Russian Oriental Studies: Current Research on Past & Present Asian and African Societies

312 Pages·2004·1.25 MB·English

by  Vitaly Naumkin

RUSSIAN ORIENTAL STUDIES
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RUSSIAN ORIENTAL STUDIES
Current Research on Past & Present Asian
and African Societies
EDITED BY
VITALY NAUMKIN
BRILL
LEIDEN •BOSTON
2004
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This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Current research on past & present Asian and African societies : Russian Oriental studies /
edited by Vitaly Naumkin.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 90-04-13203-1 (hard back)
1. Asia—Civilization. 2. Africa—Civilization. I. Title: Current research on past and
present Asian and African societies. II. Naumkin, Vitalii Viacheslavovich.
DS12.C88 2003
950—dc22 2003060233
ISBN 90 04 13203 1
© Copyright 2004 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written
permission from the publisher.
Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal
use is granted by Brill provided that
the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright
Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910
Danvers MA 01923, USA.
Fees are subject to change
printed in the netherland
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CONTENTS
Preface ........................................................................................ vii
PART ONE
POLITICS AND POWER
Monarchy in the Khmer Political Culture .............................. 3
Nadezhda Bektimirova
A Shadow of Kleptocracy over Africa
(A Theory of Negative Forms of Power Organization) .... 23
Leonid V. Geveling
PART TWO
HISTORY
Islamic Frontiers in the Caucasus during the 'Abbasid
Period .................................................................................... 59
Alikber Alikberov
The Religious and Ideological Conception of Monarchical
Power as an Object of Systematic Description
(Concerning the Study of Nusantara Monarchies,
the Seventh to Fifteenth Century A.D.) .............................. 73
Gennadi G. Bandilenko†
On the Origins of Catherine II’s Mediterranean Policy ...... 97
Irina M. Smilyanskaya
PART THREE
ECONOMICS AND SOCIETY
The Chinese Migration to Siberia and the Beginning of the
Formation of a New Diaspora ............................................ 123
Vladimir I. Dyatlov
Agricultural Growth in India. Some Burning Issues Towards
the End of the Twentieth Century .................................... 163
Victor G. Rastyannikov
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PART FOUR
LANGUAGE
OntheHistoryofTraditional Anthropometric Terms:
Qarï and Other Central Asian Linear Measures .............. 195
Anna V. Dybo
The Cultural Vocabulary in the Common North Caucasian
Lexical Stock .......................................................................... 211
S.A. Starostin
PART FIVE
PHILOSOPHY AND CULTURE
On Kalàm Atomism and its Role in Islamic Culture .......... 245
Tawfik Ibrahim
The Notion of Stone in the Book of Genesis ........................ 263
Dmitry V. Frolov
Indra the Ant: Comparative Commentary on a Motive
of Ancient Indian Mythology .............................................. 271
Vladimir N. Toporov
Index .......................................................................................... 295
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PREFACE
In Russia, the study of the countries of Asia and Africa has a long
history and is part of an old tradition. Its foundation was laid in the
Middle Ages by the Russian travellers and pilgrims to the Holy
places, who penned the first works on countries of the Orient that
were published in Russia. The very geographical position of Russia
predetermined its close contact with the countries of the Orient.
Wars, conquests, and migrations of the population predestined an
active interaction between the Russians and the peoples of Asia. An
acute interest in the Orient and the knowledge accumulated laid the
groundwork for Russian Orientalism that was born in the beginning
of the nineteenth century.
Contemporary dictionaries usually describe Orientalism, first, as
the knowledge and study of Oriental languages, literature, history,
etc., and second, as a quality or usage characteristic of Eastern
(Oriental) peoples. A. L. Macfie traces this twofold interpretation to
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, where the word Orientalism
was used to refer to both the work of the Orientalist and also, in
the world of arts, “to identify a character, style or quality commonly
associated with the Eastern nations.” This word was even used, in
the context of British rule in India, “to refer to or identify a ‘con-
servative and romantic’ approach to the problem of government.”1
The Russian word for Orientalism—vostokovedenie—has always had
only one meaning and has never referred to anything but Oriental
studies; it has never had any other connotation. As distinct from
Western Orientalism, Russian Orientalism has long (at any rate until
the emergence of the Soviet Union) been predominantly engaged in
the study of the Middle East, to a lesser degree with China, and to
a still lesser degree with Japan, despite the geographical proximity
of these countries to Russia. The study of Oriental languages in
Russia started with the Turkish–Persian Department in Muscovy.
1 Introduction to: Orientalism. A Reader. Edited by A. L. Macfie, Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press (2000).
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viii 
The territories more distant from Russia, including so major a coun-
try of the East as India, were not a focus of attention for the Russian
Orientalists, probably because, in contrast to European powers, Russia
limited its expansion to lands lying directly to the south of its fron-
tiers. Furthermore, the centuries-old sharp rivalry with the Turks
and the Persians was the paramount factor that conditioned the ini-
tial concentration of Russian Orientalism on the study of Iran and
Turkey.
A forte of Russian, and particularly Soviet, Orientalism was the
knowledge of Oriental languages (both dead and living). Speaking of
the modern Russian tradition of Islamic studies, Dale Eickelman, for
instance, noted that many of his Russian counterparts “received train-
ing in a strong tradition of analysis of classical Muslim texts and a
commitment to the mastery of ‘Eastern’ languages, which is often
superior to that offered in Western training.”2
Since their emergence and continuing to our time, Oriental stud-
ies in Russia have traditionally been considered a separate, all-round
humanitarian discipline. History, economics, culture, and literature
of the countries of the East as well as Oriental languages are taught
at Russian universities. Graduates receive qualification in the specialty
of “Oriental Studies.” At some large universities there are separate
Oriental studies faculties, as, for example, in the M. V. Lomonosov
Moscow State University (MSU) (this faculty is called the Institute
of Asian and African Countries) or in the St. Petersburg State
University. At these faculties Oriental studies are supplemented by
African studies, which, in turn, are also considered a separate, all-
round discipline in research institutes.
Oriental research institutes or sections of institutes function within
the framework of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS). These
are the Institute of Oriental Studies (IOS) in Moscow and its branch
in St. Petersburg, and the faculties or sectors of Oriental studies in
many research institutes of general humanitarian studies in Russia’s
regions. Within the RAS there is a specialised Institute of Africa.
Oceania is likewise studied in the framework of Oriental studies.
Naturally, the Institute of Africa partly duplicates the Institute of
2 Preface to: Russia’s Muslim Frontiers: New Directions in Cross-Cultural Analysis. Edited
by Dale Eickelman, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press (1993),
p. viii.
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 ix
Oriental Studies, being engaged, for example, in the study of the
general questions of history, economics, civilisations of developing
countries or, particularly, of Arab countries of North Africa.
Since Soviet times, Russian science has inherited one more ‘dupli-
cating’ institute of Oriental studies—the RAS Institute of the Far
East (IFE). In the Cold War era, the creation of this institute, just
like the Institute of Africa, reflected the Soviet Union’s sharply
increased interest in the Afro-Asian world at the time, as a result of
Soviet policymakers’ needs for research in the countries of the con-
temporary East and Africa. Some attempts to eliminate this dupli-
cation were, nevertheless, undertaken: at the creation of the IFE,
this institute was assigned the task of engaging in all studies of the
‘modern cycle,’ while the IOS mostly retained the study of the sub-
jects of ‘the traditional cycle’ (history, literature, languages of China
and other Far Eastern countries). Inside the IOS itself there existed
an earlier-established ‘division of labour’: the institute in Moscow
was engaged in the entire range of research, and the Leningrad (now
St. Petersburg) branch only in the study of ancient and medieval
history of the Oriental countries, philology, the study of written
sources, and the monuments of written literature. The St. Petersburg
branch is the repository of an extremely valuable collection of Oriental
manuscripts.
In Soviet times there was a concept of the ‘Soviet East,’ of which
the republics of Central Asia were a part (in the process, it was cus-
tomary to speak of ‘Central Asia and Kazakhstan’, with an impli-
cation that a section of the territory of Kazakhstan did not belong
to Asia) as well as (in part) Transcaucasia (the term ‘South Caucasus’
was not used). In accordance with this conception, the study of the
history of these territories before 1917 (i.e., the Bolshevik revolution
and the formation of Soviet Russia) was included in the specialty of
‘the history of the USSR,’ which caused some difficulties for the
Orientalists engaged in the study of ‘the foreign East’ alone. It is
possible, though, that the fact that the southern republics of the
Soviet Union were left beyond the framework of Oriental studies
relieved the Orientalists of the time of the tough pressure of cen-
sorship and ideological rigidity that inevitably attended any schol-
arly research involving questions of internal Soviet reality.
After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia’s Oriental studies
began to be engaged in the whole range of problems concerning the
states of Central Asia and the South Caucasus, and also the Asian