Reading the news in an Armenian community in India
In 1794 Harutyun Shmavonian began publishing Azdarar in Madras, now Chennai, India. Eighteen issues appeared by 1796. The monthly introduced a distinctive rhythm to Armenian print. Each dated issue belonged to a sequence, allowing readers to follow developments from one instalment to the next.
Why did an Armenian monthly emerge in India? Madras was home to Armenian merchant families. The Shiraz-born priest Harutyun Shmavonian built ties with that community. Those connections mattered to an editor who needed people to supply news and an audience that would return for the next instalment. The eighteen issues run from October 1794 through March 1796.
Armenianist Anna Sirinian identifies India’s contemporary English-language press as a model for organising editorial work. The subjects chosen, however, reflected the readers’ own connections. Reports from Transcaucasia and material on Persian history made sense to trading families whose working relationships extended far beyond Madras.
Commercial notices and political reports appeared alongside poetry, fables and historical writing. Readers could find economic news and passages from Khachatur of Julfa’s History of Persia in the same periodical. This editorial range helps reconstruct the interests of an Armenian community in India, where following trade and reading Armenian literature could be activities of the same reader.
Most of the journal was written in Classical Armenian, or Grabar. Some news and announcements appeared in the vernacular. The surviving issues therefore also provide evidence for language history: comparing different genres reveals how an editor addressed readers when circulating different kinds of information.
The journal is also evidence for language history. A historical narrative and a practical announcement addressed different needs. Comparing a vernacular notice with a Classical Armenian passage in the same issue is more revealing than assigning the language of one notice to the entire publication. In Chennai’s Armenian churchyard, an open book bearing the name Azdarar marks the editor’s grave, linking the surviving issues to a particular community and place.