The General Assembly is the principal body of the national representative administration, which is composed of one hundred forty members, twenty of these are clergymen, elected from Constantinople, forty are representatives elected from provinces, and eighty are representatives from the districts of the capital. This assembly is elected for ten years, but one-fifth of its membership is changed by election every two years. Thus the whole Assembly is changed every ten years. The General Assembly assumes the entire responsibility of the national affairs; the patriarch is the presiding officer. There are two other assemblies or councils: Ecclesiastical or religious and political or civil. The former consists of fourteen clergymen, the latter is composed of twenty lay members. The members of these councils are also elected from the General Assembly for two years.
The ecclesiastical council has its sphere of action in religious matters and is the highest religious authority in the Turkish empire. The political or civil council is the civil authority, and has four sub-councils or committees under its supervision through which to operate, namely, council of Revenues, council of Expenditures, Judicatory Council and Educational Council (or the committee on Education). These names indicate the sphere of their activities or duties.
This mode of operation or division of the work is carried out into the provinces wherever Armenians are found. The Bishops or their substitutes are the presidents of these provincial councils. And all the councils and sub-councils in the provinces and in the districts of Constantinople are amenable to the General Assembly, and the Assembly and the Patriarch to the Porte.[76]
Oppressions, resulting from wars, political and religious, persecutions, the division of the country among different powers, and the desire of the people to better themselves have caused the people to scatter from their paternal homes all over the world. An early company of emigrants entered India via Persia. After the appearance of the East India Company, the Armenians rendered the Company very important services, acting as interpreters. Thus they also received special privileges as traders and became very wealthy. In every important city they have their churches and schools and printing press. They have been also liberal in giving large sums for the education of the poor and orphan Armenian children.
The Armenians in Persia, or under the Persian rule, are not in a very desirable condition, from a religious and educational point of view. Especially those living in Western Persia, or Pers-Armenia, are subject to all sorts of cruelties at the hands of the Kurds, with whom they unfortunately neighbor. But the presence of the Russian armies who occupy these regions may be the end of oppression in the East.
Russia having in the last century wrested from Persia and Turkey a large portion of Armenia, there are over a million of Armenians in the Armenian provinces of Russia, besides those who reside in the commercial cities of the same empire. Their financial and intellectual condition is far better than that of those living in Persia, or in the interior of the Turkish provinces of Armenia. Now that the entire Armenia is occupied by the Russian forces, the prospect is that probably the dawn of the liberty of the long oppressed Armenians is at hand. Russia of this century is different from the Russia of the past. She will be liberty-loving, the good company that she is in will guide her to heal the wounds made in the past, and make those who have served her faithfully, both in the past and at the present, acknowledge her as their liberator.
A proximate estimate of the number of Armenians in different countries in the world may be given as follows: Two millions in the Turkish empire, before the war; one million and three hundred thousand in Russian Armenia and in the same empire; one hundred and fifty thousand in Persia and in other eastern countries; one hundred thousand in European countries and a hundred thousand in America; total three million and six hundred fifty thousand.
The Armenians belong to the branch of the human family which is commonly called the Aryan Race. The nations of Aryan stock extend from Hindustan or India to Europe, for this reason it is also called Indo-European or Indo-Germanic. This Aryan race is geographically divided into two branches, the eastern and the western. The western branch comprehends the inhabitants of Europe with the exception of the Turks and others of Mongolian origin. The eastern branch comprehends the Armenians, the Persians, the ancient Medes and Afghans and the inhabitants of Northern Hindustan.
The studies of anthropology, philology, psychology and sociology have confirmed the original unity of these nations. The Armenian language also, therefore, belongs to the Indo-European family (the occidental branch) of languages. This is proved not only by numerous words with the identical sense in this family of languages, but also by the very construction of the language itself. “In any case it is clear that many of the oldest forms which the Armenian shared with other Indo-Germanic dialects were lost and replaced by forms of which the origin is obscure.... The attempt made by S. Bugge to assimilate Old Armenia (language) to Etruscan, and by P. Jesen to explain from it the Hittite inscriptions, appear to be fanciful.”[77]
There are, however, two Armenian languages, the ancient and the modern; the former was the language of the pre-Christian era, and after the conversion of the nation, and the translation of the Bible into the same, it became the standard language of literature. “In its syntactical structure the Old Armenian resembles most nearly the classical Greek.” The modern Armenian is not a distinct language, but it is simplified and adapted to the present use of the most of the people. Within little more than a century it has become a very rich language by numerous original and translated works, by periodicals and papers published in various centers of learning, and especially by the translation of the Bible. The relations of the modern to the ancient Armenian might well be compared with that of the modern Greek to ancient Greek language.