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Clearer to mention this being an East Slavic dialect. Slight rewording regarding 'berasta' as this term is rarely used in English sources. |
→Onfim's writings: added section about his family, reference, and added information about Danilo |
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Onfim left seventeen known birch bark items. Twelve of those have illustrations, five only text. One of the drawings features a knight on a horse, stabbing someone on the ground with a lance, with scholars speculating that Onfim pictured himself as the knight. The writings are clearly homework exercises: Onfim practiced by writing out the [[alphabet]], repeating syllables, and writing [[psalm]]s—texts that were presumably familiar to him.<ref name=s101>Schaeken 101.</ref> His writing includes phrases such as "Lord, help your servant Onfim" and fragments from Psalms 6:2 and 27:3.<ref>Schaeken 103.</ref> Indeed, most of Onfim's writing consists of citations from the [[Book of Psalms]].<ref>Franklin 203.</ref>
Onfim's illustrations include pictures of knights, horses, arrows, and slain enemies. One striking image, "a portrait of himself, disguised as a fantastic animal",<ref>Yanine 54.</ref> is found on item 199 (pictured above; it was originally the bottom of a basket made of birch bark), which contains a picture of a beast with a long neck, pointy ears, and a curly tail. The beast either has an arrow with feathers in its mouth or is spewing fire; one of the accompanying texts (the one below the box) says "I am a wild beast" (the text in the box says "Greetings from Onfim to
One of Onfim’s drawings provide an insight into his family; a picture of a warrior alongside a child (presumably Onfim), is captioned,”This is my Dad! He is a warrior. When I grow up, I want to be a warrior just like him!”<ref> http://www.goldschp.net/SIG/onfim/onfim.html </ref>
The rows of five letters each on the other side of 199 are an alphabet exercise.<ref>Schaeken 105.</ref> On item 205 (not pictured in this article), Onfim wrote the [[Cyrillic alphabets|Cyrillic alphabet]] and added "On[f]", for his name, in the middle; below that alphabet is what some researchers see as a boat with oars.<ref name=s104>Schaeken 104.</ref> Item 206 contains alphabetic exercises and "'portraits' of little Onfim and his friends".<ref name=slavic>"Slavic Paleography" 522.</ref>
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