scholarly journals Afanasy Nikitin in India: A Historical Retrospective of the Legendary Journey

2021 ◽  
pp. 33-54
Author(s):  
Д.Е. Челышев

В статье определено историческое значение путешествия тверского купца Афанасия Никитина в аспекте его влияния на последующее развитие культурных контактов между Россией и Индией, а также выявлен ряд обстоятельств, связанных с установкой в Индии единственного памятника путешественнику. Проанализирован текст литературного памятника XV в. «Хожение за три моря», использованы результаты исследований индийских и российских ученых, ряд англоязычных источников. Подчеркивается историческая ценность путевых заметок А. Никитина как единственного свидетельства о реалиях жизни индийского общества в государстве Бахманидов, что позволило автору обоснованно внести ряд корректив в исторические данные. Подвергнута критике концепция ориентализма в оценке значимости и мотивов деятельности известных российских путешественников и исследователей Востока. Сооружение памятника А. Никитину в 2001 г. трактуется как событие, придавшее новый импульс развитию и расширению российско-индийского сотрудничества. The article defines the historical significance of the journey of the Tver merchant Afanasy Nikitin in terms of its influence on the subsequent development of cultural contacts between Russia and India, and also reveals a number of circumstances associated with the installation of the only monument to this traveler in India. The text of a 15th-century literary monument, A Journey Beyond the Three Seas, is analyzed. The results of research by Indian and Russian scholars and a number of English-language sources are used. Systemic-historical, historical-genetic methods and a number of methods of historical source study related to the interpretation and analysis of textual content are applied. The book by Nikitin has been studied in the aspect of comparing its content with information provided, among others, by Portuguese authors. The historical value of Nikitin’s travel notes is emphasized as of the only evidence of the realities of the life of Indian society in the Bahmanid state, which allowed the author to reasonably make a number of corrections to the historical data. The late 19th-century publications of British and Indian authors dedicated to the detailed reconstruction of Afanasy Nikitin’s route and published in Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency are studied. The versions of the interpretation of the geographical names given in A Journey Beyond the Three Seas are considered. In the light of the publications that appeared on the pages of Gazetteer, the key stages of Nikitin’s journey through the territory of the Western Deccan are considered. Discussions caused by the study of the Journey by Indian authors at the end of the 19th century are analyzed. The author claims that, in his notes, Nikitin sought to comprehend and understand what he saw rather than compare the incomprehensible with the usual realities and condemn it for the fact that it does not fit into his own ideas at all. The concept of Orientalism in assessing the significance and motives of the activities of famous Russian travelers and researchers of the East is criticized. An extensive factual record of events related to the erection of the monument to Afanasy Nikitin in the vicinity of Mumbai in 2002 is presented. The construction of the monument to Nikitin is interpreted as an event that gave a new impetus to the development and expansion of Russian-Indian cooperation. The author points out that the cultural resource is the basis in building a general concept of interstate relations and continues to play a significant role in interstate cooperation between Russia and India.

Author(s):  
Alexey B. Mazurov ◽  
Alexander V. Rodionov

The article considers theoretical development of the problem of the origin and provenance in the 15th — the first quarter of the 19th century of the famous Old Russian book monument — the Zaraysk Gospel. Although it has repeatedly attracted the attention of archaeographers, textologists, paleographers, linguists and art historians, this article is the first experience of studying these issues. Created in 1401 in Moscow, the Gospel, which is parchment manuscript, was purchased in 1825 by K.F. Kalaidovich for Count N.P. Rumyantsev from the Zaraysk merchant K.I. Averin, that determined its name by the place of discovery. The scribe book of Zaraysk in 1625 in the altar of the Pyatnitsky chapel of the St. Nikolas wooden church (“which’s on the square”) in the city’s Posad, recorded the description of the manuscript Gospel, corresponding by a number of features to the Zaraysk Gospel. The connection of the codex with the St. Nicholas church is indirectly confirmed by the drawing of the church placed on one of its pages (f. 156 ver.) with the remains of inscription mentioning St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. This allows concluding that the manuscript in the 17th century was in the book collection of the temple. In the 17th century, the ancient St. Nicholas church was re-consecrated to the Epiphany, and the sacristy was moved to the stone St. Nicholas cathedral in Zaraysk. It is most likely that in the first quarter of the 19th century, the merchant K.I. Averin purchased the Gospel from the members of the cathedral’s clergy. The article analyzes the context of the early contributions of the 15th century “to the Miraculous Icon of St. Nikolas of Zaraysk”, one of which, most likely, was the parchment Zaraysk Gospel. The authors assume that this contribution is related to the chronicle events of 1401 or 1408. The study is significant in terms of the theoretical development of methods for identifying ancient manuscripts and their origin.


2011 ◽  
Vol 139 (suppl. 1) ◽  
pp. 6-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Milutin Nenadovic

Discordances of harmonic mental functioning are as old as the human kind. Psychopathological behaviour of an individual in the past was not treated as an illness. That means that psychopathology was not considered an illness. In all past civilizations discordance of mental harmony of an individual is interpreted from the physiological aspect. Psychopathologic expression was not considered an illness, so social attitudes about psychiatric patients in the past were non-medical and generally speaking inhuman. Hospitals did not follow development of medicine for admission of psychiatric patients in past civilizations, not even in the antique era. According to historic sources, the first hospital that was meant for mental patients only was established in the 15th century, 1409 in Valencia (Spain). Therefore mental patients were isolated in a special institution-hospital, and social community rejected them. Only in the new era psychopathological behavior begins to be treated as an illness. Therefore during the 19th century psychiatry is developed as a special branch of medicine, and mental disorder is more and more seen according to the principals of interpretation of physical illnesses. By the middle of the 19th century psychiatric hospitals are humanized, and patients are being less physically restricted. Deinstitutialisation in protection of mental health is the heritage of reforms from the beginning of the 19th century which regarded the prevention of mental health protection. It was necessary to develop institutions of the prevention of protection in the community which would primarily have social support and characteristics.


2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dong Hoon Shin ◽  
Jong Ha Hong

From the end of the 15th century, syphilis spread worldwide, posing a serious threat to public health. Venereal syphilis has been a major research topic, not only in clinical medicine but also in paleopathology, especially because it is a disease of questionable origin and of high prevalence until the discovery of antibiotics. Syphilis in history has been studied extensively in Europe and the Americas, though less so in Asia. In this review, based on extant historical documents and available paleopathological data, we pinpoint the introduction and trace the spread of venereal syphilis in Korea to the end of the 19th century. This review provides


Der Islam ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 93 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bill Hickman

Abstract:The martyrdom of the mystic Ḥusayn b. Manṣūr, better known as al-Hallāj (executed in Baghdad in 922 CE), has been a compelling story for Muslim audiences for centuries. An Ottoman Turkish narrative poem on the subject, composed sometime in the 15th century, proved to be especially popular. It was hand-copied repeatedly, into the 19th century, and lithographed at least twice. Nearly a century ago, Louis


Author(s):  
Anna Y. Vasileva

The purpose of the study is to determine how the development of the tourism business of Thomas Cook and Son in the Nile Valley influenced the perception and assessment of contemporaries of the British presence in Egypt at the end of the 19th century. The relevance of the analyzed problem lies in the fact that the study of the history of tourism in the era of New imperialism allows us to supplement our understanding of the representations of the empire and private busi-ness and their mutual influence. It is substantiated that, according to the views of contemporaries, the activities of the company contributed to the creation of conditions for the economic develop-ment of Egypt, opened these territories to the world, providing free movement along the Nile, and contributed to the spread of the English language, making this country more “civilized” in the eyes of Europeans. We conclude that, at the same time, the handbooks of the company broadcasted the achievements of the imperial policy of Great Britain, reinforcing the idea of the positive conse-quences of the British occupation for Egypt. It is concluded that the commercial success of private business became a visible manifestation of the success of the England’s civilizing mission. The research materials can be used to further study the relationship between the development of mass tourism and the colonial policy of Great Britain.


Author(s):  
Joseph Inikori

Since direct contact between Europeans and West Africans was established in the mid-15th century by the Portuguese, Euro-African trade relations have played a major role in West Africa’s long-run socioeconomic development. This critical role was connected to two totally different kinds of trade conducted by Europeans at different points in time: trade in commodities (the products of West African labor and natural resources) and trade in human captives. The first 200 years (1450–1650) of European commercial enterprise in West Africa were dominated overwhelmingly by trade in commodities; trade in human captives overwhelmingly dominated in the 200 years which followed (1650–1867). Trade in commodities returned with a bang in the last decades of the 19th century (1870–1900). The respective effects of these two trades on the development process in West Africa were as different as the trades themselves. The early trade in commodities contributed positively to the process; the transition from the trade in commodities to the trade in human captives had a disastrous effect; the 19th-century transition to commodity trade made an immense positive contribution. The positive contribution was significantly enhanced by the ending of the socioeconomic crises engendered by the trade in human captives, and by the establishment of general peace (Pax Britannica) by British colonial rule, with its free trade policy. However, the failure of the colonial administration to take advantage of the general increase in real household incomes and purchasing power and encourage domestic manufacturing in the colonies prevented the transformation of short-term growth into structural transformation and long-run development.


2006 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 235-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Trudgill ◽  
Elizabeth Gordon

The division of the world’s Englishes into rhotic and non-rhotic types is clearly due to the fact that the former are conservative in not having undergone loss of non-prevocalic /r/, whereas the latter have. The beginnings of the loss of non-prevocalic /r/ in English have generally been dated by historians of the language to the 18th century. It is therefore obvious, and has been widely accepted, that Irish English, Canadian English, and American English are predominantly rhotic because the English language was exported to these colonial areas before the loss of rhoticity in England began; and that the Southern Hemisphere Englishes are non-rhotic because English was exported to these areas in the 19th century after the loss of rhoticity. Analysing newly-discovered data from Australia, we present some surprising evidence that shows that this obvious conclusion is incorrect.


2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leo Catana

Abstract This article critically explores the history and nature of a hermeneutic assumption which frequently guided interpretations of Plotinus from the 18th century onwards, namely that Plotinus advanced a system of philosophy. It is argued that this assumption was introduced relatively late, in the 18th and 19th centuries, and that it was primarily made possible by Brucker’s methodology for the history of philosophy, dating from the 1740s, to which the concept of a ‘system of philosophy’ was essential. It is observed that the concept is absent from Ficino’s commentary from the 15th century, and that it remained absent in interpretations produced between the 15th and 18th centuries. It is also argued that the assumption of a ‘system of philosophy’ in Plotinus is historically incorrect—we do not find this concept in Plotinus’ writings, and his own statements about method point in other directions. Eduard Zeller (active in the second half of the 19th century) is typically regarded as the first to give a satisfying account of Plotinus’ philosophy as a whole. In this article, on the other hand, Zeller is seen as having finalised a tradition initiated in the 18th century. Very few Plotinus scholars have examined the interpretative development prior to Zeller. Schiavone (1952) and Bonetti (1971), for instance, have given little attention to Brucker’s introduction of the concept of a ‘system of philosophy’. The present analysis, then, has value for an understanding of Plotinus’ Enneads. It also explains why “pre-Bruckerian” interpretations of Plotinus appear alien to the modern reader; the analysis may even serve to make some sense of the hermeneutics employed by Renaissance Platonists and commentators, who are often eclipsed from the tradition of Platonism.


Menotyra ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rimantas Gučas

For Lithuania, the 19th century was marked by the symbol of the Russian Empire – Lithuania became a province of a foreign empire. Farming suffered a severe general downturn. As the Church’s powers began to be restricted, there was almost no opportunity for new significant instruments to emerge. The monasteries, which until then had been the initiators of the best organ building, were closed. Eastern Catholic (Unitarian) churches, which also had organs in Lithuania, became part of the Russian Orthodox Church, and the organs were ordered to be liquidated. The Catholic Church itself, unlike evangelicals, also had little regard for music and especially for organ matters. From the beginning of the 15th century, the development of Lithuanian organ culture was closely associated with Königsberg. Once the import customs were imposed, significant contacts which had taken place almost disappeared. The industrial revolution in Lithuania was delayed, and for half a century small artisan workshops still prevailed. Almost exclusively small, single-manual organs without pedals or positives were built. A large three-manual organ at Vilnius University St John’s Church was rather an exception. It was built by the Tiedemanns. This family, which originated in East Prussia, worked in the Baltic States throughout the first half of the 19th century. Only in the middle of the century did the new European organ building trend, the so-called organ romanticism, reach Lithuania. A particularly important role in this period was played by the experience of organ building of the neighbouring Curonia. Very few impressive examples were created, and in this respect Lithuania is hardly able to compete with the major countries of Central Europe. Lithuania is characterized by the fact that in the 19th century local masters and companies ( J. Rudavičius, M. Masalskis, F. Ostromensky), as well as masters from neighbouring Curonia (Herrmann, Weissenborn) and Poland (Blomberg) worked there. In western Lithuania, then part of Prussia, Terletzki was active. Meanwhile, large factories (Walcker, Rieger) reached Lithuania only in the first half of the twentieth century and only in a few instances. At that time, more work started to be focusing on the construction of two-manual with pedal instruments. At the end of the century, J. Rudavicius built some three-manual organs. His 63-stop organ built in 1896 for a long time was the largest in Lithuania. Although the 19th century Lithuanian organs are relatively modest compared to other countries, they have the value that is only growing in the context of present-day Europe, since the “progressive ideology” of more economically powerful European countries affected the art of organ building and few small romantic instruments are left.


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