Moscow: Natalis Publ., 2012, 816 p., ill.

The book is a whimsical mix of various texts, united only formally by the fact that they all relate to the topic of death.

On the one hand, death is a universal equalizer, it can be considered as one of the factors that unite all of humanity. I. P. Glushkova, the compiler and inspirer of the collection, does not aim at such a task, confining herself to Maharashtra, but at least reaches a significant detail of the problems. The choice of Maharashtra for an in-depth analysis is justified because this state has undergone the most detailed study at the Center for Indian Studies of the Institute of Higher Education of the Russian Academy of Sciences (see: India: a country and its regions / Vanina, Moscow: Editorial URSS, 2000), and this is a considerable merit of I. P. Glushkova.

On the other hand, death is different, and there are problems about it that are not at all related to each other. There is a medical side (microbes, viruses, diseases, aging). It is partially covered in S. Sidorova's article " A nurse from Bombay: to live or not to live?" (the problem of euthanasia in India) and in a purely medical aspect in the article by M. B. Makalpin "Epidemic: corpses and vaccines against the background of bubonic plague "(plague epidemics in 1896-1930). But these two materials, at least, relate to the death of humans, while E. Buchanan's essay " Cats against rotten fever "(1908) talks about something completely different - about the death of rats. Buchanan proves that cat breeding is much more effective than any vaccination in the fight against epidemics.

There is a medical and social side of the problem - the fight against epidemics. This story is devoted exclusively to informative material by E. Vanina "The Plague in Bombay: Testimonies of an Indian teacher and Russian doctors". This is both the publication of sources and their in-depth analysis, which makes a significant contribution to our knowledge about this period, explaining a lot about the epidemic, the actions of the government, and the reaction of Indians - both ordinary people and, in particular, the recognized leader of Maharashtra nationalists B. G. Tilak. Sh. D. Dzoshi's autobiographical story "Where are those pestilent days?"is well adapted to this material. about how he survived the plague in his youth. This is one of the rare examples where the materials in the book complement each other.

There is a psychological side to the perception of death-the idea of the soul and the afterlife. Unfortunately, the book poorly reflects the concept of rebirth of souls, so fashionable in popular discussions about Hinduism ("A good religion was invented by the Hindus..."). But this is not a reproach to the compiler. The concept of mctempsychosis is generally poorly understood, because it is deliberately vague and not spelled out in the Hindu sacred books.

There is an ethnographic side-posthumous rites, their preservation and, on the contrary, changes in recent years. This category also includes materials about pilgrimages to places where saints pass away as a sub-topic. This topic is well presented in the article by I. Glushkova "Traces and heritage. Extracting posthumous meanings." A. R. Kulkarni's article "Live in the bonfire: virtuous wives of the Maratha country" is very informative about the history of the appearance and prohibition of the sati rite. This material is supplemented with poems by an unknown author about the self-immolation of the widow of one of the Marathi Peshvas and the memoir of J. Forbes (1749-1819) " I regret that I did not see this amazing sacrifice of myself...". The article by E. Feldhaus "River deities and the encroachment on the lives of children" is written, as the compiler warns us, "in line with the academic tradition American cultural anthropology, where different cultures are understood as semiotic codes that require decoding" (pp. 329-330, note 5). (I do not accept this tradition and therefore cannot say anything about the significance of this article.)

There are murders of political figures that need to be studied using the usual historical (political science) methods. In this virtual "department" (the book offers a not always clear grouping of materials), the article E is significant. Vanina's "The Death of the Emperor - the End of the Empire" about the circumstances of Aurangzeb's death is an excellent psychological and historical analysis of the personality of the last Great Mughal. There is nothing in our indological literature

this has never happened before. Equally informative is the part of the article by I. Glushkova "Traces and legacy ...", which deals with the murder of the great Shivaji Afzal Khan. This is both good historical material and a curious sketch of modern Maharashtra (in this case, not different from the general Indian) mores. The spirit of these morals is simple: "our people are always right" and " everything is allowed to the saints." However, the need to prove a thousand times that Shivaji was right, insidiously killing the enemy, says that the conscience of the Marathas on this occasion is still a little sick. It is particularly poignant now that the general's murder in his tent was an "anti-terrorist action" (p. 105). However, I note that this part of the article is not thematically related to the first part, which deals with the worship of dead saints.

There are terrorist acts, where the main problems are the prerequisites, consequences, and resonance. This also includes man-made disasters (A. Bugrov " Shock. Earth and people in the Latour Apocalypse"). Here, the individuality of death is decisively relegated to the background by quantitative indicators: how many died? Ten? A hundred? A thousand?

This is also the nature of the problem when considering the victims of pilgrimage crowds, although the origins of such tragedies are significantly different (I. Glushkova "Perishable and perishable: mass disasters on the approach to the shrine"). Here, the counting of victims should be accompanied by a study of the nature of the crowd and religious beliefs and prejudices.

There are deaths in war that do not seem to have any connection with individual deaths or the consequences of terrorist acts. But in this case, too, there is no problem of individual parting with life (except for the description of the deaths of military leaders), and we are usually talking about numerals - how many fell. I. Glushkova's article "The Bloodbath of Panipat (1761): The Living and the Dead"is devoted to this subject. With such thoroughness, the events of that dramatic year were not considered in Russian literature.

There is also the problem of suicides (the rite of sati, which has already been mentioned, although this is also suicide, does not apply to this problem. This is pure religion, the one that is "opium for the people"). A. Bochkovskaya's article "Multi-dimensionality of despair: on the suicides of Vidarbha farmers" trustfully reproduces the thoughts of a number of scientists about the increase in the number of suicides among farmers in one of the regions of Maharashtra. The reasons for this unfortunate phenomenon are easily found: crop failures, debt, hence frustration, etc. Incessant usurious debt is also a characteristic feature of Indian rural life at all times. So this kind of explanation is not convincing. Although it is useful for an indologist to know about the problem of suicide in Maharashtra.

From the book, you can extract a kind of anthology of Marathi literature, selected, of course, from the point of view of the main theme of the book. There are poems by Durga Bhagaat, Dilip Chitre, Nissim Ezekiel, essays by D. A. Kulkari, P. L. Deshpande, plays by Mahesh Elkunchwar, short stories by Vijay Tendulkar, Vilas Sarang, Makarande Sathe, Shankar Kharat.

There is also an obituary that, like all obituaries, speaks not about death, but about a person's life. And other articles, and even poems, also telling about the writer Chitra, but not related to the topic of death. Chitre was a good man and a writer-let's believe the memories of his friends, but only related to death, that he recently died.

M. Elkunchwar's play "The Worn-out Clothes of our Body" tells about the suffering of family members who can not wait for their father to die. V. Tendulkar in his story relishes the case of bloody hooliganism and the murder of this killer by a brutal crowd. V. Sarang with a seriousness worthy of better application, tells about how he killed flies a newspaper, and then watched as the spider took one of them.

Makarand Sathe is represented by a fantasy play on the themes of the other world. Shankar Kharat tells a heartwarming story about a goat sacrifice that turned out to be useless.

Like almost any collection of articles, this one consists of more or less successful materials. But in this case, their incompatibility is simply blatant. Some articles on historical and ethnological (anthropological) subjects are very informative. Others have an unclear purpose. The" prologue "and" epilogue " that frame the collection do not explain this purpose. Moreover, it is frankly stated that the book "was created without a preliminary plan and did not become the implementation of the "invented" concept" (p.41). I don't think the goal was to put the Maharashtra people in a bad light. The collection didn't work out. "Death" did not unite both the dead and those who wrote about them.

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