Articles

The article is focused on the problems of defining the governmental policy of the Republic of India towards the former princely territories after their integration into newly created independent state, constructing of the image of “princes without princely states”, revealing the reaction of princely community to republican political system versus the ideals of monarchy. The article traces the destinies of princely dynasties in contemporary India and dwells on the problems of incorporation of their representatives into modern Indian society based on democratic traditions. The article shows the process of transformation of the attitude of Indian ruling circles to traditional elites of South Asia and reflects changing repercussions of this problem in national historiography. The article raises the questions whether the princely dynasties of India can be measured in terms of “gone with the wind” traditional groups destined to extinction or they managed to become a part of modern composite ruling stratum and what social and political values prevail in the minds of the common population of the former territories of princely states.

This article examines the poetics of Eastern Han epistles (second century AD), the first poetic love messages in the history of Chinese literature. The works discussed are Qin Jia’s poem “Sending to My Wife” (Zeng fu shi), his three-part poetic cycle “Remaining in My Native Region, I Send to My Wife” (Liu jun zeng fu shi), and an anonymous poem, “The Daughter of Shaofu Cui Bestows a Poem upon Lu Chun” (Cui shaofu nü zeng Lu Chong shi). These works had not previously been translated into Russian or studied in Russian sinology. The analysis considers poetic form, composition, themes and motifs and their connections, the genre features of the epistle, features of other genres, and means of artistic expression. As the works include poetic cycles as well as individual poems, the article also discusses the poetic cycle itself. It concludes by identifying general features of the poetic love epistle at the transition from Antiquity to the Middle Ages.

Punjabi Sikhs’ presence in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands can be traced back to the nineteenth century. The number of Sikh units in the British-Indian army increased after the annexation of Punjab (1849); Sikh army and police were employed to operate the Andamans-based Kala Pani (Black Water) jail. The Police Gurdwara of Port Blair became a visual marker of Sikh presence in the archipelago. In 1937, the New Gurdwara was set up; it was later renamed Dr Diwan Singh Kalepani Gurdwara to commemorate Diwan Singh’s contribution to India’s national liberation movement and his humanitarian and educational work in the Andamans. In the late 1960s, the Indian government invited former servicemen, primarily Punjabi Sikhs, to settle in the Nicobar Islands to protect them from poaching and to show India’s presence in that part of the Bay of Bengal. A “Mini-Punjab” subsequently emerged on Great Nicobar in the 1970s. Throughout their history in the Andamans, Sikhs strove to reproduce their homeland in a faraway land. Unlike other Sikhs in Bengal, Assam and other regions far from Punjab, the Andaman-based followers of Guru Nanak did not have to continually assert their identity through negotiation with local social and cultural traditions.

The article is devoted to proving that Yang Xiong (53 BC – 18 AD), an outstanding Chinese thinker, writer and scientist, is the creator of the first explicit rhetoric as a theory of literature in China. From this point of view his work in world sinology has not yet been considered. The article reveals the main factors and features of the formation of ancient Chinese doctrines on oratorical art using the results of research on archaeological excavations of the last three decades. Ancient Chinese rhetoric has gone a long way of development from latent to explicit form with the selection of poetics from it. The works of Yang Xiong are one of the final stages of this process. The main provisions of Yang Xiong’s rhetoric are revealed on the basis of the study of his treatise “Exemplary Speeches” Fayan, which is both the theory and practice of literature, because on the one hand, it formulates the theory of rhetorical poetry and prose, and on the other hand it is conceived by the author as a canonical example of its literary embodiment. This thinker understands literature very widely, it covers all the main genres and types of writing that were formed by that time. A special role in it is given to canonical literature, which combines the features of the canon and classics. Yang Xiong gives poetry and prose a rhetorical character, makes a functional distinction between oral and written speech, but it is with the text that he binds the creative act, making writing primary in relation to oral presentation. He pays special attention to the aesthetic side of ancient Chinese literature. Yang Xiong also gives a rationalistic interpretation of divine inspiration, examines the phenomenon of creativity and develops the category of individual authorship.

The article, based on Moroccan and Egyptian examples, offers a historical retrospective of political and economic interactions between the ruling circles of the Arab lands and powerful clans of descendants of Prophet Muhammad (sharifs), which resided in the North Africa since the early Middle Ages. The authors demonstrate the causes of friendly relations between the ruling structures and sharifian families. Typical social and economic conditions for usage of charitable endowments (waqfs) and land grants (azibs), provided to the advantage of sharifs, are also reviewed, as well as historical and cultural background for transformation of waqf and azib lands into private property. The authors trace back the etymology of azib and argue that its semantic content was due to existence of semi-nomad camps on the cattle-pass routes. Special attention is paid to the legal status of population living in waqfs and azibs, as well as factors of economic efficiency of these economic units. The study explores the continuity and stability of their evolution on specific examples. Reasons for development of wakfs into azibs, which remained typical in Moroccan (not Egyptian) history, are also outlined.

The paper discusses polysemic onomatopoetic words in Japanese. Several models of semantic development are identified among 371 words from the Japanese-Russian Dictionary of Onomatopoetic Words, including both giseigo and gitaigo (sound and image mimetic words). The meaning of a polysemic onomatopoetic word generally develops from the concrete to the figurative and abstract: for example, from the description of a sound to a movement associated with it, or from an image or state associated with movement to human feelings and emotions likened to that state. The paper confirms some universal patterns in the semantic development of polysemic words, including metaphorical and metonymic transfers of meaning.

The present paper provides a survey of Indonesian women’s prose (so-called sastra wangi) that has been gaining strength since the end of the twentieth century and has become one of the central phenomena of modern Indonesian literature. In connection with the subject of discussion, some information on gender studies and feminist literary criticism is given. Sastra wangi possesses distinctive features that distinguish it from purely entertaining chick-lit. Similar processes are found in the literature of many countries, as shown by examples from Indian, Turkish and Chinese writing. Modern Indonesian women’s prose can therefore be viewed in the context of Asian and African women’s writing in general.

The article discusses the poetological features of the story “Infinite Present Time” (1998) by A. Kulin, which are studied on narrative-compositional and image-bearing levels. The unusual chronotopos (playing with time and space), along with the psychological motivation of the characters and the acute social problems, permit us to say a lot about the fictional code that is dominant in this work of the writer. The present tense (=yor) is intended to increase the sense of tragedy and make the events described more dramatic. The present tense in this story seems to absorb the past and replace it, presenting past events in a tragic perspective through the prism of today. The present tense (=yor) is also used to describe events that the main character believes will happen to her in the future. They also evoke a persistent sense of hopelessness and anxiety. In such a way, the present tense accumulates all other tenses, apparently becoming infinite: there is nothing but the present, a message which the story’s title emphasizes.

The article analyses economic and political aspects of Algeria’s development against the background of the so-called Arab Spring, reflects on the role of the country’s president who had been honored as a man who stopped the civil war by a national accord. However, in the author’s perception, the current events resulted in deep social differentiation, the emergence of a new oligarchy, built on a splice of military, bureaucracy and private business. The author portrays some of the Algerian leaders, as well.

On the basis of Russian-Chinese parallel corpora, with a focus on academic texts in the social sciences and humanities, this paper examines the universal of как structures in two aspects: equivalence and foreignization. We hypothesize that such equivalence has mixed features. To test this hypothesis, we: 1) classified Russian sentence patterns introduced by как into seven types, four “integral” (for example, the “so that” pattern) and three “split” (for example, the “so…that” pattern). A statistical analysis of Russian как structures and their Chinese equivalents found that equivalence distributions differ between the two languages, with Types Two and Four in the integral group and Type One in the split group having the greatest equivalence; 2) tested the foreignization hypothesis by comparing the distributions of Chinese structures corresponding to как patterns in a translation corpus and a comparable corpus: 正如 (zhengru, just as), sentence-final 因为 (yinwei, for), and the idiomatic structures 如此……以致 (ruci…yizhi, so…that) and 没有……就 (meiyou…jiu, if not…then). Translators tend to follow the conventions of the source language, Russian, rather than those of the target language, Chinese.

The paper examines the semantic domain of falling in modern Japanese. The domain is comprised of two verbs of falling down, ochiru and furu; two verbs of falling over, taoreru and korobu; and one of falling and rolling, korogaru. They differ in their preferred type of trajector (objects for ochiru, rain etc. for furu; animate for korobu, unspecified for taoreru). Some finer characteristics can also be seen: for furu other trajectors than rainfall are acceptable if they come from above the viewpoint. For korobu the trajector must be self-propelling. For vertical objects the resulting prostrate state is covered by taoreru even if the fall itself comes under ochiru.

The article is dedicated to the lexical-semantic and grammatical characteristics of the two main components of the field “movement in ether” – namely, the verbs pát- “to fly; to fall” and dī-/ḍī- “to fly”. The main basis for the analysis was the hymns of the Rigveda; language data from texts in Middle Indo-Aryan and New Indo-Aryan were also used. The dynamics of the semantic and formal transformations of the verbs mentioned and of their derivatives, correlating with their functioning at different phases of the evolution of Indo-Aryan, was demonstrated.

The article analyzes the unpublished correspondence between V.V. Bartold and A.E. Krymsky during the period from 1908 till 1913. It contains valuable data which helps us to reconstruct main trends of the academic life at that time and to have a better understanding of the problems which occurred in the field of Oriental studies in Russia in the early 20th century. The correspondence of these distinguished scholars shows that they shared obvious common sympathy and similar professional interests. The letters of V.V. Bartold and A.E. Krymsky confirm that their primary concern was the state of Oriental studies and the system of education.

Nowadays, China is one of the world’s fastest-growing economies and the largest energy consumer. The rapid development of China has brought the country to the brink of environmental collapse. In order to improve China’s environment, it is necessary to change the structure of energy consumption. Natural gas is a high-quality, highly efficient, clean, low-carbon energy source. It plays an important role in the diversification and optimization of China’s coal-dominated energy mix. Different official documents state that coal-to-gas switching is an integral part of the implementation of China’s low-carbon development strategy and a key element in the country’s transition to a sustainable energy system. This paper focuses on the dynamics and structure of gas consumption by sector and region. It also characterizes forecasts in this sphere for the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016–2020).

New trends in globalization are considered: some authors state that globalization is under threat, with the rise of protectionism and new labor-saving technologies. New trends in globalization of the 2000s include the increasing role of Asian countries in the world economy. In the first half of the 2010s, we can point out the growing importance of regional economic integration, including negotiations on the creation of regional mega-groups such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Possible future variants of the new world economic order, such as Globalization 3.0, Polarization, Islandization, and “Commonization” (version of E. Petersen and P. Laudicina), are depicted. Transnationals from Asian countries play an increasing role in the world economy. The author makes an attempt to show that TNCs from Asian countries are involved in these new trends in globalization: the increasing importance of internal and regional markets, the rise of robotics and automation, and the transfer of labor-intensive industries from Asian countries to “frontier” economies (some African countries).