Vol 20, No 3 (2023)

The article presents a part of a Russian translation (with an introduction and commentaries) of the valuable treatise: Dalil al-mutahayyirin (“A Guide for the Perplexed”) by Sayyid Kazim Rashti, one of the founders of the Shaykhi school. The work is dated 1842. The translation is made from the Arabic original and two Persian translations of the treatise.

The paper aims to introduce four Persian documents (a farman and three petitions) from the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts, Fund 77 “Relations between Russia and Persia” into scholarly discourse. These documents are directly related to the visit of Haji Muhammad-‘Ali, messenger from Iranian Shah ‘Abbas II, to the Tsardom of Russia. He was delegated to travel to the Russian state in relation to Shah Safi I’s death in order to meet with the kupchina (official Shah’s tradesman) Bijan-bek in Moscow in 1641–1643 and hand over the gifts to the ruler of the Russian state on behalf of the new Iranian Shah. In this paper, the farman and petitions are translated into Russian; the Persian original and translation are preceded by a historical and linguistic commentary.

There are two schools in the Mahāyāna Buddhist school of Madhyamaka, namely Prāsaṅgika, the more radical one, according to which absolutely all propositions and theories are empty, for every concept in them refers only to other concepts but not to the extraconceptual reality, and Svātantrika that allows the existence of propositions sensible on the level of relative reality. But in Prāsaṅgika itself there were two traditions that differed not in the principles of philosophy but in the character of commenting the basic Madhyamaka text, “Root stanzas on the Middle Way” by Nāgārjuna. These traditions were represented in the commentaries by Buddhapālita (the 5th–6th centuries) and Candrakīrti (the 7th century). Candrakīrti’s commentary is based on Nāgārjuna’s autocommentary Akutobhaya to a much greater extent than Buddhapālita’s one. The latter presents a tradition of commenting Mūla-madhyamaka-kārikā that originates not from Nāgārjuna himself but from a disciple of his.

The article contains the publication of a fragment of an architrave from the Yamanaka (Osaka) catalogue of 1924. According to a number of criteria, it is attributed to the right part of the architrave of Mereru (mrrw) from the State Hermitage collection. Judging by the inscription, the architrave could come from Zawiyet el-Mayetin, although the location of the tomb of Mereru at Saqqara is just as probable. All the titles of Mereru are found both on the monuments of the Memphite region and in the province; they characterize his status as an official above the average rank. On the Yamanaka fragment, one official title has been preserved: zS a-nswt pr-aA “Palace scribe of the royal chancellery”. The current location of the Yamanaka fragment is unknown.

This paper by Nikita Yakovlevich Bichurin (Father Iakinf, 1777–1853) was first published in the periodical Moscow Telegraph, in the “Miscellanies” column (1831, part 42, pp. 141–144) without mentioning the author’s name. The title “Extract from a Letter from Kiakhta of September 19, this 1831 year” was given to the paper by Bichurin’s bibliographers later. The reason for writing this small note was a language examination at the School of Chinese Language in Kiakhta on September 13, 1831. Bichurin himself was teaching at that School for 18 months in 1830–1831 and for one year in 1835–1836. The note is remarkable for one of the earliest mentions of the contact border language — the Kiakhta (Maimaicheng) pidgin and the first introduction of 15 phrases from it.

The article presents the history of acquisition, processing and a brief review of Andreev’s collection of Tamil manuscripts from IOM, RAS. New data have been found as the work on the article proceeded. It concerns A. Grünwedel and V.S. Vorobiov-Desiatovski’s participation in the description of the collection under consideration. In fact, this is the first publication dedicated to Dravidian manuscripts from the Institute’s Indian Collection, and it is likely that it will not be the last.