2023.2

This article is devoted to the broad question of the connection of synchronous epigraphic sources of the Chunqiu era on the history of ancient East Asia and those types of texts that were included as components in later complex texts. The examples of two inscriptions on bronze vessels show the emergence of two different traditions of self-referencing inscriptions: the tradition of royal inscriptions and the tradition of inscriptions of dignitaries of hereditary aristocratic clans. The example of the second type of inscriptions shows the origin of the plot core of that type of texts, which will later become a type of historical and literary narratives in Chun qiu zuo zhuan, which are sometimes called “anecdotes”. The research shows the similarity between the plot in the inscription and the general outline of events in the written monument. The article assumes the parallel development of two different traditions of texts arising from different types of inscriptions, these processes are linked to the development of two types of statehood in . The article also describes the successive stages of the genesis of tradition of narratives: from inscriptions on bronze of the 7th century BC through the inscriptions on bamboo of the Zhangguo era to the time to the antologies and complex texts of the Western Han era. Thus, we can conclude that there is a continuous chain of transmission of historical information from synchronous primary sources to complex narratives of the later historical tradition. Our research establishes a connection between the productive type of preservation of historical memory and the winning imperial model.

The paper explores the military industry development in the Ottoman Empire during the period of active reorganization of its armed forces and implementation of Western technical innovations (1826–1880). The paper scrutinizes the activities of the most important Ottoman industrial centers: the Imperial Arsenal, the Imperial Weapons Workshop, the Powder Workshop and the sewing factory. These centers provided all kinds of troops with the necessary supplies, producing cannons, small arms, ammunition and uniforms for military personnel. The multifaceted analysis of the Ottoman military transformations allowed to highlight a number of important research findings: first, the ambivalent nature of the reforms, which improved the technical equipment, but worsened the economic situation in the empire; second, the dependence of the Ottoman Empire on imports from Europe and America, which was relevant for all aspects of the military; third, the insufficient technical and economic basis for the reforms; four, the subordinate position of the Ottoman state relative to Western military-technical thought. Reformers found themselves trapped in a vicious circle, being forced to rebuild the whole industry from scratch for each new model of weapons created in Europe. Several unsuccessful attempts of organization of the military industry resulted in the degradation of the Ottoman military production and the beginning of purchases for the entire army. At the same time, the reformers did not take into account the expenses of the innovations. This practice contributed to both economic and political collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

The article analyzes the complex and tangled relationship between members of the military-political elite of Ottoman Egypt at the end of the 18th century. Based on the materials of the chronicle of the Egyptian annalist Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti the article aims to reveal the principal motives for the murder of one of the key figures in the neo-Mamluk hierarchy — Emir al-Hajj Yusuf-Bek. At the same time, the author examines the role of Islamic religious leaders, namely the Egyptian Alim corps, in this notorious affair. As a result of the case study, a finding is made about the necessity of observing the norms of behavior set in the Egyptian society by holders of secular power towards the religious spiritual authorities.

The paper explores the development of Iranian-Turkish relations through the prism of Turkish press coverage of Reza Shah’s visit to Turkey from 10 June to 7 July 1934. The research is based on the content analysis of the flagship Kemalist media outlets — namely, the newspapers Akşam, Cumhurriyet, Hakimiyet-i Milliye and Son Posta. Founded at the turn of the late 1910s and early 1920s with the personal support of Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk), these newspapers became the mouthpiece of the ruling People’s Republican Party and an instrument of Kemalist political propaganda. The visit of Reza Shah Pahlavi to Turkey in 1934 became an important event in the history of Iranian-Turkish relations, which experienced in the 1930s a new stage in its development characterized by both the overcoming century-old confrontation legacy and the imperatives of modernization and Westernization. The state visit of Reza Shah and his meetings with Ataturk marked the course for establishing good neighborly relations and cooperation between Ankara and Tehran. The Kemalist propaganda, mixing the problematic issues of bilateral relations, played a significant role in covering these events and giving them an official solemn gloss. Although there is a number of publications analyzing the record-breaking visit of Reza Shah to Turkey, none of the well-known works attempted to analyze the events through the prism of Turkish press coverage and Kemalist propaganda’s activities. The content analysis of Turkish press revealed the mechanisms for creating a positive image of Iran, the ruling Shah and relations between Tehran and Ankara in an exclusively positive way using a variety of propaganda techniques. The state visit of the Iranian Shah became a manifestation for the policy of good neighborliness, set by the 1932 agreement between Turkey and Iran, and continued in the subsequent years.

The present article based on local chronicles and diplomatic correspondence as well as on the accounts of European and Russian visitors to the khanate focuses on the issue of specific traits and evolution of courtly ceremonial and official titles adopted by the khans of Khiva in the 1st half of the 19th century. This source material supports the idea of the styling of Khivan rulers being deeply rooted into epic Iranian and Quranic traditions. The titles used equally reflect the polyethnic nature of the Qongrat khans’ authority, appealing to Turkic, Mongol, Arabic and Iranic elements.

The article deals with the situation of Antiochian Orthodox Church in contemporary Syria and Lebanon. With the example of Antioch Patriarch Theodosius’s reign the author makes an attempt to analyze the Patriarchate’s inner life as well as a set of external factors that had an influence on it. In the middle of the 20th century, the canonical territory of the Antioch Patriarchate became an object of intense rivalry between the Cold War blocs. The traditional competition between Damascus and Beirut is coupled with the emergence of the independent states of Syria and Lebanon, which leads to a church management crisis, which has repeatedly been on the verge of a split. At the same time, the Greek and Russian influence, which has a long history, is filled with a new content, becoming an internal factor in the life of the Orthodox community. The Lebanese region and the Greek party within the patriarchy had a pronounced pro-Western orientation, while the Syrian group was closer to an alliance with the Russian Orthodox Church and the USSR. Great value in the transformation of the patriarchate was played by “The Orthodox Youth Movement”, which by the end of Patriarch Theodosius’s reign had won key synodal positions and determined the pro-Greek bias in the external church relations.

The article deals with the period of the first monarch of the Western Han state — Liu Ban, better known as Han Gao-tsu (202–195 B.C.). This period is investigated in the context of collision of different paradigms of future development of the new Han Empire as the largest and longest-lasting state formation of the imperial type in ancient East Asia.

The paper discusses issues in the contemporary historiography of Telugu (Andhra) ethnonationalism as part of research on national movements and development of political consciousness of the peoples of independent India. The growth of religious and ethnic nationalisms, separatism and autonomous movements in the contemporary world has put forward the necessity of rethinking the above processes within the framework of ethnonational policies pursued by states. In the Republic of India whose 1.5 billion people speak 19.5 thousand languages and dialects and represent more than ten religions (including three world religions) as well as many religious beliefs, the problems of ethno-linguistic and ethno-confessional belonging get increasingly politicized as a powerful resource for regional and all-India political, economic, cultural and other elites. Authors of this paper discuss aspects of foreign and Soviet/Russian scholarly studies along the following lines: 1) nationalism and federalism within the all-India context (with a particular focus on South India); 2) the setting up of Vishalandhra and building it into India’s administrative territorial framework of the 1950s; 3) the Telangana movement, or the ‘Greater Andhra’ restructuring process.

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.

The article is focused on the problem of language shift in Malaysian minority communities. The studies conducted by both local and foreign researchers on endangerment and maintenance of minor ethnic languages in Malaysia has been reviewed. Native languages of minority communities were divided into groups based on the ethnicity of their speakers: indigenous, creole and idioms of the immigrants. As a result of the analysis of the language situation in each selected group, three directions of the language shift among their speakers were identified: into Malay, English and Mandarin Chinese. The data obtained from this study contributes to the information about the reasons for language shift, which put minor languages into disadvantageous positions in the modern world.

The paper describes the relationship between historical changes in syntactic coding strategies and the rules of co-referential deletion in the history of Western Indo-Aryan languages. It will be shown that the evolution from nominative-accusative to ergative type, and then a partial return to the nominative-accusative model of syntactic coding manifested itself not only in morphological marking and verbal agreement, but also in the domain of syntactic ergativity — the rules of clausal combination and co-referential deletions. The nominative-accusative strategy of syntactic coding was typical for Old Indo-Aryan period. In the Middle Indo-Aryan it was replaced by a “split” ergative one: sentences with perfective verbal forms were structured according to the ergative model. The Middle Indo-Aryan and the beginning of the New Indo-Aryan period show the most consistent features of morphological ergativity. In the course of historical development, the ergative strategy (S=P≠A) gives way to a neutral one (S=P=A), then a contrastive one (S≠P≠A), which in a significant part of Rajasthani nominal paradigms, as well as in Punjabi pronominal paradigms, was later replaced by accusative system of case marking (S=A≠P). Middle and early New Indo-Aryan languages demonstrated both the peak of morphological ergativity and various deviations from the classical accusative model of clause combinations and coreferential deletions. Later, with the transition to a contrastive and nominative-accusative system of case marking, the rules of clausal combination and coreferential deletions acquired a consistently accusative character. Middle and early New Indo-Aryan languages had one more feature of syntactic ergativity: the Agent in ergative construction was only a secondary figure in the sentence and could be easily omitted. In most modern Western NIA languages Agent omission is impossible.

The article considers the films of the popular Chinese film director Zhang Yimou, as a text of culture and in the context of the development of the Chinese film industry in today's global competition in the field of culture. The purpose of this article is to investigate the reasons for the popularity of Zhang Yimou's films both in China and abroad. With the help of a semiotic analysis of the cultural code and the functioning of ideology in the films under consideration, it was concluded that the success of Zhang Yimou's work was achieved due to different directorial strategies depending on the audience — Chinese and foreign. The article examines the use of cinematography as a tool of "soft power, with the help of which the famous Chinese director promotes world interest to the national history and culture, thereby implementing the state policy of revival China's authority on the international stage. Understanding the essence of culturally and socially important information encrypted with the help of cultural code in modern Chinese films is also important for improving effective intercultural communication skills.

The article deals with the analysis of folklore texts of the peoples from the Indonesian provinces of Papua (written down in the 1960s–1970s). ‘Folk Tales from Irian Jaya’ may be considered to be a relatively new material in comparison with the field-work by Wirtz and Nevermann done before WWII. The study focuses on the archaic features of these texts such as etiologism, totemism, the cult of ancestors, belief in spirits, etc. The article attempts to identify the key elements of the most ancient layers of folklore, which are undergoing inevitable changes in oral transmission and written fixation. On having analyzed the texts the author has come to the conclusion, that the innovations are made in order to include the Papuan part to the melting pot of the pan-Indonesian culture, but such later interpolations do not ruin the archaic elements. The study of Papuan folk tales is intended to contribute reconstruction of a more complete picture of the primary forms of Indonesian folklore and its evolution.

This article is aimed at studying the childhood component in the works of Nima Yushij and his younger coeval Golchin Gilani (1910–1972). Both authors stayed at the origins of Iran’s “new poetry” (“še‘r-e now”), which demonstrated a break with the rules of normative poetics. This study addresses two interrelated aspects of the analysis. First, the matter is focused on the strategy of displaying memories of childhood, which form a frame of axes in the author's artistic world. Secondly, the artistic solutions of Nima Yooshij, embodied in his poems for children at the meaning and formal organization aspects, contributed to the formation of “new poetry” tools, since these poems could serve as a kind of creative laboratory for the poet. The article touches upon the little-studied area of scientific consideration of the "new poetry" in Iran, especially: the origins of the childhood theme in traditional Persian-language poetry; the role and functions of the childhood theme in the construction of the author's individual artistic world in the "new poetry"; figurative image fabric of children's feelings by the material of the early “new poetry” works in Persian. The childhood theme in the lyrics of the two authors is tightly connected with the theme of love for a homeland. The idyllic description of the homeland’s beautiful nature serves as a "portal" to the ideal world, and the author's landscape, imbued with the personal vision of the lyrical hero, is one of the methods for individualizing the artistic world in the "new poetry" poems.

The article examines the change in the nature of bilateral trade between the EU and Turkey during the period of its stay in the Customs Union of European states, that is, from 1996 to the present. In the early years, a sharp aggravation of the deficit nature of trade for Turkey was expected. It is not surprising that the imbalance has softened somewhat in the subsequent period due to Turkey's gradual adaptation to new conditions and the effective use of new import opportunities not only to saturate the consumer market, but also for technological renewal of production. What looks paradoxical in many ways is the bringing of bilateral trade in the last few years to a balanced state and even some surplus in favor of Turkey. The change in the nature of bilateral trade, apparently, was the result of long-term factors. Firstly, there has been an "ennobling" of Turkish exports, understood in this case as a certain increase in the level of its manufacturability, although while maintaining a low share of the actual high-tech goods. Mobility is also important not only for Turkish exporters, but also for Turkey's European partners, who are very willing to take into account the new opportunities of Turkish partners in their import strategy. Secondly, the expansion of the EU due to the entry of economically weaker new members, close to the level of development of Turkey or even lagging behind it, trade with which is mainly surplus for the Turkish side. At the same time, Turkey's trade with the EU-15 countries, as before, remains scarce.

This article demonstrates the current situation in the field of literary translation from oriental languages into Russian, providing an overview of the translated works from Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Persian, Arabic, Indian and Kyrgyz literatures of different eras — from antiquity to the present — in terms of their content and volume. In addition, it highlights the specific features of literary and artistic translation from oriental languages. For example, much thought should be put into translation of the realities that characterize the oriental cultures: in particular, specific idioms and exoticisms. The question is raised as to how far the translation should deviate from the original: should the translator make his product interesting for the reader or should it be as close as possible to the original text in terms of content. The above examples of difficulties in literary translation allow to conclude that oriental literature is quite sophisticated in its presentation to the Russian reader, and yet these translations show increasing popularity.

The Encyclopedia of Japanese Linguistics (Nihongogaku daijiten), published in 2018, is a new type dictionary concerning Japanese linguistics. The Encyclopedia of Japanese Linguistics, which was compiled over a long period of time from 2006 to 2018 by a collective of prominent native and world linguists, highlights the achievements of modern Japanese and world linguistics in compliance with modern approaches. This dictionary is the first Japanese dictionary in which new linguistic terms and description of the linguistic methods and terms are presented. The dictionary includes more than 800 dictionary entries and introduces almost all epochs and theories of linguistics as well as the most significant concepts of world linguistics from ancient times to the present. The Encyclopedia of Japanese Linguistics was preceded by “The Japanese Linguistic Dictionary” (1955) and “The Japanese Great Linguistic Dictionary” (1980). Both dictionaries were reprinted several times and reflected the achievements of linguistics at the time of their publication, but no longer meet the requirements of the contemporary time. It should be noted the appearance of a large number of new dictionary entries and the expansion of the list of personalities in The “Encyclopedia of Japanese Linguistics” on account of the description of new linguistic approaches. The dictionary also includes a number of appendices, which are described in the following review. Being a fundamental source of linguistics knowledge, the dictionary also makes a significant contribution to the development of Japanese lexicography.

The article investigates the biography and academic legacy of the famous Russian representative of classical Oriental studies Boris V. Miller (1877–1956). His life along with his scholarly and pedagogical activities reflected turning points in the history of linguistic, folkloristic, historical and ethnographic studies of the Iranian-speaking peoples of the Caucasus — Talysh, Kurds and Tats at the end of the 19th — first half of the 20th century. Professor B.V. Miller is remembered in the history of Oriental studies in Russia as a talented and highly motivated scholar who made a significant contribution to the development of Iranian studies, and as one of the founders of Iranian studies at Lomonosov Moscow State University.