On November 28-30, 2001, the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences hosted the Roerich Readings on Central Asian studies, Tibetology, and indology.

Report Ya. V. Vasilkova The Most Ancient Indian Art Mirrors from the Scythian-Sarmatian mounds of southern Russia was devoted to attribution of a series of mirrors called "rattle mirrors". Three of them were found in the burials of nomads in the Altai and one in the Southern Urals. They date from the end of the VI - beginning of the IV century BC. The speaker convincingly showed that the drawing on one of the mirrors (from Rogozikha) is an illustration to the tale from the Kathasaritsagara of Somadeva, which dates back to the V century BC. They are described in the Sanskrit treatise "Elephant Fun" (Matangalila). This identification makes it possible to recognize all" rattle mirrors " as Indian. Thus, Russia is the owner of unique samples of pre-Taurian art, which is practically unknown in India itself.

In the report "Problems of Eastern Hellenism" B. A. Litvinsky The Russian academician T. G. Bayer (1694-1738), who published the book "Historia regni Graecorum Bactriani Petropoli"in St. Petersburg in 1738, was at the origin of the study of this topic.

Until the second half The main source for studying the problems of Eastern Hellenism remained the reports of ancient authors and coins. In our time, archaeological materials have been added to them, which were obtained by French scientists at the Ai-Khanum settlement and the expedition of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Sciences of Tajikistan during the excavations of the Oxa Temple. These materials made it possible to fundamentally revise the old concepts. The huge role of the Hellenistic heritage in the history of Eastern, in particular Central Asian, civilization became obvious.

T. Y. Elizarenkova (IVE RAS) "What was meant by doors-gates in the Rig Veda" was devoted to the linguistic analysis of the word dvar/dur, which goes back to the basics of Indo-European origin. Usually in dictionaries, these words are translated as "door". In order to clarify the meaning of these words and understand what reality was hidden behind them, T. Y. Elizarenkova analyzed all the cases of their use in the Rig Veda. She came to the conclusion that the original meaning of these words is the gate of a cattle pen. The significance of doors for a house is not attested in the Rig Veda. In addition, in the Rig Veda, these words are used not in the everyday sense, but in a metaphorical context: as the gate of day, prayer, thoughts, etc., their main meaning is the gate between the earthly and divine worlds.

In the report "At the origins of Jain pictorial art" V. V. Vertogradova Based on the material of the earliest extant Jain archaeological sites (1st century BC - 2nd century AD) - stone slabs with images in low relief (ayagapata-), referring to the texts of the Jain canon, she considered the formation of early Indian ideas about ritual space and their implementation in the first cult structures. structures. Exploring the structure and functions ayagapaty (based on a study of the collection of the Lucknow Museum, India), she described it as one of the earliest incarnations of the mandala and as the first Indian icon revered in an early stone structure (protohram) in the sphere of various emerging ancient faiths-Bhagavatism, Jainism, Buddhism. In this connection, the text of the Ashoka inscription from Rummindea is interpreted.

In the report "Inscription from Dudhpani on village Rajas and problems of interpretation of Sanskrit terminology" D. N. Lelyukhin (IV RAS) analyzed the content of the text

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an inscription from Dudhpani in Bihar, which has not yet been translated into European languages, tells the story of how three merchant brothers became "kings" (rajanah) in three "villages" (pallih). The speaker suggested to think about the correctness of the interpretation of the corresponding "statist" Sanskrit terminology (raja, mandala, etc.).

Report Yu. M. Alikhanov (ISAA at Moscow State University) was devoted to the issue of dating the plays of the so-called Trivandrum cycle, the ownership of which Bhase has recently been increasingly questioned. According to the speaker, when determining the time of creation of a particular Trivandrum play, it is necessary to take into account the general transformation of Sanskrit drama in the post-Gupta period. As the more or less dated material of the seventh century shows, the sources of dramatic plots changed, plot schemes and compositional techniques were updated, and the boundaries of dramatic genres shifted. Analysis of the typological discrepancy between Gupta and post-Gupta drama suggests a relative dating of Trivandrum plays. For example, "Nataka on Statues" could hardly have been created earlier than the 7th-8th centuries-this is indicated by the story going back to the Ramayana and the peculiarities of its development.

Report E. V. Tyulina (IB RAS) "Vastuvidya ("Science of Construction") as an example of understanding the universe in the tradition of the Puranas" was devoted to the place of treatises on construction (VI-XI centuries) in the system of representations of the Puranas. These treatises, which are part of a number of puranas, are devoted to the science of organizing and sanctifying the space of the temple and dwelling, recreating the mental connections of the structural elements of the building with the universe, and at the same time with the tradition that offers different ways of organizing the temple space. The importance of studying such texts is determined by the fact that they were included in the puranas-works also devoted to the" ordering " of space, understanding the world and all its phenomena as manifestations of divine energy. On the example of texts about construction, the principles of organizing a puranic text that considers all phenomena on the basis of unified schemes and matrices were shown.

In the report "Buddhism and the "theatrical" cult of Devaraja in Ayutthaya (Central Thailand, XIV-XVIII centuries)" E. N. Afanasyeva (IMLI RAS) spoke about the cult of Devaraja (god-king), which has been preserved in this country due to the tightly centralized structure of state administration. The preservation and popularization of the Vishnu legends associated with this cult was promoted by the traditions of the local theater, which was divided into public or "external"ones (lakhon nook), associated with ancestral and fertility cults, and the "inner" (i.e. palace) theater (lakhon nai), associated with the ritual of coronation, marriage, initiation of princes, etc. Later, with the spread of Buddhism, theatrical performances turned into one of the types of ritual offerings to the bodhisattva king. There was a synthesis of Vishnu beliefs and Buddhism, resulting in the idea that Rama is one of the reincarnations of the Buddha.

N. A. Zheleznova Kundakunda's Theory of Two Points of View: Problems of Two Interpretations is based on a study of treatises attributed to one of the earliest Jain philosophers, Kundakunda (3rd-4th centuries). The essence of the so-called theory of "two points of view" is that every reality is considered from two fundamentally different and irreducible points of view: genuine (pure, real) and ordinary (impure, unreal). The studied treatises contain two mutually exclusive interpretations of this theory: on the one hand, the ordinary approach as the first stage is necessary for understanding the highest truth, and on the other hand, the ordinary point of view is called false and has nothing to do with the truth. The author of the report suggests removing this contradiction by applying the initial principles of the theory of "two points of view" to this theory itself. Then, from an ordinary point of view, it is necessary to have two approaches to describing reality, and from a genuine point of view, only one is true.

In the report "Classifications of textual practices of the Early Buddhist community based on the materials of the Pali Anuttara Nikaya" D. I. Zhutaev (IVE RAS) noted that for a correct approach to determining the structure of texts of early Buddhism, it is necessary to reconstruct the system of socially fixed ways of transmitting this tradition that existed in oral form. Technologies for storing and transmitting texts, methods of teaching, etc. the author proposed to call textual practices of early Buddhism. Based on three suttas from the fifth book of the Anuttara Nikaya, he identified two fundamentally different systems of such practices. Following V. V. Vertogradova, the author sees the first of them in a system consisting of five levels of training

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and comprehension of knowledge in Buddhist monasteries, aimed primarily at the individual assimilation of the sacred text by the monk. The second is a system of five forms of external speech activity, i.e. aimed at teaching others, preaching, etc. Subsequently, in the Mahayana tradition, both of these systems are mixed and combined into a single system.

S. D. Serebryany and I. S. Nazarova In their report "On the Chinese translation of the Hridaya Sutra", the authors shared their observations on the changes that the text of the sutra underwent when translating from Sanskrit into Chinese, and revealed significant differences in the translations of this monument into Russian from Sanskrit, Tibetan and Chinese.

In the report "India in the medieval tradition of Tibet" E. D. Ogneva (Lutsk) spoke about bilateral contacts between Tibetan and Indian cultures that lasted for a century (VII-XVII centuries). Under the influence of the Indian tradition, schools of Sanskrit translators were established in Tibet, and the foundations of historiography and philology were laid. Works of Indian literature, including the Ramayana and Mahabharata, were widely distributed. At the beginning of the 17th century, the greatest influence of the Indian tradition can be traced in the works of Taranatha (1575-1634), who made new translations from Sanskrit for the Tibetan Canon. His autobiography has preserved information about the last Indian pandits who traveled to Tibet, the Sanskrit manuscripts he collected, and the chapters of the Ramayana (The Tale of Hanuman). and the Mahabharata ("The Legend of Bhima"). Taranatha's writings contain biographies of his Indian teachers and charya-giti cycles.

N. V. Alexandrova In her report "The geographical space of the' Buddhist world ' and the Text of a Buddhist Pilgrim, "she analyzed the ideas about geographical space revealed by the texts of Chinese pilgrims. The image of a Buddhist stupa proposed in the Balkh legend recorded by Xuanzang, each of the three parts of which is compared with the relics - things of the Buddha, allows us to isolate semantic rows that relate to the spatial images of Buddhist culture. The ascent of this semantics to the archaic Vedic paradigm, which permeates the royal ritualism with its inherent focus on territorial expansion, is quite obvious and has passed on to Buddhist semantics its own outward-directed scheme of "spatial tension", which has undergone rethinking. The report examined the chain of ideas that follows from the comparison of the "stupa base" (designation of horizontal earth space) and the "Buddha's robe".

Report Yu. I. Drobysheva (Institute of Problems of Ecology and Evolution, Moscow) "Sacralization of geographical space in the cultures of the peoples of Central Asia and modern ecological problems" was devoted to the mechanisms of sacralization of space in the traditional culture of the Mongolian and Turkic peoples, as well as attempts to study and use the ecological experience of these peoples in nature protection. So, sacred territories are compared to nature reserves, sacred rocks, trees, springs, etc. - to cultural monuments. Emphasizing the relevance of research on traditional nature management, the speaker noted the low level of available publications that do not give an objective picture of the interaction of human collectives and host landscapes.

In his report "Edicts of Ram Shah - the first environmental legislation of Nepal", A. A. Ledkov (Institute of Ecology of the Russian Academy of Sciences) spoke about the study of this most important source for studying the history of the Gorkha Principality (central Nepal) during the reign of Ram Shah (1606-1636). This legislation was of a social nature, since the emerging ruling elite was interested in sustainable agricultural production and securing the population on the land. Of the 27 "edicts", 5 are somehow related to the protection or use of natural resources. Environmental protection measures were mainly aimed at protecting forests, water bodies and soil, as well as maintaining the fertility of fields and pastures. Thus, the preservation of natural balance, which continues to be the most important task of the Nepalese state, has a deep tradition dating back to the 7th century.

In the report "Goats, monkeys, laughing serpent (ancient Iranian bestiary - the "key" to modernity)" O. V. Zotov The author considers the correlation and confrontation of natural and, according to the speaker, geopolitical forces in the Iranian symbolism of animal images.

A. I. Volodarsky (IIEiT RAS) in the report " From Harappa to Euler. The history of a mathematical problem", showed how a mathematical problem arises from the practice of weighing.

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the problem of representing an integer as an algebraic sum of powers of smaller integers, and how this problem has changed over time. In the Harappan culture, only weights were found that make up a geometric progression and allow us to talk about the system of weight measures adopted there, based on doubling. In the twelfth century, al-Khazini, an Arab scholar and disciple of Omar Khayyam, showed in the Book of Scales of Wisdom what is the minimum set of weights that give the only solution to the"weighing problem". A rigorous solution to this problem was given only in the XVIII century by Leonhard Euler, an academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences.

Traditionally, a number of reports were devoted to the history of the Roerich family and their views. In the report V. A. Rosova (P. K. Kozlov Museum, St. Petersburg) ""The Great Horseman". About V. I. Lenin and the symbolism of the star in N. K. Roerich's paintings " new archival documents from the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation (Moscow) and the Center for Russian Culture in Amherst (USA) were used. The speaker told about unknown episodes of the Central Asian expedition of Nicholas Roerich (1925-1928). It was at this time that the plot about V. I. Lenin and communist symbols appeared on the artist's canvases. This is the painting "Lenin Mountain" ("The Phenomenon of Time" in 1924), conceived and painted in Khotan, which was later presented to the Soviet Government, as well as two other works: "Shambhala is Coming" (1926) and" The Great Horseman " (1927). The artist's use of Bolshevik symbols (the face of Lenin, the figure of a Red Army soldier, a five-pointed star) is due to the fact that it was at this time that negotiations were conducted with the Soviet government, in particular with G. V. Chicherin, regarding the "United Asia" plan proposed by R. K. Roerich, the main thesis of which was to unite the teachings of Buddhism with communist ideology on a state scale.

A. V. Stetsenko (ICR) in the report " N. K. Roerich's Central Asian Expedition. Facts and conjectures " noted that recently some journalists and scientists incorrectly interpret the facts of the Central Asian expedition, distorting documentary information in accordance with their value systems. O. A. Lavrenova (ICR), which made a report "Philosophy, ethics and history: on the issue of historical and biographical studies of the life and work of the Roerich family", considers it illegal to interpret the social and cultural activities of Nicholas Roerich in "the usual geopolitical way for the modern Russian philistine". In order to adequately explain and describe it, researchers need to know and deeply understand the spiritual heritage of the Roerich family, especially the "Living Ethics" that became the conceptual basis of their work.

M. N. Egorova "Fohat in the aspect of solar energy" was devoted to an important concept of "Living Ethics" - Fohat and its connection with the ideas of the so-called invisible Central Spiritual Sun, which in the Teaching is identical to the real sun, the source of life and energy.

M. L. Dudaev (IV RAS) spoke about his book " The Harbin Secret of Roerich: N. K. Roerich and Russian Emigration in the East "(Moscow, 2001), which opens a series of unique studies devoted to N. K. Roerich. It tells about the Harbin period of N. K. Roerich's life - a key one in his life. The book reveals the reasons for the failure of the second American Central Asian expedition. The abundance of factual material used in it, previously inaccessible to researchers, and a thorough analysis of the political situation at that time make it possible to analyze the current events impartially. L. V. Mitrokhin (IB RAS) in the report "Some comments on recent publications about two Central Asian expeditions of N. A. Kropotkin".K. Roerich (1925-1928 and 1934-1935) " stressed the importance of publishing documentary material related to these expeditions, as their activities served as a source for numerous falsifications. He called on all researchers involved in the study of Nicholas Roerich's life and work to stop baselessly accusing each other of being biased and unite their efforts in order to better understand this complex, multi-faceted personality, and on the basis of factual material to prove the inconsistency of conjectures and conjectures presented in the mass media as the truth.

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