On December 10, 2014, the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences hosted the XIV Quarterly seminar of the China Department " China and the World. Tradition and modernity". For the first time in many years, a scientific forum devoted entirely to the issues of Tangut linguistics was held in Moscow.

The seminar was opened by Mikhail Sofronov (ISAA MSU), a leading Russian tangutologist, author of the world's only "Grammar of the Tangut Language". He spoke about the history of Tangut studies and its main achievements, and introduced the main speaker-Lin Yingjin , Researcher at the Institute of Linguistics of the Sinica Academy (Taiwan) - one of the largest modern Tangutologists and specialists in the Tangut language. Lin Yingjin's lecture was devoted to testing the hypothesis of K. B. Kepping, expressed to her in 1985, that the Tangut language had the characteristics of an ergative system. Noting the highest degree of innovation of the hypothesis, Lin Yingjin used examples from Tangut texts to show that there are signs of ergativity in the Tangut language, but it is hardly possible to say that this was a quality necessarily inherent in the language, since in many cases there is no indication of the presence of the ergative case. Perhaps the fact is that the Tanguts who translated the texts they needed from other languages fell under a certain influence of the original languages, so there is no ergativity in the texts translated from Chinese, but in the texts translated from written Tibetan, it is present. Undoubtedly, we do not know much about the original Tangut texts, and in general they are insufficiently studied. Perhaps in the future there will be data for a definitive answer to the question of the presence or absence of ergativity in the Tangut language. V. Sofronov drew attention to the fact that some observations of Lin Yingjin allow us to raise the question of revising modern ideas about possessive constructions in the Tangut language - probably, in addition to the possessive construction, it was also possible to express some connection with the subject that does not imply possession of it.

Despite the small number of listeners, this event can be attributed to the most important scientific events of the year.

On February 18, 2015, the XVI Quarterly seminar of the Department of China of the Institute of Information Technology of the Russian Academy of Sciences " China and the World. Traditions and Modernity", mainly devoted to the problems of historical phonology of the ancient Chinese language.

The topic of the speech by G. S. Starostin (RANEPA Academy of National Economy and Public Administration) is "Questions of reflection of sounding speech in the graphic representation of classical Chinese monuments". Over the past hundred years, world Sinology has achieved great success in studying the historical phonology of the Chinese language. Unfortunately, in recent years, Russian sinology has practically not been involved in such studies. Thus, students of Chinese studies often complete their specialized education without knowing much about these issues and without even knowing about the existence of such problems.

Historical phonology was born in China - philologists of the late Ming and Qing (XVII-XIX centuries) not only noticed that many signs that rhyme in Shi Jing ("Canon of Poems", XI-VII centuries BC) do not rhyme now, but also managed to carry out a huge work on systematization of data and partial reconstruction sounds of the ancient Chinese language. The study of Shi Ching rhymes is still the main focus of phonology studies in China.

DMITRIEV Sergey Viktorovich-Candidate of Historical Sciences, Senior Researcher at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. E-mail: sdmitriev@ivran.ru

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Thanks to the works of Bernhard Karlgren (1889-1978)1 historical phonology of the ancient Chinese language took shape as a science, and the first system of reconstruction was proposed. The reconstructions of S. E. Yakhontov 2 and S. A. Starostin 3 are considered major contributions of Russian scientists. Today, among the existing reconstruction options, the most popular one can be called the system proposed by V. Baxter and L. Sagarom 4, however, and it is not perfect. The main point, however, is that the phonetics of the Chinese language were not unchangeable, and that the use of historical phonology was absolutely necessary to solve a number of sinological problems, has long been generally accepted both in China and in the West. In our country, unfortunately, it still remains the property of an extremely narrow circle of linguists.

Old Chinese is phonetically different from Middle Chinese, being closer to the Tibeto-Burmese languages, while Middle Chinese has obviously been significantly influenced by Austronesian languages. Apparently, in the ancient Chinese language, the syllable (expressed by a sign in writing) was not phonetically unchanged; various word-forming prefixes, suffixes and infixes could be introduced into it, which set off shades of meaning, relationships with other members of the sentence, or shared various grammatical functions. In the Middle Chinese language, this became impossible, the syllable "closed", almost losing the ability to change its sound; shades of meaning or grammatical function began, as a rule, to be expressed through interaction with other signs or service particles, as well as syntactically - the position in the sentence. Some variants of syllable sounds are preserved in dictionaries in the form of different readings of signs (often differing semantically), but not all of them: having preserved the memory of changing the reading of signs, Chinese philologists forgot the reason for this change.

These changes, which largely took place before and during the Han Empire (202 BC - 220 AD), were also reflected in the written language. In pre-Imperial times, phonoideographic signs (which convey information about both the meaning and sound of a word to a certain extent), which have occupied the main place in Chinese writing since the Han period, were not numerous - the so-called borrowed signs, which convey only the sound, played a much more important role (a simpler or more frequently used sign was used to write a word - a homonym). Whole groups of similar-sounding syllables could be written with the same sign, reflecting a whole field of semantic and grammatical units - and, apparently, it was phonetics, and not semantics, that was the basis of ancient Chinese writing of the Zhou era.

Naturally, different homonymic signs could be used in different places, which, of course, was unacceptable in a single empire. The situation was further complicated by the fact that the changes in the phonetics of syllables mentioned above led to the fact that many signs that had previously been homonymous or similar in sound ceased to be so - and therefore many ancient texts that were fundamentally important for imperial culture and education became extremely difficult to understand (or to understand them). (required hints from the teacher, whose competence was also not always indisputable). Han lexicographers tried to solve these problems by increasing the number and role of phonoideographic signs - often they were formed by adding determinative keys to popular phonetics that indicated a particular shade of its meaning. The most important texts of the tradition were rewritten, the borrowed signs were replaced with phonoideographic ones, if possible; the texts were provided with comments (however, the replacement of signs was not carried out quite systematically, and since the process of changing the language by this time was already quite long, the degree of understanding of the text by commentators also often leaves much to be desired).

The widespread notion in the literature that writing has been completely unified since the Qin-Han era (as archaeological finds have shown) is completely erroneous - neither the Qin nor Han authorities were able to achieve this: despite great efforts, the rules of writing still differed greatly in different regions of the empire; new trends related to the development of the language of the Qin-Han empire strengthening the role of phono-ideographic signs and refusing to use them for other purposes.-

1 Karlgren B. Etudes sur la phonologie chinoise //Archives d'etudes orientales, XV, 1-2. Upsala, 1915-1916; Idem. Grammata Serica, Script and Phonetics in Chinese and Sino-Japanese // The Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm, 1940; Idem. Compendium of Phonetics in Ancient and Archaic Chinese // The Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm, 1954; Idem. Grammata Serica Recensa. Stockholm: Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, 1957.

2 Yakhontov S.E. Drevnekitayskiy yazyk [Ancient Chinese language], Moscow: Nauka Publ., 1965.

3 Starostin S. A. Reconstruction of the Ancient Chinese phonological system, Moscow: Nauka Publ., 1989.

4 Baxter W.H., Sagart L. Old Chinese: A New Reconstruction. Oxford University Press, 2014.

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borrowed signs that convey only phonetics took a long and difficult time to take root. In practice, this happened already in the early Middle Ages, when the Old Chinese language became a dead, purely written language studied in schools, and the living development of the language began to occur within the framework of almost non-written dialects of the Middle Chinese language.

All these discoveries completely debunked many long-lived myths in historiography. For example, the idea that ancient Chinese was the language of intellectuals, largely artificial and purely written, does not stand up to any criticism, since it is completely incomprehensible to the ear (in fact, the phonetics of the ancient Chinese language were much richer than the modern one, so many homonymous signs in ancient times were not such at all); analysis of many ancient texts of the Chinese language It shows that they are focused primarily on the transmission of sound, and not on the subtleties of syntax or grammatical structure. It is probably necessary to review the well-established opinion that the signs of the ancient Chinese language were incredibly plastic and could perform the functions of almost any part of speech, depending on the context and word order in the sentence. Apparently, this is nothing more than an illusion based on the fact that ancient Chinese languages do not convey all the subtleties of their own phonetics. Thus, where we see a single sign that can act both as a noun and as an adjective or verb, the ancient Chinese saw several words denoted by the same sign, but read differently.5 Ancient Chinese became an artificial language, almost unsuitable for oral communication, already in the Middle Ages.

Of course, the study of ancient Chinese language material is very difficult due to the fact that we still have very few texts that did not pass through the Han reform (they can only be found archaeologically); in the texts that underwent it, the original spelling is greatly changed, and not always systematically, which makes it difficult to reconstruct confidently. But now there are computer databases of ancient Chinese texts that allow you to quickly and exhaustively analyze the contexts of using a particular sign. This allows us to draw conclusions about the rules of their use on a much stronger foundation than before - the dictionary or commentator can make a mistake in interpreting the sign, but the entire corpus of the language does not.

In conclusion, the speaker elaborated on specific examples of the reflection of the sound of living speech in the hieroglyphics of the ancient Chinese language. Thus, it has long been noticed that the combination of the signs zhi (demonstrative pronoun, verb, service word) and the interrogative particle hu in Dohan texts is often replaced by the sign zhu ("all"), which cannot be explained by any grammatical reasons. However, if you remember that the sign zhi at this time was read as *tə, and hu-as *wa, then everything falls into place. Moreover, this contraction is optional - that is, sometimes these two signs were pronounced more clearly, and sometimes they were reduced-depending on the manner of speech or dialectal features. Dialectal features may also explain the fact that in Shi Ching and Shang Shu ("Honored Scriptures"), the sign zhan ("so, so", the pronoun" to be so") is often replaced by the sign yan ("word, speech") - the fact is that zhan at that time was read as *pap, and if it came after a syllable with a laryngeal consonant, then the first *n naturally passed into the laryngeal *n, andaccordingly gave way to - *nan. To explain this substitution (as many generations of Chinese philologists have tried to do) without using the achievements of historical phonology, it is obviously quite impossible. There are quite a few similar examples.

L. P. Chernikova (Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences) spoke about her stay at Shenyang University and her training in Chinese language courses for researchers and teachers of the Chinese language.

Unfortunately, specialized scientific events devoted to historical phonology - one of the most interesting areas of modern linguistics and sinology - are extremely rare in our country, so this seminar was an important event in scientific life.

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On May 27, 2015, the XVII quarterly seminar "China and the World. Traditions and modernity".

5 Relics of this are also noticeable in the modern language - the van sign in the meaning of "ruler, king" is read in the second tone, and in the meaning of "rule" - in the fourth (BKRS, N 502, vol. 2, p. 155). Of course, this is not an accident, but the last traces of the phonetic difference between these two words, which were written with the same sign.

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Yu. V. Chudodeev (Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences) made a report on Soviet-Chinese relations during the Second World War. He highlighted the difficult course of development of Soviet-Chinese relations, analyzed the main changes that took place in them. The speaker elaborated on the merits of Soviet pilots who fought in the Chinese sky. It is characteristic that this story, which is not very well known in our country, is of great interest in China.

A. S. Trunova (Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences) in the report "Dream in the Red Chamber in Modern Chinese Literature", noting the exceptional place that the novel occupies in Chinese literature, paid special attention to the novel's sequels that appeared before its official publication and continue to be published until now. The reason for this is both the huge popularity of the novel and the dissatisfaction of many readers with its ending. It is amazing how popular "Dream in the Red Chamber" is now-not only among professional philologists, but also among ordinary readers.

K. V. Panin-Pentkovsky told about his great - grandfather-Vyacheslav Ivanovich Pentkovsky (Penkotsi-Pentkovsky) (1886-1968). He was born in Sevastopol, was an officer, and in 1918 found himself in China as an emigrant from Soviet Russia, received a law degree in Harbin, and opened one of the most prosperous law firms. He worked a lot for the CER and, apparently, quite early began to work for Soviet intelligence (it is possible that his arrival in China was not just an emigration). From 1924 to 1946, Pentkovsky was a legal adviser to the Consulate General of the USSR, defending Soviet citizens in Chinese courts. In 1946, after transferring almost all of his considerable property earned over decades of successful legal practice to the USSR, he returned to the USSR, however, retaining his Chinese name Pengkoqi as the first part of the composite surname. After returning to the USSR, he soon became a researcher at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, working in the team to compile the "Big Chinese-Russian Dictionary". But it seems that this was more of a cover - up-he continued to perform other government tasks. In his eighties, he left the service and family and moved to a remote Siberian village, ostensibly for farming. However, there is evidence that this was also a cover - up-shortly before his death, Pentkovsky was seen in Shanghai, where he apparently wrote another page in his amazing biography of a Chinese intelligence officer.

S. V. Dmitriev's report (IB RAS) was entitled "Tangut festive dishes based on the Tangut-Chinese dictionary "Pearl in the palm of your hand". In the well-known but underappreciated dictionary of the 12th century, which is practically the only bilingual thesaurus of the Tangut language and culture, a small section is devoted to Tangut cuisine. This section is of particular interest, since the compiler of" Pearl " Kwelde Riephu (Gule Maotsai) chose for his book the most characteristic, from his point of view, samples of Tangut culture and everyday life. Here is a description of the Tangut feast - thus, the listed dishes belong to the category of festive dishes that are not specifically highlighted in other Tangut dictionaries known to us. The analysis of dishes shows that Tangut cuisine in its appearance was neither a shadow of the Far Eastern Chinese, nor a reflection of nomadic Mongolian or Tibetan: most of the dishes are various kinds of pastries (steamed, baked, fried and dry tortillas), porridges, noodles and gravies - their assortment makes you think more about the cuisine of the oases of Central Asia. It is interesting that the listed holiday dishes are rather sparse - there are no delicacies among them, but even just meat dishes. We know that they were present in Tangut cuisine , but for some reason the author did not consider them sufficiently representative for inclusion in the dictionary.

All the reports, which were diverse in their topics, were received with great interest; many questions were discussed.

On September 16, 2015, the XVIII quarterly seminar of the Department of China of the Institute of Information Technology of the Russian Academy of Sciences " China and the World. Traditions and Modernity", dedicated to the problems of Chinese antiquity and the memory of the late colleague and friend A. R. Vyatkin.

Adam Schwartz (Yale University) gave a lecture on the concept of li ("ritual, decency") in ancient Chinese texts. Epigraphic data and such basic texts of the Confucian tradition as Lun yu and Shi Ching were used for the analysis. The report examined the relationship between the categories of Li and Wen ("enlightenment, culture") in the Confucian tradition. It is not uncommon to find the statement that the rules of behavior (li) should be learned in parallel

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or before the book knowledge, like a pattern (another meaning of the wen sign), which covers the fabric to increase its beauty and value. However, an analysis of Lun yu's chapter 3.8, which is mainly devoted to Confucius 'commentary on the Shi Ching ode" Sho-ren "("Beauty", translated by A. A. Shtukin" You are Majestic in Yourself"), shows that the Teacher believed that mastering the ritual completes the teaching of the canons, just as a cloak made of plain linen covers patterned clothing. beauty outfits. This story is interesting not only for understanding some of the basics of Confucian teaching, but also as an example of how Confucius uses ancient poetic texts not in their direct sense, but as an illustration of his pedagogical and metaphysical constructions. So, the description of beauty in his presentation became an allegory of the place of decency in a person's life.: as in the Jewish and Christian traditions, the Song of Songs - originally a love poem-has come to be interpreted as an allegorical praise of God.

M. E. Kuznetsova-Fetisova (Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences) made a report on the scientific conference "Bronze artifacts and inscriptions on bronze in the Western Zhou Period" (Peking University, June 20-26, 2015), in which she participated. The author especially noted the representative list of speakers, including many reputable Chinese experts on this topic, as well as the great interest of students and young scientists in the conference.

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On October 14, 2015, the XIX extraordinary seminar "China and the World. M. S. Khayutina (Institute of Sinology, Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich) gave a lecture on "Others in Ancient China (XI-VIII centuries BC): new archaeological discoveries and new theoretical approaches". It was about the gradual transformation of our understanding of the Western Zhou era in the light of new discoveries by Chinese archaeologists, which allowed us to much more clearly illuminate some aspects of Chinese history during this era. Historical literature (especially Chinese) still dominates the image of Western Zhou as a strong and centralized state with a complex and efficient administrative apparatus that exercised complete control over the Great Plain and surrounding territories. However, the development of Chinese archaeology, as in many other cases, allows us to take a somewhat more substantive look at this problem.

In 2006-2008, excavations were carried out near the town of Hengbei, Jiang County, China. Shanxi, during which the cemetery was excavated (the excavation area is 35 thousand m2, 1326 graves, of which 1200 were excavated and only 2 were published), where representatives of the ruling Peng clan were buried, in particular . Despite the fact that this state was located in close proximity to the major West Zhou centers (both capitals of Wang, the capital of the Jin shire), the graves studied are very different from the Zhou standard: they are much deeper (26, 65 and 15.28 m deep with a standard of about 7-8 m), traces of ground structures were found, which is also atypical. Many traces of human sacrifice have been found, which are almost completely absent in the Zhou graves (in Jin - only the earliest). The analysis of ceramics probably suggests that the Peng population is related to the northwestern (Gansu) Qijia culture and the northern (Ordos) Lijiang culture (an interesting example of the mixing of South Siberian and Shan bronzes). The Peng Bo Kui Clan (, in the epigraph is represented by the sign Gui) by some scholars (for example, Wang Guo-wei) was associated with the Gui-fang tribe, known from inscriptions on fortune-telling bones, with which many Shan sovereigns fought (sometimes the Lijiang culture is considered an archaeological reflection of this tribe). This clan had marital contacts with the Zhou Wangs and with the rulers of the Jin and Zeng shires, who often married Kui women.

The study of graves in Dahekou near the county town of Yicheng prov. in 2009-2011 also yielded interesting results. Shanxi . There on an area of 40 thousand square meters. about 1,500 graves (579 excavated, 10 published) and 24 chemakenas (chariot burials with horses harnessed to it) have been discovered in m2. In some burials (for example, in China), 24 bronze tripods were found, despite the fact that in the richest graves of a large Jin estate, 7-9 are found. In addition to bronze, many graves contain protopharfors and funerary wooden figures covered with red and black lacquer-the oldest in China. The architecture of the graves (specific shelves for inventory in the walls), as well as ceramics, indicate (as in the case of Peng) possible connections between this lot (it was called Ba) and the Ji clan ruling there with cultures

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north and northwest-and this clan was also closely related by marriage to the Zhou shires of Yan and Jin and to the Zhou Wangs.

Chinese archaeologists who have worked on these sites, and scientists who have analyzed the results, offer different concepts designed to find a place for these principalities in the West Zhou system: some say that Peng and Bo were vassals of the Zhou Wang, but the ethnically ruling clans in them and their inhabitants were representatives of other peoples, quite far from China. others believe that the rulers of these fiefs were vassals of the Jin. This is not excluded, but in the epigraphy of Peng and Bo there is no mention of such vassalage-despite the fact that, for example, in the Jin epigraphy, the dependence of the Jin rulers on Zhou, the story of the founding of the principality by the Zhou Wangs is one of the most popular stories. The graves of the Peng and Bo princes are not inferior in size and abundance of equipment to the graves of the rulers of the neighboring Zhou estates, and often even surpass them. In terms of the technology of making bronze vessels and ceramics, these non-Zhou principalities are also not at all inferior to Zhou, which somewhat violates the usual picture of the advanced Zhou civilization, surrounded by backward "barbarians", equal relations with which are impossible by definition.

These findings should lead historians to reconsider their view of Western Zhou. Obviously, the West Zhou political landscape was far from monotonous: in addition to the polities that fully recognized the suzerainty of the Zhou Wang and even considered it the basis for the legitimacy of their power, in the immediate vicinity of the Zhou domain there were states that had close ties with it (cultural, marital, etc.), but did not consider themselves vassals of the Zhou. At the same time, such independent or semi - independent states inhabited by ethnically distinct groups were not by default enemies of the Zhou center-on the contrary, they were quite prestigious marriage partners, which was probably explained, in particular, by the fact that their rulers were not inferior in their wealth and military power to their Zhou neighbors. There is no doubt that the control of the Zhou Wangs in what is commonly considered "West Zhou China" was very far from total and highly dependent on a particular area. It could not have been otherwise, given the level of development of infrastructure and productive forces characteristic of that time. Attempts to portray Western Zhou as the forerunner of later Chinese empires, although rooted in the Confucian tradition, can hardly be considered scientific or in any way justified.

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