KARAITES. See JEWISH SECTS.
Vux STEFANOVITCH, 1787-1864; h. Serbia; educated at Karlovitz at the school for dissenters from the Greek church. Being of a delicate constitution, instead of joining the insurgents in their struggle against the Turkish authorities which began in 1804, he acted as secretary to their chiefs, who were ignorant of the art of pen manship. He also served at Belgrade, as secretary of the senate and of Kara-George or black George, prince of Serbia, while he held the power. In 1813, the Serbians being abandoned by Russia, he was compelled, after the treaty of Bucharest establishing the Power of the sultan, to fly to Austria, and encouraged by Kopitar,'the Slavonic scholar, then holding a position in the imperial library, he undertook the labor of collecting the national ballads, with many of which he had been familiar as a boy. He traveled through Bosnia and Montenegro, seeking among 5,000,000 of Serbian-speaking people for their ancient songs, translations of some of them having been loudly praised by Goethe. Some are of recent origin, celebrating the exploits of the first 10 years of the present century.
He was supplied from all sources, even by ferocious Mohammedans of western Turkey, and by Serbian women, who contributed their familiar love-songs. In 1814 he published Narodne Srpske pjesnie, (Vienna, 4 vols.), selections of which have been translated into English and German, ranking very high among •European ballads. He also published a Serb grammar translated into German by Jacob Grimm, and in 1818 a Serho-German dictionary, basing his system of orthography on the Russian alphabet, and Danitza, a literary almanac. In 1826-24, Serb Poindar :Proverbs, and Serb Popular Dries. In 1847, a Serbian translation of the New Testament. In 1849, Kaye/a:lick or, Casket for the Serbian Lan,b-uaye and History, and other works of value in the study of the race. He received the honorary degree of PH.D. from the university Jena, and a pension from the Russian government. His Serbian countrymen have no family names, and the dis tinctive surname of Karajitch is the name of the district where his family resided; his appellation of Vuk Stefanovitch signifying Wolf, the sou of Stephen.