“Delhi”, a picture story by Tatyana Kudryavtseva, opens this issue as our “Impressions” section.
A report entitled “Under the Sign of Orient” the magazine informs about the jubilee function of the academic community on the occasion the 190th anniversary of the Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences.
The Land of Orient
Yelena Stroganova, Aleksandr Yevangeli. Tingatinga: A Person and a School. The art of tingatinga painting, which was born in Tanzania in the 1960s, is the natural phenomenon that exists between the living ritual and legend, between mass culture and magic, between the art for tourists and the artist’s self-expression. The article is amply illustrated by reproductions of tingatinga paintings.
Vladimir Petrukhin. Donator of Antiquities. The article describes activities of Yevgeny Satanovsky, President of the Institute of Israeli and Middle East Studies, related to salvage and study of archaeological artifacts. He had donated an extensive collection of artifacts to the Historical Museum in Moscow, making accessible to the public the specimens of applied and decorative art of the peoples of Medieval Southeastern Europe.
Igor’ Chininov. Light-winged Canoe. Using the Stone Age technology, the inhabitants of Micronesian islands had developed the perfect boats – canoe, and had made far and long voyages. The art of ancient navigators had became a part of the cultural heritage of the islanders.
Yelena Katasonova. Glamour à la Japonaise. Another publication of the author who is studying the modern youth culture of Japan. This time the article discusses the Hello Kitty project, as well as the other phenomena of pop-culture, which embody the overwhelming vogue of the Japanese for everything that follows the glamour style of kawaii.
Konstantin Panchenko. Fragments of Christian Orient. The region of Tur Abdin between the upper reaches of Tigris and Euphrates, in the extreme southeast of modern Turkey, is one the Christian enclaves, which had existed here from the times of Roman Empire. The author, who visited the place, shares his impressions of the Syriac Orthodox Christian churches and monasteries.
Mikhail Karpov. The Autumn of the Ancient Capital. Soon after the People’s Republic of China had been proclaimed, the first projects of the large-scale reconstruction of Beijing were born. A lot of outstanding architects and political leaders, as well as Soviet specialists, who worked at that time in China, took part in the discussion of aesthetic, town-planning, logistic, ideological, and political concepts of the new city.
Yana Faskhutdinova. Hanbok and the Ancient Art of Seduction. After the fashion show in Moscow, which featured the Korean women’s dress of the Choson dynasty, the author had an opportunity to speak about the history and modern image of hanbok, which is so popular in Korea that it became one of the national cultural symbols.
Sergey Smorodkin. The Open Palm. The expedition to the Mangyshlak Peninsula, headed by Alan Medoev, the outstanding scholar from Kazakhstan, had found numerous memorial and ceremonial structures, including subterranean ones, as well as petroglyphs of the 18th-19th century that had preserved the ancient artistic traditions.
Ilya Zaytsev. Crimean Khans in Exile of Rhodes Island. Non infrequently, the members of the Crimean ruling house fell into disgrace of the Ottoman dynasty. Some of the tombstones of the Girey family, who had lived as prisoners on Rhodes Island, have been preserved to the present day.
Andrey Strelkov. The Odissey of the Buryat Lama. In the life of the Buryat lama Erdeni Galshiev (1855–1915), the real and the mythical are interwoven in one magical pattern. The author of the article reconstructs the episodes of the biography of this Buddhist thinker and man of faith, who left to his scions the moral teaching entitled The Mirror of Wisdom.
Andrey Lan’kov. There, Over the River... Lately, the border region between China and North Korea became quite popular among the tourists. The riverbank area of Dandong in China is the triumph of economic spree, whereas the other bank of Yalujiang river is a complete desert...
Alisa Borisenko, Yuly Khudyakov. Water-bearers from Syberia. The aquamanilia – vessels for the washing of hands – and other articles of daily use from Europe found in Syberia give evidence to the penetration of European merchants and missionaries beyond the Ural mountains in the High Middle Ages period.
Dmitriy Kapustin. The Everyday Life of the Distant Parish. The Russian Orthodox Christian church had been reestablished in Hong Kong under the auspices of the Moscow Patriarchy.
Vladimir Belyakov. Russian Grooms for Egyptian Princesses. The history of marriages between Egyptian women and Russian men dates back at least to a century ago. And the Egyptian brides were not just commoners, but real princesses.
Irina Trofimova. The Thing We Come Back to Is Never the Same as the Thing We Have Left. The author of the article is the artist who is working in the technique of batik. She tells the reader about the history and methods of this ancient technique of cloth decoration, as well as about her own artistic works.
Writings
Marina Mongush. Otto Maenchen-Helfen’s Journey to Tuva 80 Years Ago. The article reproduces the fragments from the book by a German traveler and his unique photographs. The German traveler’s observations are complemented with modern material by the author.
Our «Orientnet» section features the review of web-resources on Indian music.
Please e-mail your wishes, suggestions and comments to the following address: orientnet@rsl.ru.
You can find the summaries of the previous issues online, by visiting our section of the Russian State Library Web-site: http://orient.rsl.ru/en/