KARAJICH, VUK STEFANOVICH the father of modern Serbian literature, was born on Nov. 6, 1787, in the Serbian village of Trshich, on the Bosnian border. Having learnt to read and write in the old monastery Tronosha (near his native village), he was engaged as writer and reader of letters to the commander of the insurgents of his district at the beginning of the first Serbian rising against the Turks in 1804. Mostly in the position of a scribe to different voyvodes, sometimes as school teacher, he served his country during the first revolution (1804 13), at the collapse of which he left Serbia, but instead of follow ing Karageorge and other voyvodes to Russia he went to Vienna. There he was introduced to the great Slavonic scholar Yerney Kopitar, who encouraged him to collect the poems and popular songs, write a grammar of the Serbian language, and, if possible, a dictionary.
His first book, Mala Prostonarodna Slaveno-Serbska Pyesma ritsa (Vienna, 1814), contains roo lyric songs, sung by the peasant women of Serbia, and six poems about heroes, or as the Serbs call them Yunachke pesme, which are generally recited by the blind bards or by peasants. From that time Kara jich's literary activity moved on two parallel lines : to give scien tific justification and foundation to the adoption of the vernacular Serbian as the literary language ; and, by collecting and publishing national songs, folk-lore, proverbs, etc., to show the richness of the Serbian people's poetical and intellectual gifts, and the wealth and beauty of the Serbian language. By his reform of the Serbian alphabet and orthography, his Serbian grammar and his Serbian dictionary, he established the fact that the Serbian language con tains 3o distinct sounds, for six of which the Old Slavonic alpha bet had no special letters. He introduced new letters for those special sounds, at the same time throwing out of the Old Slavonic alphabet 18 letters for which the Serbian language had no use. This reform was strenuously opposed by the church and many conservative authors, who went so far as to induce the Serbian Government to prohibit the printing of books in new letters, a prohibition removed in 1859. alphabet facilitated his
reform of orthography, his principle being: write as you speak, and read as it is written! Hardly any other language in the civilized world has such a simple, logical, scientific spelling system and orthography as the Serbian has in system. His first grammatical essay was published in Vienna in 1814, Pis menitsa Serbskoga yezika po govoru prostoga naroda gram mar of the Serbian language as spoken by the common An improved edition appeared in Vienna in 1818, together with his great work Srpski Ryechnik (Lexicon Serbico-Germanico Latinum). This dictionary—containing 26,27o full of important contributions to folk-lore, as Karajich never missed an opportunity to add to the meaning of the word the descrip tion of the national customs or popular beliefs connected with it. A new edition of his dictionary containing 46,270 words, was published at Vienna in 1852.
Meanwhile he gave himself earnestly to the work of collecting the of the mind of the Serbian common He travelled through Serbia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Montenegro, Dal matia, Syrmia and Croatia, and the result was shown in a largely augmented edition of his Srpske Narodne Pyesme (Leipzig, 3 vols., 1823; vol. iv., Vienna, 1833). Popular Stories and Enigmas was published in 1821, and Serbian National Proverbs in 1836. From 1826 to 1834 he was the editor of an annual, called Danitsa (The Morning Star), which he filled with important contributions con cerning the ethnography and modern history of the Serbian people. In 1828 he published a historical monograph, Milosh Obrenovich, Prince of Serbia; in 1837, in German, Montenegro and Monte negrins; in 1867, The Serbian Governing Council of State. He supplied Leopold Ranke with the materials for his History of the Serbian Revolution. He also translated the New Testament into Serbian, for the British and Foreign Bible Society (Vienna, Karajich died in Vienna on Feb. 6, 1864; and his remains were transferred to Belgrade in 1897 with great solemnity and at the expense of the Government. (C. Mu.; X.)