ABSTRACT
It was the third section of the liturgy — hymns arranged according to their appropriate days — that was the most fruitful for Georgian literature. Nurtured in both Hellenistic and Syrian traditions, Georgian hymnography soon flourished independently. Hymns, themselves inspired by the Psalms and the Gospels, led, both in Byzantine Greek and in Georgian, to a flowering of lyrical and spiritual poetry. The Greek oktoechos (the hymns in the eight Byzantine modes established by John Damascene), the Lenten triodion, the pentekostarion (hymns for Pentecost), and the menaion (monthly hymns) all found their counterpart in Georgia. They are the most numerous, the most undervalued, and the most seminal part of the Byzantine poetic heritage. At first, hymns were so linked to Psalms that they were known by the initial words of the Psalm with which they were sung. Later hymns (known as დასდებელნი, dasdebelni, literally ‘supplements’) were independent of the Psalms. At least one dasdebeli, an evening hymn to Saint Hilarion, survives in a khanmeti text (possibly fifth century). The Georgian terminology is far simpler than the Greek, there being no distinction between the elaborate sticharion and the simpler troparion. Perhaps Georgian hymnography had already developed before the full Byzantine terminology had evolved.
