Articles

Religious ceremonies of the Western Zhou era (1027–771 BC) are rarely the subject of research. The specificity of epigraphic sources of the epoch makes it possible to correlate their data with synchronous written sources and sources of a later time and restore a picture of the religious life of the society of the era studied. The author of the article based on the analysis of the content of inscriptions on bronze vessels of the early period of the Western Zhou era (1027–966 BC) highlights regular and occasional religious ceremonies, as well as their elements, such as ritual feasting, ritual drinking of wine, the instruction of van, various types of sacrifices. The study showed that some of the considered ritual ceremonies and their elements are found unchanged in the historical source “Chunqiu Zuozhuan” of the Chunqiu era (771–453 BC), and some have no analogues in the subsequent era.

Several Sufi shrines important for Iranian mysticism are located in the region of Khurasan. One of them is the mausoleum of shaykh Ahmad from Jam — a 12th-century Sufi mentor, also known as «Ahmad-i Jam». Ahmad’s circle of devotees burgeoned into a significant Sufi community of the region while his descendants maintained the shrine and enjoyed beneficial positions in Khurasanian state and society. The article explains the main functions of Sufi center as a place for the joint religious rites, meetings and debates, where representatives of various movements could exchange religious experience. Based on the materials of Sufi hagiographies and correspondence, the author also attempts to assess the role of Islamic mysticism in the political events in the Middle East and investigate the relationship between the descendants of Ahmad-i Jam and the rulers of the 14th–15th centuries — the Karts, Tamerlane and his son Shahrukh. Special attention is paid to the role of the Jami shaykhs in the Tamerlane’s conquest of Khurasan and subsequent events.

This work continues the study initiated in the article “Hatra, Sasanids, and Arabs: Political History”. It focuses on references to the fall of the city of Hatra in Arabic verses and legends. A comparison of those references to the data of antique sources allows to supplement the picture of events. The war which led to the fall of Hatra (240 A.D.) began with an invasion of the region of Shahrazur by Arabs from the Ḳuḍāʿa tribal confederation. Although Muslim writers claim that the king of Hatra subsequently made an attack upon Southern Mesopotamia (Sawād) and captured a woman from the Sasanid family, those assertions appear false. Sasanid king Ardashir I Pabagan (225–240) put the blame for the invasion upon the king of Hatra, from whose possessions the Ḳuḍāʿites had arrived, and moved his troops against that city. After a month (or some more time) of siege, the Sasanian troops took Hatra employing a stratagem. That was reflected in a legendary story of a failed romance between Ardashir’s son Shapur (or a Sasanid general) and the Hatraean princess, who gave the city over to the enemies. As an extraordinary event, the fall of Hatra took root in the historical memory of the inhabitants of the Euphrates region and is mentioned by poets related to those places.

Recently Soviet studies of African history, as well as Soviet journalistic writing on Africa draw a significant attention of non–Russian historians. The image of Africa which was created by Soviet Africanists seems an obvious and easy subject to those who use post-colonial methodology. Soviet historiography of African history is usually characterised out of historical and comparative context, which prevents an analysis of its multi–layered and complex nature, as well as its historical transformation, its real achievements and its no less real limitations. The article investigates the major tendencies and trends in Soviet historiography of African history in the context of major developments in world African studies. It analyses their trajectories and assesses them from the point of view of their contribution to the academic understanding of African history. It also defines the main stages of the development of Soviet historiography of African history from the late 1920s until the late 1980s and gives a short overview of its main schools, each with its different topics, approaches and sources. The importance of this study derives from the fact that until now no comparative–problematic analysis of the Soviet historiography of African history has been done. A particular stress was made on its historical context, which helps to prevent a distortion of its image.

The period of king Injong’s reign (the second quarter of the 12th century) was specially chosen to describe the history of Koryŏ–Song relations. Active contacts between the Korean state Koryŏ (918–1392) and the Chinese Song Empire (960–1279) began in the 11th century. They developed in several directions. First, it was an exchange of diplomatic missions of equal status: in peaceful years, states exchanged one or two embassies annually, and merchants who had a certain freedom of action and did not depend much on the political situation sometimes brought messages from the Song. Trade exchange developed more actively, including the neighboring state of Liao (907–1125), with which the Song conducted indirect trade through Koryŏ. The last direction was mutual trips of Buddhist monks and the exchange of religious literature. At the beginning of the 12th century, both states faced enormous difficulties in domestic politics: the uprisings of Lee Jagyŏm and Myoch’ŏn in Koryŏ, and Song Jiang and Fang La in Song. In addition, both states faced a serious external threat in the face of the Jin state (1115–1234), which in 1126 forced Koryŏ to recognize vassalage, and in 1127 tore off the northern territories from the Song, marking the beginning of the division into the epochs of the Northern and Southern dynasties. Song repeatedly asked Koryŏ to take its side against Jin, but the Korean king preferred to observe neutrality first, and then submit to the Jurchen state in order to avoid war. This attitude caused dissatisfaction with the Song government, but it had no way to influence the decisions of the Korean neighbor. Shortly after the final loss of the northern territories, the Southern Song practically ceased official diplomatic contacts with Koryŏ.

After arriving to India as a part of French East India Company mission and becoming de facto head of all French settlements in Asia, François Martin (1634–1706) chose a place for a future commercial post on the Hindustan peninsula coast, concluded agreements with local rulers concerning the ownership of this territory, and founded a settlement, which subsequently began to attract thousands of Frenchmen. Among them were both the trading company employees and ordinary people willing to shift from cold Europe to comfortable tropics. As a result, Pondicherry turned into the most famous French colony in India, and François Martin’s name became part of the history of French colonialism. Throughout 30 years of his service for the French East India Company, François Martin was keeping a diary; after more than two centuries, in 1931, it was published in France as a three-volume edition. In his ‘Mémoires’ Martin introduces in detail the milestones of establishing the French trade system, the sea voyages to Madagascar and further to Asia, discusses the performance of other European companies in Hindustan, describes local princely states and their interaction, and presents his assessment of the achievements of the French on the peninsula. Based on primary sources that have never been used by Russian Indologists, the article focusses on the role of François Martin in setting up strategically important French territories in South Asia at the turn of the XVIII century.

In the 2nd and 3rd century A.D. the rulers of the city of Hatra (Northern Irak) bore the titles of kings of ʿrb, where ʿrb denoted lands between Euphrates and Tigris rather than Arabs. However, Arabs dwelt in those places too and preserved memories of tribes from the Ḳuḍāʿa confederation staying there. The course of Hatra’s history was largely determined by Emperor Septimius Severus (193–211)’ two failed attempts to capture it, in 198 and 199. Considering the Roman threat, the rulers of Hatra applied to Parthian Arsacids for protection. Parthian king Valgash (Vologeses) V (190/91–207) granted the ruler of Hatra his protection. The rulers of Hatra became vassals of the Arsacids and had to assist them, including by military force. Due to that, the ruler of Hatra fought in 225 on the Parthians’ side against the Sasanids, who, in their turn, attempted to capture the city, yet, with no success. After the Arsacids’ downfall, the rulers of Hatra became allies of Rome. Then the Sasanids undertook another campaign against Hatra and finally took it (240). Shapur, son of Ardashir I, the founder of the Sasanid empire, took part in that campaign. Since Shapur was then co-ruler of Ardashir, the capture of Hatra is often described in Oriental sources as an achievement of his reign.

Basing on the documents from the investigation file, the paper displays the life of the famous actress of the Japanese Theatre and Cinema - Okada Yoshiko. Together with her beloved man - Sugimoto Ryokichi (who was the member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Japan), she crossed the Soviet-Japanese border in Sakhalin Island in 1938, hoping to start a new happy life in the Socialist country. Instead, they were immediately arrested and forced to “admit” that they came to the USSR with the spying purposes. After about a year Sugimoto war judges and shot, and Okada was sentenced for 10 years in the concentration camps. Nevertheless, she was not broken down, she managed to survive, come to Moscow and start working on the State Radio and for some Moscow theatres.

The present article is a further extension of the authors’ previous publication dealing with the main milestones in the development of the Department of Near and Middle East History during the years of Soviet power. This part of the study covers the range of issues relating to the functioning of the staff of the department from the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 to the present day. The challenges faced by domestic higher education and Oriental studies in the post-perestroika period are described, as well as the characteristics of the departmental leaders who were able to ensure the consistent development of the department in the new realities of a rapidly changing world. A considerable part of the article is devoted to the analysis of academic and pedagogical activities of the Department’s teaching staff at the present stage. The members of the Department actively and fruitfully work on creation of new high-quality training programs for Orientalists specializing in the history of the Middle East, making a significant contribution to training and education of Orientalist specialists at Moscow University, and promoting Oriental studies and historical science in general.

The article is dedicated to the 90th anniversary of Dega V. Deopik, Professor, PhD in History, whose brilliant research and educational work is closely related to the Institute for Asian and African Studies of the Moscow State University. The article dwells upon major fields of his research activity in oriental studies. Nevertheless, the scope of his academic interests is much wider, it embraces archaeology, ancient history and culture, origin of writing in the Eastern Asia, etc. In the article a special attention is given to the Vietnamese studies, his first and for long major special field, and also to his works on countries and peoples of the South-East Asia as well as ancient history of the Eastern Asia, so called Old China. Mentioned are his achievements in studying epigraphic artifacts and medieval chronicles and also development and implementation of quantitative methods in oriental studies. It is emphasised that Dega V. Deopik is also a distinguished teacher, research advisor and lecturer.

This article is devoted to rethinking the understanding of creativity - zuo in the treatise of Wang Chong (c. 27 - 100 AD) “Discourses in the Balance” (Lunheng), which is a logical continuation of the ideas of some of his predecessors. The article draws attention to the peculiarities of the philosopher's literary thought and compares them with the ideas of Yang Xiong (53 BC - 18 AD) from the treatise Exemplary Speeches (Fayan). The main provisions of Wang Chong's literary thought are revealed on the basis of an analysis of the chapters from “Discourses in the Balance”, which the philosopher wrote to fight works that were incorrect, from his point of view. Thanks to a scrupulous examination of such works, the philosopher managed not only to generalize the important thoughts of his predecessors in relation to literary creativity, but also come to many new discoveries that were successfully developed by subsequent literary theorists. The philosopher understands literature - wen quite broadly and includes in it those types of written creativity that during the next era will be excluded from the concept of wen. The thinker himself does not believe that wen means in general everything written in hieroglyphs, and therefore excludes matter-of-fact reports from wen, which is carried out by local officials. Wang Chong assigns a separate place to odic poetry in the wen system and even places a partial emphasis on the aesthetic function of literature. He considers discourse - lun to be a standard of wen, to which he refers his own treatise. The thinker puts forward certain requirements for the style of reasoning and observes them himself throughout the entire treatise, turning it, on the one hand, into a theoretical work, and on the other, into a practical one, on the pages of which this theory is embodied.

This article discusses various approaches used in describing the Chinese language basic unit of grammar. The problems faced by Chinese linguists along this path are due to the typological features of the Chinese language, where the word plays a peripheral role in the system, therefore units of all levels, from morpheme to sentence, were promoted to the status of the basic unit of the language in different periods. One by one we introduce problems, faced by Chinese linguists, as they are described in the most important works, along with the solutions they offer depending on the dominant theory of the linguistic history period. It shows how the views of scientists on the structure of the Chinese language and the choice of the basic (structural) unit of its grammar has been shifting due to the expansion of scientific knowledge about the typological features of languages. In contrast to previous periods, when a single view of the basic unit of grammar prevailed in linguistic research, today theories tend to pluralize. At the present stage, the search for ways to represent the Chinese language without the templates, developed with Western languages and European linguistics, has led to the emergence of several original concepts, hardly known to the Russian-speaking audience. The unsolved problem of defining a word, the difficulty of distinguishing units at the syntactic level in Chinese led to proposition of а sentence (clause), a syntagma (word group) and a character (taken on a new meaning) as the basic unit of the language structure. The validity of these approaches usually domestically described as those with Chinese characteristics requires discussion in the scientific community outside China and should be proofed or at least validated on a wide range of language concepts.

The article focuses on the analysis of elements of spoken language in Japanese commercials. Japanese colloquial speech is a structure that significantly differs from codified language which is reluctant to adopt any sort of change. Some of colloquial speech elements may even appear in other functional styles. The article describes main characteristics of Japanese colloquial speech in commercials seen on four language levels: phonetic, lexical, morphological and syntactic. It also examines primary tendencies applicable to these levels, and attempts to give possible reasons for usage such elements.

The article analyzes the understanding of agentivity by Japanese linguists both during the historical formation of this concept and in the context of the current functioning of this semantic category in the Japanese language. Agentivity is an important linguistic universal that influences the formation of both deep and surface syntactic structures, ultimately determining the characteristics of any linguistic structure. The current level of linguistic knowledge about how agentivity is represented in the Japanese linguistic discourse could be considered as insufficient; it does not provide a systematic understanding of the features of the Japanese perception of agency, even though the structure of the hierarchical relations of semantic and syntactic actants with the predicate in the Japanese language determines the functioning of all key grammatical categories. An array of Japanese-language and partly English-language works has been studied for more than 100 years, from the end of the 19th century to the end of the 21th century to perform several tasks: to determine the essence of the concept of “agency” in Japanese terminology; to identify and systematize the linguistic phenomena described by Japanese linguists to be determined by the agentive characteristics of the event participants; to clarify the significance of agentive features for various grammatical categories. It has been found that Japanese linguists are unanimously of the opinion that Japanese tends to exhibit low-agent properties which are expressed in the structure of Japanese voice, in the system of Japanese polite verbs, in the case marking of actants, in desiderative and potential constructions, etc. As further prospects for study, we see the investigation of Japanese-language linguistic papers on the role of agentive features in the formation of Japanese vocabulary and further systematization of agentive characteristics in the morphosyntactic aspect.

The history of the missionary movement in India was reflected in various types of sources: both in official documents and in letters from Church ministers. These texts contain unique information about the region and, at the same time, allow us to imagine the perception by Europeans of the image of the “other” - the pagans, the antipodes of the Christians. An example of such sources can be materials related to the name of Pastor Bartolomäus Ziegenbalg, who headed the Lutheran community in Southern India at the beginning of the XVIII century. The texts compiled by Ziegenbalg clearly show the division of the entire Tranquebar society into three large and specific groups: Christians (Christen), Muslims (Mahometaner / Mohammedaner / Muhammedaner) and pagans (Heiden). At first glance, the main criterion in this division turns out to be the religious factor, and the characteristic of the inhabitants of Hindustan is built according to the bipolar principle typical of early forms of thinking: “we” (Europeans, carriers of true knowledge and genuine culture) and “they” (ignorant pagans, barbarians). On closer inspection, the situation seems more complicated. Ziegenbalg’s critical attitude towards local European Christians creates a distinct effect of a certain detachment of the mission servants and their flock from Christening. The pastor introduces the concepts of “new Christians” and “old Christians”. The new ones are those who join the community from among the pagans. The old Christians, as expected, mean European Christians living in and around Tranquebar.