, and they reach not only the cuneiform times when monarchy was underway in Armenia, but even the prehistoric era." Grigoryan identified various episodes in the epic as of patently matriarchal origin, prompting various scholars both in Soviet Armenia and elsewhere to probe deeper into the proto-layers of the epic.
context_section_description: In 1881 "Daredevils of Sasun" was translated into Russian. Later the tale was translated into the languages of all fifteen republics of the Soviet Union. Next the text was translated into French and Chinese.
  Other variants of this folk epic have been published since 1874, and there are some fifty of them altogether. Bishop Garegin Srvandztiants saved the Armenian epic from oblivion. 60 years later, Manuk Abeghian rendered an almost equally valuable service with his co-workers by collecting nearly all of these variants in three scholarly volumes published by the State Publishing House in Yerevan, Armenia in 1936, 1944 (part l) and 1951 (part ll), under the general title Daredevils of Sasun. All three volumes contain over 2,500 pages of text. In 1939 a collated text weaving most of the important episodes together was published for popular reading under the title "David of Sasun". As village texts are in various dialects, which presents many difficulties to the modern reader, the story was reworded and a fairly uniform style comprehensible to Eastern Armenian dialects was adopted.  From 1939 until 1966 all translations were made from this popularized text.
  In 1964 Leon Zaven Surmelian, Armenian-American author, translated the epic into English from its original village stories under the name Daredevils of Sassoun.
caption: Cover of an Armenian comic book, Sasna Tun (House of Sasun), 1982
exif: {}