SIMON FRANKLIN (Cambridge, UK) ON MEANINGS, FUNCTIONS AND PARADIGMS OF LA W IN EARLY R US' What did the law mean to inhabitants of early Rus'? This is one of those large, tempting questions which, as a moment's re- flection reveals, cannot have a proper answer; or at least, it cannot have a single answer to match the ostensible plainness of the inquiry, for the big question immediately breaks down into a multitude of sub-questions. Which inhabitants, when and where? What exactly is implied by "law"? Law as a concept according to some modem definition? Law as a concept or cluster of concepts in early Rus'? Law as a corpus of specific medieval texts? Law as a set of social practices, whether or not they are textually prescribed or vali- dated ? And so on. The impossibility of a unitary answer does not invalidate the question. On the contrary, the question is justified through the nuances of the multiple answers. The aims of the present study are (i) to provide a brief critical sur- vey of the principal approaches to such issues in recent scholarship; and (ii) to suggest an additional analytical framework which may be useful. As re- gards the chronological scope: "early Rus"' will be restricted to pre- Muscovite. I will not stray beyond the end of the thirteenth century. For convenience, we can summarize studies, of early Rus' law under three broad headings: studies of language, studies of texts, and studies of so- cial practices and structures. If one is interested in the "meaning" of law, then the study of the lan- guage of law must be a good place to start. Surely the meaning of the phe- nomenon is conveyed in the meaning or meanings of the words associated with it? If the world is filtered through the word, then the path - or at any rate a path - to understanding the place of law in the thought-world of early Rus' is through semantic analysis of the relevant vocabulary. Thus historical lexicographers such as V. I. Kolesov, or T. I. Vendina, have explored the nuances of words such as zakon (and its many associated compounds), pravda, zapoved', ustav, nrav, obychai, volia and others.' The methodologi- 1. E.g., V. V. Kolesov, Drevniaia Rus nasledie vslove.Mir cheloveka (St. Petersburg: St. Petersburg State University, 2000), 116-36;idem, Ia2yk i mental'nost' (St. Petersburg: Peter-