2023.1

The article examines the determining factors of the formation and development of one of the most acute disputes in the interstate relations between Indonesia and Malaysia, namely territorial dispute. The author turns to its origin in the historical past of the region. Based on the analysis of several agreements concluded between Great Britain and the Netherlands in the colonial era, the main reasons for the development of contradictions are revealed. Special attention is given to the problem of interpretation of the corresponding agreements.

In the shadow of the Emergency declaration in 1975, the Indian government suspended a number of basic human rights including the freedom of conscience, peaceful assembly and association. Eventually it banned some 20 rightwing religious organizations opposed to the socio-political course of Indira Gandhi and attacked their leaders on the grounds of causing unrest, inciting religious riots and provoking communal violence. Though religious and sectarian groups tried to maintain a united front against the government, they lost that battle. As a result, various religious communities were predictably deprived of legal representation and protection at courts, which intensified the violation of human rights and highlighted a need of negotiation process between the government and respective leaders of Indian religious groups. The anti-secular onslaught shed light on the discrimination treatment of minorities, primarily Muslims and Sikhs. The initiation of a forced sterilization campaign of male population predominantly in Muslim areas along with demolition of slums with a large number of Muslim population revealed the glaring hypocrisy of Indian democracy based on the principles of secularism and inclusiveness. This article examines the mid-1970s ban on a number of religious organizations in India and attempts to explore its influence on the Indian society in the subsequent decades. Currently, in the light of ideological confrontation between secularist forces and radical religious groups the study of the “dark” Emergency period implicates the importance of the constitutionally based principle of freedom of conscience and its implementation in real life.

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.

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.

The article is focused on the acceptance of Hindi as the official language of the Republic of India and the related problems of the status of other Indian languages, the constitutional design of the language policy at the stage of formation of the legal system of an independent state, the positions of various regional political forces on this issue and possible solutions to the issue of the official language. The article raises the question of the linguistic unity of multi-ethnic states without an absolute ethnic and linguistic majority. In this context the role of language in shaping the identity of social groups and its possible use as a mechanism of state control is important, as well as the reaction of various political groups and activists. The process of debate in the Constituent Assembly of 1949 is considered to be the starting point for the language policy of the new state, which determined the status of Indian languages for years to come. In this regard, the positions of the participants should be seen as an attempt by various regional forces to influence the language policy in the long term. The article estimates the languages that could claim the status of the official Indian language, their position in the country and society by the time of Independence, the arguments for and against their adoption. In this context the positions of Hindi in different states of India, which classified themselves as Hindi-speaking or non-Hindi-speaking, is very important.

The paper is dedicated to analysis of the problems of presenting the grammatical information in the text of ‘Dhātupāṭha’ which is treated by the Indian grammatical tradition as created by Pāṇini himself (V cent. b.c.) in the form of an ‘Appendix’ to his Sanskrit Grammar ‘Aṣṭādhyāyī’. Having shortly characterized certain historical problems associated with ‘Dhātupāṭha’, the author puts special stress on the fact that all the nowadays available versions of the ‘Appendix’ have reached us in presentation of the later commentators and grammarians, and thus the problem of Pāṇini’s authorship of the treatise is still remaining unsolved. The grammatical information found in ‘Dhātupāṭha’ and not quite consistently presented in it needs to be explicitly opened. That is why the most basic tenets of Sanskrit verbal grammar are — in the shortest way possible — explicated in the paper.- Thus, the paper is supplied with the data concerning verbs’ classification into 10 classes through the help of the so called “presence basis”; the roots are characterized in accordance with their correspondences with the grammemes of Active and Middle voices; the information on the so called “accentuation” in verbal roots and in forms produced from them and on the meta-lingual properties of Sanskrit tones is given; the principles of the distribution of the ‘Dhātupāṭha’ roots into 3 different groups (‘seṭ’, ‘ániṭ’and ‘veṭ’) in accordance with their interaction with the connective ‘-i-‘ are explained; the information concerning the meanings references applied to a number of roots in the ‘Dhātupāṭha’ is also provided. In conclusion, the devices of coding the grammatical information which has been important for ‘pāṇinists’ of all times and which is present in the treatise are explained through the help of the two illustrative samples extracted from one of the versions of ‘Dhātupāṭha’ (S.Katre’s).

The article is devoted to the study of one of the specific aspects of the development of the Persian classical ghazal as a structural and thematic unity with pronounced signs of poetic form. Compositional factors played a key role in the transformation of the ghazal. The techniques of decorating the beginning and ending of a poetic work were regulated by the norms of Arabic poetics borrowed by the Iranians. They were respectively designated by the terms ‘beauty of the beginning’ (husn al-matla‘) and ‘beauty of the ending’ (husn al-makta‘). Their use in Persian poetic practice had notable specificity in comparison with Arabic. The use of repetitive figurative and syntactic clichés to implement these techniques in the ghazal gradually turned into a generally accepted norm. Along with the principle of uniform design of the ending, there is also a basic fund of standard figurative-syntactic models and clichés that served as markers of the beginning of the ghazal. At each stage of its evolution, the ghazal interacted with various components of the genre system, gradually expanding the thematic range and the repertoire of standard beginnings. As a result of these changes, which are often not fixed by theoretical poetic treatises, but fixed in practice, the canonical appearance of the Persian ghazal arises. It was fundamentally different from the original prototype. After going through several stages of transformation, the ghazal turns into a genre form with a set of permanent structural features.