The Kočerin Tablet is a medieval tablet with an inscription written in
Bosnian Cyrillic, in an archaic West
Stokavian dialect of
Serbo-Croatian, using
Ikavian pronunciation.
History and discovery
The
stećak
Stećak (, ) or Stećci in plural form (, ) is the name for monumental medieval tombstones, that lie scattered across Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the border parts of Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia. An estimated 60,000 are found within the border ...
tombstone, which is placed on the grave of
Viganj Milošević, was cut and inscribed in 1404 or 1405.
[2004. Šefik Bešlagić, ''Leksikon stećaka''.] The text is positioned on the bottom of the
stećak
Stećak (, ) or Stećci in plural form (, ) is the name for monumental medieval tombstones, that lie scattered across Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the border parts of Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia. An estimated 60,000 are found within the border ...
, which is discovered in a necropolis Lipovac, in a field just west and outside of today’s village of
Kočerin
Kočerin ( sr, Кочерин) is a village in Bosnia and Herzegovina. According to the 1991 census, the village is located in the municipality of Široki Brijeg
,
, nickname =
, motto =
, i ...
, away from the town of
Široki Brijeg,
Bosnia and Herzegovina, where it was discovered in 1983.
In 1872, stećak was moved to Kočerin and built-in into the right side of the local parochial office wall. In May 2004, it was carefully removed from the office wall and exhibited in the parochial premises in Kočerin.
Dimensions
The tablet measures across on the bottom, in the middle, and at the top. It measures in height. The top part is damaged.
Text
The tablet contains 25 rows of script, with 9-15 characters on each line. There are 300 characters in total and represents the largest known text in
Bosnian Cyrillic.
The text displays a large number of ligatures.
It is written in a
Shtokavian Ikavian dialect, without nasal vowels, in a single-
yer
A yer is either of two letters in Cyrillic alphabets, ъ (ѥръ, ''jerŭ'') and ь (ѥрь, ''jerĭ''). The Glagolitic alphabet used, as respective counterparts, the letters (Ⱏ) and (Ⱐ). They originally represented phonemically the "u ...
script, with some apparent
Glagolitic influence.
[2011. Mateo Žagar, review of ''Jezik srednjovjekovnih kamenih natpisa iz Hercegovine''.] The form ''svetago'' shows influence from
Church Slavonic
Church Slavonic (, , literally "Church-Slavonic language"), also known as Church Slavic, New Church Slavonic or New Church Slavic, is the conservative Slavic liturgical language used by the Eastern Orthodox Church in Belarus, Bosnia and Herzeg ...
, but the rest of the inscription is free of Church Slavonicisms in its morphology.
The text mentions how Viganj Milošević served five rulers:
Banus Stjepan,
King Tvrtko,
King Dabiša,
Queen Gruba, and
King Ostoja.
The inscription ends by saying: ().
References
External links
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kocerin Tablet
Texts of medieval Bosnia and Herzegovina
1404 works
15th-century inscriptions
Written monuments of Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bosnian Cyrillic texts
Široki Brijeg