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RUSSIAN ORIENTAL STUDIES This page intentionally left blank naumkin-los.qxd 10/8/2003 10:33 PM Page iii RUSSIAN ORIENTAL STUDIES Current Research on Past & Present Asian and African Societies EDITED BY VITALY NAUMKIN BRILL LEIDEN • BOSTON 2004 naumkin-los.qxd 10/8/2003 10:33 PM Page iv 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 NAUMKIN_f1-v-x 11/18/03 1:27 PM Page v v 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 NAUMKIN_f1-v-x 11/18/03 1:27 PM Page vi vi PART FOUR LANGUAGE On the History of Traditional 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 NAUMKIN_f1-v-x 11/18/03 1:27 PM Page vii vii 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). NAUMKIN_f1-v-x 11/18/03 1:27 PM Page viii 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. NAUMKIN_f1-v-x 11/18/03 1:27 PM Page ix 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