Articles

The article examines the role of Mughal gardens in Indian history from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. It considers their functions during the reigns of the Great and Late Mughals and their value as indicators of the growth and decline of the Mughal Empire. Establishing gardens was especially important to the first Mughal emperors as a way of marking territory. By the seventeenth century, this way of asserting authority was no longer needed, and the wives and daughters of emperors began to tend the gardens of the capital. The widespread decay of gardens in the eighteenth century reflected the disintegration of the empire. Two Delhi complexes are examined: Humayun’s tomb, the first Mughal dynastic building in South Asia and a model for Indian Muslim architecture, and Safdarjung’s tomb, often described as the last glimmer of Mughal architectural style in Delhi.

The article examines the existence, development and influence of the ancient plot of the Ramayana and its main characters, Rama and Sita, on modern Hindi literature. Numerous publications confirm the importance of this subject for contemporary India. The ancient plot is modernized and connected with the current situation in India and the world. The images of Rama and Sita also allow writers to create new genres: a modern mahakavya in Hindi rather than Sanskrit, a satirical or detective story, a feminist novel, a utopian novel or a postmodern novel with elements of comics. The article focuses on two Hindi works: Premchand’s “Ram Charcha” (Discussing Rama), a Ramayana in simple prose for children and a broad audience, and Kusum Ansal’s “Ek aur Panchavati” (One More Panchavati), a novel in the “mahila lekhan” (women’s writing) movement.

The article deals with some issues of PPP-based international economic comparisons. Considering the case of the world’s two largest economies — China and the USA — it formulates the problems of accurately estimating economic size and the level of economic development. In particular, it identifies shortcomings in IMF and World Bank methods for PPP-based indicators that severely limit researchers’ capacity for analysis and forecasting. It stresses that, given the current quality of statistics, precise estimates of PPP-based GDP cannot be obtained for either developing (low- and middle-income) or developed (high-income) countries. It gives reasons for revising IMF and World Bank methods of adjusting PPP-based GDP.

The article presents an analysis of the semantic field of oscillation verbs in Hindi and its metaphorization. The main aim of this article is to study the principles of organization of the semantic field of oscillation in Hindi. Some semantic parameters relevant for this field in Hindi were revealed. The most relevant parameters are animateness and oscillation because of the deformation.

This article deals with the fate of Hyderabad, the largest princely state in South Asia, after it was integrated into the Indian Union. The decolonization of South Asia affected not only the provinces of British India, but also most of the 600 Indian princely states. Russian historiography pays special attention to the events that took place in British India. The author analyzes the decolonization of Indian princely states, in particular, the case of Hyderabad, which was exceptionally important due to its strategic location within India. Hyderabad was forcedly integrated into India, so this article dwells on the aftermath of this event.

This article focuses on analyzing and comparison of phrase identification criteria in modern Russian and Chinese languages. Through a theoretical and terminological examination author concluded the research with the observation of three common criteria in Russian and Chinese Phraseology. This confirmed to a certain degree the universality of phrase identification in these two languages. However, some unique criteria from Chinese language do result in very different types of phrases in these two languages. It’s recommended that further researches on typology and Inner form of Russian and Chinese phrases can be based on the results of this article.

The article focuses on emotional and sensorial perception of Delhi by three foreigners (J. Matheson, G. Bulger, R. Minturn) who visited India in the second half of the XIXth century and authored informative travelogues.

The article describes the semantic field of the “human” concept that is widely presented among the Swahili proverbs. That is the space of this concept that helps to overview the system of spiritual cultural values. Cultural and spiritual values are very important part of every ethnic community and Swahili as well. These values are accumulated, carefully kept and pass from generation to generation of Swahili people with the help of their proverbs. Cultural values are also a basic category of the world’s picture of the ethnos. All the values are invisibly spread and somehow codified in the language of Swahili community and proverbs are not an exception. The investigation of human values through the proverbs is like a key to the soul of Swahili people.

The article is focused on the role of Nuri al-Said in the process of state-making in Iraq in the beginning of the XX century. Special attention is paid to the issues of establishing of the British Mandate in Mesopotamia and the beginning of the independence according to the treaty of 1930 between Britain and Iraq.

Contemporary Chinese poetry demonstrates a tendency towards converging word and image. Many authors use this convergence of visual and verbal as a means of renewing their poetics. It reflects not only orientation towards a creative dialogue with the art of previous periods, but also emergence of new expressive means that implicate language experiments (incl. words as asemantic images). Examples of this approach include formal experiments of poet-cum-artist Yan Li, calligraphic explorations of Ouyang Jianghe, and works of several poetry groups and circles, among others — the ‘marvelous enlightenment’ calligraphy school (miao wu). This use of hybrid formats for information presentation captures new ways of visual-verbal interaction in rethinking of the literati tradition. At the same time, it constitutes a part of our need for surviving in a global text field, where misunderstanding of the text language in constant crossing of linguistic borders is increasingly becoming an important part of our practice.

The article describes the events in Libya from 1943, when Libya was liberated from the control of Italy and divided into three occupation zones, to the first decade of the XXI century, the verge of “Arab Spring”, which triggered a civil war in that country. It especially focuses on the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya regime, which was overthrown together with its founder in 2011. The author shows that behind this regime, allegedly based on direct democracy, was not only the autocracy of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, but also political confrontation between representatives of different tribal clans, which escalated in 1991–1998, during the period of international embargo against Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. The article also analyzes the main trends of Libyan foreign policy and internal conflicts that lead to the fall of Libyan Arab Jamahiriya and the shocking death of Gaddafi.

The article speaks about the numerous verbal forms in the Fula language (Atlantic family) and the best way to translate them into typologically different languages, such as Indo-European. The verbal forms discussed are predicates, participles and recently grammaticalized auxiliaries.

The social status of the reaya of the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century is analyzed in this article. The author describes the relationship between the peasant and sipahi-landowners. Much attention is given to the consideration of categories of the peasantry, types of taxes that were paid in favour of sipahi and the state treasury, the mutual duties and rights of reaya and landowners.