The article examines the Soviet Union’s policy in Afghanistan during the period of its military presence there (1979–1989) as a set of measures corresponding to the modern interpretation of the concepts of nation-building and state-building. It also analyzes modern theories of nation- and state-building and highlights their main trends, forms, and problems. The author also proposes a unique approach that combines these two concepts as “nation-state-building” in relation to the Soviet project in Afghanistan. The article elaborates on the main tasks of the Soviet policy in the 1980s in Afghanistan as well as their implementation and results. Due to the combination of “nation-building” and “state-building” concepts in a complex structure of “nation-state-building”, the article draws conclusions, first, about the applicability of this approach to the specific Soviet project of state-building in Afghanistan, and, second, about the complexity of the project itself, which included ideological, political, economic, and military components. On the basis of archive documents, memoirs of military and diplomatic actors, and a wide scope of academic research, the author substantiates the idea of large-scale tasks of nation-state-building in Afghanistan in Soviet foreign policy, and also indicates that the implementation of the project encountered great difficulties from the unfolding civil war to the inability of the Afghan leaders to consolidate the political life of the country. Soviet leadership quickly realized the unreadiness of the Afghan society for the proposed systemic social transformations. Despite the fact that the goals of the Soviet project were not achieved, this does not diminish its scale and historical significance.

At the end of 2019 and in early 2020, there were large-scale protests in India against amendments to the Citizenship Act 1955. They touched upon an important issue for Indian society — the issue of religion. Many protest actions were characterized by appeals to various forms of art, including poetry. We analyze the perception of secular or inclusive nationalism in the context of the 2019–2020 protests through the prism of the most popular poetic works that were recited at various venues. We present an overview of the problem of secularism in modern India, which is necessary to understand the main motifs of the works. In addition, the political context of the anti-CAA protests, as well as some of its peculiarities that are directly related to the issues of the Indian nation and religion, are considered. We give a brief description of the works under consideration, among which are both classical examples of Urdu poetry and poems created directly in the context of events. We study the main motifs of the above-mentioned poetic works, among which special attention is paid to the motif of inclusiveness. It is noted that the structure of poetic works reflects the generalization of individual experience to the collective experience. We conclude that poetry in which the ideas of resistance are expressed remains a key element of political struggle in contemporary India.

The article explores the novel Manjali and Cakrabirawa (2010) by one of the most outstanding modern Indonesian writers, Ayu Utami (born in 1968), whose philosophical and intellectual work marked the beginning of a new era in Indonesian literature. The novel was not translated into English and has not been the subject of research in Russia. Articles on the topic are few and only deal with themes of gender studies and feminism. This article provides an analysis of the interpretation of the plot-forming mythological layer of the novel. Utami boldly raises the topic of political repression through mythological optics, offers her own view on the construction of the image of a witch called Calon Arang, supposedly a political rival of a historical figure — Raja Airlangga (1000–1049), the ruler of the Javanese-Balinese state of Kediri (1042–1222). Calon Arang, nicknamed Rangda (“widow”), is a well-known character in folklore, the story has many versions. The relevance of the article is due to the paradox of the myth of Calon Arang: on the one hand, its characters and plot are well known to Indonesians (primarily Javanese and Balinese), but on the other hand, the myth remains poorly understood. Cultural-historical, comparative-typological and mythopoetic methods make it possible to analyze the mythological images in her novel “Manjali and Cakrabirava”, which is, as the events of the mythological plot of the 11th century, associated with political issues — the struggle for power and the demonization of the opponent.

This paper considers causal markers in Old Khmer, the language of epigraphic 7th–15th century monuments found in Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand. Consistently looking at the contexts of two lexemes, hetu and man, it ascertains that hetu (traceable to the Sanskrit noun “cause”) was used in the 10th–11th centuries as a specialized conjunction to introduce causal clauses. Modern Khmer has transformed hetu into the conjunction haet tae. Modern Khmer also widely uses haet in various consequence phrases (as against its merely sporadic occurrences in this meaning in Old Khmer). The conjunction man is another ancient causal marker, probably ascending to Old Javanese. In consistence with modern views on the emergence of causal markers, its causal function may have developed from its earlier temporal uses (“when”). Man is not found in Modern Khmer, having fallen out of use as early as in the Middle Khmer, the language of the 15th–18th century monuments. Our probe into causal constructions with hetu and man could not come up with any examples of Old Khmer constructions with dependent nominal causal phrases, while these are common in Modern Khmer, though evidently — as derivatives of dependent causal clauses. The paper also looks into the potential emergence paths for the modern causal markers prʊəh and daoj(-saː). Our conclusion is that the registered occurrences of the Old Khmer ancestors of these words (roḥ and toy, respectively) provide no definite clue as to their evolution or the exact period when they or their derivatives assumed the causal function. Nevertheless, the existence of their modern Thai (pʰrɔ́ʔ, dûay) and Lao (pʰɔ̄ʔ, dûay ) counterparts suggests that the Old Khmer also used the respective causal markers that were later borrowed by Tai languages.

At the last decades of the long 19th century, a prominent Russian Muslim journalist and educator, Ismail Gasprinskii (1851–1914), promoted a cultural-political project for Russian Muslims, which after the Revolution of 1905 gradually shifted to the idea of national-cultural autonomy within Russian empire, long after some of Gasprinskii’s ideas were reinterpreted and he personally became known as a pan-Turkist, especially in the USSR and in Turkey. This case study aims at examining how the image of Ismail Gasprinskii was embedded into pan-Turkic discourse in Turkey. Hence, we focus on key authors, including founders of pan-Turkism Yusuf Akçura and Ziya Gökalp, who initiated the process of portraying Gasprinskii as one of the “ideologists of pan-Turkism”. Following the main aim of the study, we also briefly analyze Gasprinskii’s cultural-political project for Russian Muslims, along with the ideas of pan-Turkism per se. We argue that there are two central narratives, which solidified the imagination of Gasprinskii as a “pan-Turkist”. First, the myth of his studying in Moscow military gymnasium amidst the “militant pan-Slavism”, and second, the pan-Turkic reinterpretation of the slogan “Unity in language, thoughts, deeds”, which appeared on the heading of Gasprinskii’s newspaper Perevodchik-Terjiman in October of 1912, two years before his death.

The paper is devoted to understanding of the taboo phenomenon in language as a component of invective vocabulary on the example of Arabic, English and Russian languages, and also to study of the borders of this phenomenon and methods of its determination. In his study of conceptual features of forbidden words the author of the article refers to the works of K. Allen and K. Burridge, as well as M. Ljung. In addition to the theoretical works of linguists, the author analyzes the existing practice of implementing linguistic prohibitions in Russian, English, which affects such areas as legislation and media. Especially valuable material that was analyzed, was studies of English-speaking media regulators and major broadcasting companies. The main purpose of these surveys was to identify the list of words that audience considered unacceptable on the air, i.e. taboo. As for Arab law, there is no separation of vocabulary on permissible and unacceptable, as well as there is no obvious border and in Arabic language standards or usage. However, this does not mean the lack of prohibited words and the author clearly demonstrates the presence of taboos on examples from Arab media. In addition, the article discusses the works of Arab linguists M. A. Khatyab and N. Ya. Kanbar, dedicated to taboo vocabulary. Nevertheless, the problem of reliable determination and identification of language taboos has not been solved yet, and the author of the paper proposes a relevant criterion to determine the taboo words on the basis of the approaches existing in modern linguistics.

Both Arab and Western scholars agree that, starting in the mid-20th century, the correlation of Western Europeans with the Crusaders and the extrapolation of the term “Crusade” to modern military conflicts have become an integral part of modern Arab political discourse, and are also widely reflected in Arab culture. The existence of works examining references to the theme of the Crusades in Arab social thought, politics, and culture of the second half of the 20th century contrasts with the almost complete absence of specialized studies devoted to the analysis of references to this historical era in Arab culture in the 19th century and first half of the 20th. An analysis of references to the era of the Crusades in the work of Arab poets before 1948 shows that, already in the period of the Arab Revival, this topic occupied an important place in the imagery of anti-colonial poetry, and not only in Egypt, Syria, and Palestine, historically attacked by the Crusaders, but also in other regions of the Arab world. If, before World War I, Arab poets only praised the commanders of the past who defeated the Crusaders, then afterwards the theme of the Crusades was also used to liken the European colonialists to the “medieval Franks”. The authors of the poems containing images from the era of the Crusades were, among others, the participants of the Arab Uprising of 1936–1939 and the Arab-Israeli War of 1947–1949, who set their goal with the help of poetry to mobilize the masses for the struggle.

Since the beginning of the 21st century, educating a population capable to ensure high growth rates and to improve qualitative characteristics has become crucial for modern China. The Chinese authorities proclaimed science and education to be the “foundation” of socialist modernization and the “root” of further development of the Chinese society. To deepen the transformation in education initiated under the policies of reform and opening up, China’s educational system has come a long way. Until recently, the main focus for the authorities was the public education system. The private education sector, although formally enjoying political support from the state, nevertheless developed rather chaotically. Economic reforms in the country created the preconditions for increasing educational demand of the population not only for public but also private education, which was facilitated by a number of factors, including growth of welfare and urbanization. However, the development of the sphere of nongovernmental education had pronounced regional specifics, so it occurred rather unevenly. Recently, the development of private educational institutions has become one of the areas, on which the authorities have actively started working on. The article provides an overview of the development of private education in China, touches on the problems and peculiarities of the development of the private education sector, the impact of the pandemic, prerequisites and the upcoming reforms in the industry in the nearest future.

The paper presents a tentative overview of pronouns in Ginyanga, an understudied Kwa language spoken in Togo and Ghana; in particular, personal pronouns, reflexive pronouns, demonstratives, and quantifiers. There are no subject pronouns in Ginyanga. We define two personal pronoun series with a designated pronoun for each noun class: basic (emphatic and possessive) and object. The basic set of pronouns is used in independent and possessive contexts, as well as in reflexive constructions. The overview of Guang pronoun systems shows that Ginyanga falls into the typical Guang pattern. Possessive pronouns of the 1st (human) class exhibit some irregularities when used with kinship terms. In some cases, the morphological agreement pattern between a noun and its coreferential object pronoun can be violated on a semantic basis, e. g. human referents of non-human noun classes. Additionally, there is some variation in usage of object pronoun series by different consultants of different age groups, which may be an indication of language change. There are two demonstratives, -balɪ “this” and -bʊnʊ “that”, also subject to class agreement. In contrast to -balɪ, the demonstrative -bʊnʊ is also used in relative clauses and can be anaphoric. The majority of quantifiers demonstrate no class agreement. The only exceptions in our data are -kʊ “one” and kpɛkpɛ “each”.

The Manden Charter, according to tradition, was adopted in 1236 at Kurukan Fuga (Mali), after the victory of Sunjata Keita, legendary Mali ruler, over Sumaoro Kante, general of susu troops. It is a corpus of rules that was created to organize the Mali Empire. In 2009, UNESCO inscribed the Charter on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The Charter, like the Hunters’ Oath (1222), belongs to the oral tradition and was documented only in 1998. Therer are many oral variants of text. So there is controversy about its authenticity. Basing on the results of my previous research, it is safe to say that the Charter conveys the main social norms of Manden society and its social structure, however, it contains also some modern ideas. In Guinea, near Niagassola village, there is a place similar to Kurukan Fuga, where until recently the main Manden families gathered to make important decisions. Informants said that Sundiata himself was there also. The Charter may be even more significant today than it used to be, which is why it has become the center of attention both among the Manden peoples and abroad. Like every oral tradition the Charter makes changes in history, and this alternation of history is inevitable, because history is important not just for the past, but for present and future of the peoples. Today the Charter is an important element in Manden’s self-identification.

In the first quarter of the 21st century, the verbal model of the Mongolian Empire as a “globalizing power” firmly entered scholarly discourse. Modern processes of globalization are compelling the study of similar manifestations in the past. The systematic method of historical modeling allows you to create a verbal model describing globalization, for example, in the 13th century. Thus, to introduce the concept of “globalization” in relation to the history of the Mongol Empire, the provision on the worldwide nature of the political, economic and ideological structures of the Genghisid state is used. The concept of “Mongolian/Horde globalism” is becoming widespread in the modern discursive field. Thus, during 2006–2020, the concept of “Mongolian globalism” became widespread not only in popular scientific works, but also in scientific articles and monographs. It is quite natural and natural that the largest conquests of the Genghisids in history led to the creation of a powerful state in which unified centralized control was established, including over transcontinental trade routes. The unified management contributed to the security of trade routes and, as a result, to the revival of trade and information exchange. Undoubtedly, the trade aspect, which is most clearly traced in the economy of the Mongol Empire and the Golden Horde, has a unifying and globalizing feature. However, its scientific assessment, as well as the identification of the nature and essence of the “Mongolian phenomenon” requires more in-depth research. The article explores the features of the formulated conceptual model, the accuracy and significance of the concepts involved for all participants of the discursive field. As a result, it is concluded that there is no reliable justification for the signs, forms and patterns of the development of the phenomenon of “Mongolian globalization” at the moment.

The paper examines the change of turban space in Seoul at the turn of 20th Century. The period is rich in events that influenced the formation of the modern Korean state: ranging from the “opening of the ports” in 1876, to the proclamation of the Korean Empire in 1897. At the same time, the country began the process of modernizing urban planning legislation. Urbanprojects were carried out under the Hansung City Improvement Project (한성 도시 개조 사 업) adopted by Kojong and his government in 1896 and continued until 1905. However, in modern historiography, the project is rarely considered as an example of modern urban planning in Korea. In this paper the diary entries, collections of stories, and memoirs of foreign diplomats who lived in Korea in the end of the 19th century are analyzed, along with papers from journalists and missionaries who traveled around Korea. The results of the analysis show that qualitative changes in the urban space of Seoul took place from 1896 to 1905, within the framework of modernization reforms of the period. The Hansung City Improvement Project should be considered as an example of modern urban planning in Korea, as it was initiated and implemented by the national government within modern legal framework, and Seoul became modern city of the early XX Century. The findings of the study are important for understanding the nature of the changes that took place in Korea, starting with the “opening of the ports” in 1876.

The Oriental Department of the St Petersburg University’s library has a unique manuscript “Confessionario em Lingua Mandarina”, a handbook for confession, compiled by Dominican father Francisco Varo (1627-1687) for use in his (and his confrères) missionary work in earlier Qing China (sec. half of the 17th c.). The manuscript, seven folios altogether, bound into a dictionary (Dictionario Lusitanico Sinico Tartaro Historico Mathematico Latino for Congregação da Missão Portugueza), amidst its main body, is a precious gift to all researchers in the field, for it is, by all accounts, a unique exemplar of this kind of text by the famous missionary. Varo’s written legacy has received special attention from historians of Catholic missions in China and researchers on the Ming and Qing Chinese language. However a Confessionario is not traced in Varo’s bibliography. The undenied value of the text is its bilingual contents: the confessor’s questions in the Portuguese language translated into the earlier Qing Mandarin (southern guanhua). Documents, codifying the main Chinese dialect of the 17th c. are rather rare, although a number of elaborated descriptions of variant systems of guanhua romanization by Western missionaries provide us with all necessary instruments to analyse the transcription method, used by Varo in the Confessionario. The author of the article attempts to implement the existing methodology to identify the place of this piece of Varo’s work in the Chinese romanization mosaic. Being Portuguese-based, the transcription of the Confessionario differs significantly from Varo’s Spanish-oriented system in Vocabulario de la Lengua Mandarina (1670) and Arte de la Lengua Mandarina (1682-1703), naturally demonstrating more in common to the earlier systems by Ricci, Trigault and Martini. A few peculiarities of the romanization used in Confessionario are revealed in the article.

The article examines the process of the spread of Islam in Tsunta, i. e., in the southwestern part of Highland Dagestan, which is now part of the Tsuntinsky district of the Republic of Dagestan. By the end of the XV Century Tsunta was the only micro-region in Dagestan whose inhabitants did not yet adhere to Islam. The study is based on a comprehensive approach to the issue: the authors use information from epigraphic monuments, narratives, already published written sources, as well as oral traditions recorded by them. The latter are used only as an auxiliary source, which helps to bring additional facts to the reconstructed picture. The basic sources are local Arabic-language written sources, epitaphs of memorial monuments and written correspondence of representatives of the spiritual and political elite of Dagestan with the rural societies of mountain Dagestan. The former were identified by the authors in the Kortan locality, located in the Antsukh Gorge, Tlyaratinsky district. During the archaeographic expedition the authors also identified three Arabic-language letters, which contain answers to some key questions related to the topic under study. One of them, as it turned out, had already been previously published, but the authors offer their own version of the translation, as well as publish a copy of the letter for the first time. The other two letters are being researched for the first time. The authors have managed to identify a previously little-known phenomenon of the functioning of the Ghazi center in medieval Dagestan. From Kortan, with the involvement of volunteers from other settlements, military campaigns were organized against “pagan” communities that did not want to convert to Islam. From there, Qadis and other representatives of the Islamic clergy were appointed to Tsunta to carry out missionary work on the spot. We were also able to date the process of the spread of Islam in Tsunta, which took place from the end of the sixteenth century to the beginning of the eighteenth century.

The article presents a summary of the unpublished catalogue of Oirat manuscripts and xylographs preserved at the Cabinet for Collecting, Cataloguing, and Publishing Old Books of Ethnic Minorities, the National Affairs Committee of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (Ürümqi), compiled by the keeper of the collection Do. Galdan. The fund contains around 400 books collected among the Mongolian population of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region since 1984. The Catalogue compiled by Do. Galdan is a list of 397 entries structured according to the order of shelfmarks: the items are neither classified by topic nor indexed, which does not allow the search for a particular text inside the collection. Therefore, classifying and grouping the items is the main task of this article. Its main focus is a thematic index to the upcoming catalogue. The index is preceded by commentary that introduces the classification of texts and notes the highlights of the collection. The texts were classified based on their titles and the descriptions of their content provided by Do. Galdan in his draft catalogue. The overall number of surviving Oirat manuscripts is limited, and the value of the materials preserved in Ürümqi is beyond dispute. What makes this collection exceptional is its local and popular character which reflects the tradition of text-related practices spread among the Oirat population of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in the 20th century.

Sinology and Manchu studies in Russia are famous for their traditions and their own path of development. Since the 18th century, members of the Russian Orthodox mission devoted themselves to sinology and Manchu studies, especially in the second half of the 19th century, when they carried out a large number of studies on the history of the Qing dynasty and the Manchu language that deserve our attention. This article analyzes entries related to Manchu in the Complete Manchu-Russian Dictionary by I. I. Zakharov. By comparing selected entries of the Complete Manchu-Russian Dictionary with two OTHER Manchu Dictionaries, namely Da Qing Quan Shu and Yuzhi Zengding Qingwen Jian , the article demonstrates how I. I. Zakharov defined the vocabulary and differences of interpretations in these dictionaries. By comparing entries with information from contemporary works, such as Works on Chinese Issues by Russian Missionaries in Beijing in the Mid-19 th Century and the travel note Travel to China , this article provides an image to understand how vocabulary reflects Russians’ understanding and perception of the Qing Dynasty and Manchu in the second half of the 19th century.

This article centers around the figure of Peyami Safa, a classic of Turkish literary modernism, and particularly around his creative activities that have not yet received enough attention in Turkish studies in Russia, especially his contribution into Turkish mass (popular) literature. Under examination is the story “A Young Girl Among The Bektashi”, which combines erotic, detective, and gothic plot lines. The story was published in 1927 under the name Server Bedi, a widely known pseudonym of Peyami Safa. In this work he manifests as a writer extremely sensitive to the political situation, to government ideology, and to state policy. A decree aimed at secularization of the state was issued in Turkey in 1925, according to which dervishes’ tekkes were to be closed. Even though the struggle against “popular” forms of Islam started much earlier, in the late 19th century, when Sultan Mahmud II took steps to eradicate the Bektashi Order of dervishes, the Republican government was still in need of legitimizing its activities at all levels and in all forms of social influencing, including such media as literature and fiction. To further discredit the Alevi and Bektashi religious minorities, Peyami Safa builds his story around (and actively uses) various misconceptions about dervishes’ customs, rituals, and religious practices, misconceptions that were purported and widely circulated among the Sunni Turks. The novelty of the paper lies in the fact that it gives the fullest biography of the writer available in Russian, which, in turn, reveals major underlying reasons that determined the author’s choice of narrative strategies. Due to Peyami Safa’s personal features that were exacerbated by a serious disease he suffered, he failed to create a literary piece of mass literature of the same high quality which characterizes modernism writings created under his own name.

The relevance of this study is due to the growing interest in translations of fairy tales of small peoples and methods of linguistic and cultural translation of the content of the text in the process of translation. The work is interdisciplinary in nature and is at the intersection of cultural linguistics, folklore studies, comparative linguistics, and translation. The aim of the work is to determine how information about the values of the Karachay-Balkarian linguoculture is verbalized in the texts of fairy tales in the Karachay-Balkarian language, as well as to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of strategies of linguocultural adaptation (explication or elimination of national color) of this type of text into Russian and English. To solve the set tasks, two complementary research methods were used: an introspective method, oriented to the process (the author’s translation of five Karachay-Balkarian fairy tales into English), and the traditional method of retrospective analysis for translation studies by comparing the originals of Karachay-Balkarian fairy tales and their published translations into Russian. The material for this study was the Collection of Karachay-Balkarian fairy tales and legends, the Collection of Karachay-Balkarian fairy tales (transl. by A. Alieva, A. Kholayev, 1983), the Collection of Karachay fairy tales (transl. by I. Rumyantseva, 1981), the Collection of folk tales of Balkarians and Karachays (transl. by A. Alieva, A. Kholayev, 2003). The novelty of the research lies in the fact that for the first time the Karachay-Balkarian fairy tale as a cultural narrative of the people is considered in the aspect of translation criticism. The translation of such tales is conditioned by both a culturally specific plot and the form that is its basis - cultural details, peculiarities of mentality, expressed in language and constituting a special axiological background of the Karachai-Balkarian fairy tale. When translating, a significant part of these formal elements can be neutralized by translators for the sake of children’s perception (use of analogues in the target text, omission, deliberate domestication of the source text), which, however, leads to the loss of the main thing - the national and cultural originality of the source text. When explicating the cultural characteristics, the translator makes the reader familiar with the national flavor of another culture, however, at the same time, some excessive culturally specific information is transferred into the target text, which can cause misunderstanding or distorted perception on the part of the child reader (for example, the topic of polygamy and the peculiarities of the distribution of roles in family). In this regard, a balanced approach to the choice of the optimal strategy for the cultural and pragmatic adaptation of fairy tale texts during translation is necessary: the translator’s decision to explicate or eliminate national cultural specificity is of a compromise nature.

This article provides information about the Tocharian B collection of the IOM RAS. It is a unique collection of Tocharian B manuscripts in Russia. It includes 87 wooden tablets and 383 manuscript fragments. Due to historical circumstances, the collection was not put into scholarly circulation. Only a few manuscripts have been introduced to the academic community, although it would be hard to overestimate the importance of this collection for knowledge of Tocharian palaeography and literature. The St Petersburg collection includes manuscript fragments from all the Tarim sites where traces of the Tocharians were found. Moreover, they are varied in scripts and content. There are fragments in archaic, middle, and late forms of the so-called “North Turkestan Brāhmī” script in their calligraphic and cursive variations. Buddhist texts are most numerous in terms of content. They include jātakas and avadānas, Āgama-related texts, Abhidharma and Vinaya texts, stotras, and other Hīnayāna and Mahāyāna texts. The collection of documents on paper and wooden tablets is of special attractiveness as some of the paper documents are complete folios. The article is mainly dedicated to the formation of the collection. It also summarizes research already done to introduce the manuscripts to the academic community. The references also provide a complete list of publications of the collection materials.

Incense culture has long played an important symbolic and sociocultural role in countries of East Asia, reflecting general trends in the development of culture throughout different historical periods. At this time, traditional incense culture in Japan can be observed in three key areas: religious, sanitary and hygienic, and artistic. All these spheres represent a certain projection of historical and cultural processes in the region. Since the introduction of Buddhism in Japan in the 6th century, mainland traditions were assimilated through religious, everyday life, and artistic practices. At the same time, new principles at the level of concepts, forms, and symbolism of products were being developed to make the most of the rich arsenal of incense culture. The article briefly presents the evolution of censers as the main element of the incense culture toolkit and identifies the key trends of their manufacture in Japan. Through the analysis of the specific characteristics of Japanese censers, a brief overview of the existing incense culture and production centers is given and their continuity with mainland traditions is emphasized. Simultaneously, specific characteristics have been identified that make it possible to consider the Japanese tradition of making censers from ceramics, porcelain and bronze as a unique national achievement.

The paper discusses stylistic techniques and means of creating a language game on the example of the novel “I am not Pan Jinlian” (2012) by Liu Zhenyun. The emphasis is on the search for new orderings in the language game within the framework of the artistic universe. Studies of Liu Zhenyun’s artistic discourse today are included in various linguistic, literaryand cultural landscapes, but they are fragmentary in nature and are presented, as a rule, on local material. The language, artistic features and idiosyncrasy of the writer can be considered practically unexplored, which determines the relevance of this study. The linguistic features of the language game in the works of Liu Zhenyun are consistently considered at three levels in this study. Metaphors, oxymorons, irony, etc. are analyzed at the level of the use of artistic means and techniques. At the structural and functional level, attention is focused on the formal structure and organization of the artistic fabric of the text, some stylistic and syntactic aspects of the language game, parallel constructions and techniques (zeugma, chiasm, anacoluf, parallelisms, ekphrasis, etc.) are analyzed. At the cognitive-discursive level, attention is paid primarily to the problem of the organization of the conceptual-semantic space of the text and the disclosure of its laws, as well as its integration and synthesis with non-linguistic sciences - philology, psychology, cultural studies, etc. The mixed methods used in the article allowed us to obtain results that are productive from the point of view of the possibilities of structural- functional and discursive analysis of artistic material. The obtained data and conclusions open up wide opportunities for further analysis of the language game in artistic discourse.

The paper addresses Qing dynasty albums containing illustrations and notes about ethnic groups of southwest China usually termed as Baimiaotu 百苗圖, or Miao albums, there are Miao albums illustrating ethnic groups of Guizhou, Yunnan, Hunan, Hainan and Taiwan. Library of St Petesrburg State University holds four hand-painted albums — two on Yunnan, two on Guizhou. Over a hundred Miao albums are scattered across the world, with most valuable early editions, some with dates and prefaces, are housed in the Western museums and universities. The paper shows approaches to systematization of the albums showing Guizhou ethnic groups, including such criteria as number of pictures (usually either 82 or 40), the position of the picture and text, special features of pictures (human figures with or without background), some conclusions are based on the typology of albums housed in Guizhou, which was proposed by Chinese scholars. The paper discusses under what circumstances the number of pictures has increased from 40 to 82 at the turn of the 19th century, what sources on Guizhou were used for annotations. The paper compares illustrations and texts from two St Petersburg University albums and those from the US collections. Conclusion about necessity of deeper study of primary sources, which provided basis for Miao albums, e. g., local gazetteers, “Qing Imperial Illustrations of Tributary Peoples” (1761) etc. is made.

This publication is a part of an extensive field of the research, devoted to various areas of the borderlands, and it is actualized by the increasing scale of the study about these areas due to changes in the geopolitical situation in Eurasia. The article is devoted to the reasons and the process of the formation of some features of Qing regionalism in the western borderlands of the empire in the second half of the 18th century. The acquirement of the new lands, named the term Xiyu ( 西 域 , Western Territory) in Chinese historical materials, was of a great political importance, and the acquired domains bordering on Central Asia were transformed into an administrative-territorial unit of the empire, which became known as Xinjiang ( 新 疆 ,New Frontier). The author emphasizes the importance of studying the features of the management of the Qing borderlands in Inner Asia, where various approaches to borderland relations were actively used, and were not adopted from the “Confucian” civilization, but adopted from nomads. There reveals the distinctive features that lay in the Qing regionalism in the management of this outlying territory, which was characterized by the implementation of such measures as: the military occupation, the establishment of a new administrative structure and the publication of written monuments in the languages of the Qing empire. Adopting a more flexible approach due to their non-Chinese origins, the Manchu elites developed institutions and frontier management policies, which were different from those of previous dynasties.

The paper examines the history of Chinese translations of the works of the British economistW. S. Jevons in the late nineteenth - early twentieth centuries as part of the process of introduction of Western scientific knowledge to China. The attention is focused on the translations of Jevons’s Primer of Political Economy and his book The State in Relation to Labor . The terminological features of Chinese translations of these works are analyzed, including the searches for equivalents of modern scientific vocabulary in the heritage of Chinese culture. Jevons’s textbook was translated by Joseph Edkins and Yan Fu, who proposed their methods of adapting the text to the perception of the Chinese reader. The paper demonstrates that Edkins’s translation faithfully followed the original and used Chinese terminology available at that time. The clarity of Jevons’s textbook contributed to the dissemination of elementary knowledge of Western economics in China. The Policy to Enrich the Nation and Support the People served in China as one of the earliest sources of information about Adam Smith, his concept of division of labor, the theory of exchange, the theory of wages, and the principles of taxation. Multiple versions of hieroglyphic transliteration of Jevons’s name obstructed the formation of comprehensive vision of his legacyin China, therefore one of the objectives of the paper was to collect all available information about Chinese translations of the economic works of the British scholar. Jevons’s theory of the impact of natural factors on economic cycles influenced Liang Qichao, who compared it with ancient Chinese ideas about the relationship of famine and natural disasters with location of celestial bodies. After the translation of the Primer of Political Economy the focus of attention shifted to Jevons’s works in industrial legislation and finances.