Death of Stepanos Malkhasiants (July 21, 1947)

Along with Hrachia Ajarian and Manuk Abeghian, Stepanos Malkhasiants was a key name in Armenian philology of the first half of the twentieth century. 

He was born in Akhaltskha (Akhaltsikh), Javakhk, nowadays in Georgia, on November 7, 1859. He received his primary education at the Karapetian parochial school in Akhaltskha and then the local Russian gymnasium. From 1874 to 1878 he attended the Gevorgian Seminary in Vagharshapat. Malkhasiants was later admitted to the department of Oriental Studies at St. Petersburg State University and graduated in 1889 with an emphasis in Armenian, Sanskrit, and Georgian Studies and a first doctorate in philology.  

Following the completion of his studies, Malkhasiants became a regular contributor to periodicals and academic journals. He returned to the Caucasus and took up teaching positions in his hometown schools, the Nersisian, Hovnanian, and Gayanian schools Tiflis, and at the Gevorgian Seminary. He was one of the leaders of the Armenian Popular Party, founded in 1917. He moved to Armenia in 1919 and taught at the university, then provisionally established in Alexandropol (Gyumri). After Yerevan State University was founded in February 1920, Malkhasiants became a faculty member of the department of history and linguistics and was the first instructor to deliver a lecture there. In 1940 he was awarded with a doctorate honoris causa in philology. In 1943 he became a founding member of the Academy of Sciences of Armenia.  

Malkhasiants took an active interest in the study of classical and medieval Armenian historiography prior to his graduation from Saint Petersburg State. In 1885 he published the first critical edition of the Universal History, written by eleventh-century historian Stepanos Taronetsi (Asoghik). He later published several other critical texts by Armenian historians, including the primary histories written by Pavstos Buzand (1896), Sebeos (1899), and Ghazar Parpetsi (1904). He was particularly interested in Movses Khorenatsi and published over 50 books, articles, and monographs on the “Father of Armenian history.” He also made extensive contributions to the study of the Armenian language, metrics, and spelling, particularly grammar of Classical and Modern Armenian. His Russian translation of the eighteenth-century Catholicos Simeon Yerevantsi’s history work, Jambr, was published in 1958.  

In 1944-1945, Malkhasiants completed his monumental four-volume Armenian Explanatory Dictionary, which went on to win the Stalin Prize in 1946. This dictionary of 120,000 entries, which the author began preparing in 1922, was unprecedented in its characteristics. It provides , an exhaustive vocabulary list of classical Armenian, middle Armenian, and modern Armenian (Eastern and Western) words, as well as an exploration of the numerous Armenian dialects.  

Malkhasiants also translated some foreign works into Armenian, such as Victor Hugo’s poems and William Shakespeare’s plays, including King Lear and Macbeth. 

Malkhasiants is also known for designing the current Armenian flag.[7]  

He died in Yerevan at the age of 89 on July 21, 1947.