James R. Russell is Mashtots Professor of Armenian Studies at Harvard and worked previously at Columbia and the Hebrew University (Jerusalem, Israel) as professor of pre-Islamic Iranian languages and religions. He is also in Slavic, shamanism, and Rapa Nui studies. He is an artist, book designer, and motorcyclist, and plays the guitar so-so.
Abstract
Sehlerai is an international language invented by the 19th century Armenian polyglot eccentric of Smyrna Bedros Tenger(ian). This is the first substantial study of it in any language, though limited by the paucity of sources (and these are here studied in depth for the first time). Bedros was the only man in the Near East who ever invented a universal language, complete with the idealistic trappings of the Viennese Enlightenment.
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