Evgeny Ivanovich Kychanov passed away on May 24, 2013.

E. I. Kychanov was born on June 22, 1932 in the small town of Sarapul on the Kama River in Udmurtia in the family of Ivan Kuzmich Kychanov, a land management engineer who worked at that time as the head of the Prikamsky zemotryad, and Galina Pavlovna Kychanova (Zyleva), a kindergarten teacher. His parents came from families of petty bourgeois-rsmsslsniks and strong peasants who fully experienced the difficulties of revolutions, wars and dekulakization.

In 1950, after graduating from high school, E. I. Kychanov went to Leningrad with the intention of entering the Faculty of History or Philology of Leningrad State University. However, thanks to a happy accident, he entered vostochny. Before submitting the documents, having met B. M. Novikov, then a third-year student and now an associate professor of Leningrad State University, in the main building of the university, Kychanov decided to devote himself to studying the history of China.

The student years for E. I. Kychanov, as well as for the entire post-war generation, were difficult, but filled with the spirit of romance and true friendship. In the same group with him studied later became well-known researchers B. S. Kuznetsov, V. E. Larichev, E. V. Shavkunov, Yu. V. Zuev, with whom Evgeny Ivanovich for the rest of his life retained a warm friendly relationship.

E. I. Kychanov studied easily and with pleasure, was one of the best students not only of the faculty, but of the entire university: for the thesis " Peasant movement in the province

Guangdong and Hunan during the First Civil Revolutionary War " (directed by L. A. Berezny) he was awarded the first prize of Leningrad State University. In the spring of 1955, Kychanov was recommended for postgraduate study in the Oriental Manuscripts Sector of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences, majoring in Tangut Studies. Having successfully passed the competitive entrance exams, he became a post-graduate student of the Institute of Internal Affairs of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

In 1951, after the Institute moved to Moscow, the Department of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences remained in Leningrad (originally it was also called the Museum), the head of which was appointed D. I. Tikhonov (1906-1987). According to D. I. Tikhonov, the scientific description of some funds of the Institute was not conducted due to the lack of specialists. Such funds included the unique Tangut collection, which was brought to Russia in 1909 by P. K. Kozlov's Mongol-Sichuan expedition (1863-1935).

During the post-graduate years of E. I. Kychanov, an important stage in the transformation of the Oriental Manuscripts Sector into the Leningrad Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences falls. In 1957, the area of the Institute in the Novo-Mikhailovsky Palace was significantly expanded, the staff was replenished with new employees, new offices were formed. At this time, Evgeny Ivanovich collected material for his dissertation, mastered the French language. Back then, it only worked with published sources in Chinese.

By the autumn of 1958, E. I. Kychanov had prepared the text of his PhD dissertation " The State of Xia (982-1227)". He brilliantly defended this work on June 30, 1960 at the Faculty of Oriental Studies of Leningrad State University. The dissertation was the first special work in world science devoted to the history of the Tangut state. Kychanov exhaustively used Chinese sources on this topic, and for the first time touched upon the issues of Tangut ethnogenesis, their economic development, and the spread of Buddhism in the Xi Xia state. The dissertation was innovative in nature, since all the earlier works on Tangut studies were devoted to the study of language and writing.

On December 1, 1958, E. I. Kychanov was enlisted in the LO IV Academy of Sciences as a junior researcher and performed scientific and technical work in the institute's manuscript collection. Together with M. I. Vorobyova-Desyatovskaya, he analyzed the Tibetan fund for more than a year. At the same time, he began studying Tibetan in the hope that it would help him learn Tangut in the future.

E. I. Kychanov started analyzing the Tangut fund in the fall of 1959. This work was aimed at completing the complete inventory of the collection from Khara-Khoto, which was started by A. I. Ivanov and N. A. Nevsky. Through the efforts of their predecessors, about half of the fund was added to the inventory books. Manuscripts and woodcuts were placed in boxes and covered with a layer of yellow loess, although they were sorted more than once. The work was also hampered by the fact that after the Institute moved from the BAN building to the Novo-Mikhailovsky Palace in 1951, many manuscripts were "forced", mixed up with others and were rediscovered only after some time. A little over a year later, when certifying Kychanov as a junior researcher, the head of the Far Eastern Cabinet V. M. Stein (1890-1964) wrote:: "Kychanov is doing a lot of "dirty work", which not every young person will agree to, sorting out and encrypting the Tangut fund, thus continuing the line started by N. A. Nevsky in his time." The result of the initial inventory of the fund was the publication of a short annotated catalog "Tangut manuscripts and woodcuts" compiled together with Z. I. Gorbacheva (Moscow).: IVL, 1963). This catalog summed up the results of 50 years of work with the foundation, and E. I. Kychanov included in it a description of 4242 storage units - more than half of all encrypted works.

During the World Congress of Orientalists, held in Moscow in the summer of 1960, E. I. Kychanov was in Leningrad and among a group of young employees gave explanations to the guests on the exhibition of manuscripts. Among the orientalists who visited LO YVES AN was Sir Gerard Clawson, who examined the Tangut manuscripts in detail and had an interesting conversation with E. I. Kychanov about the prospects of his work. A few years later, in 1964, Clawson published an article in Asia Major entitled "The Future of Tangut studies", in which, as a representative of the "earlier and less scientific stage" of the development of this industry, he summarized his own experience in order to pass it on to "a new and energetic generation of young researchers".

Since 1962, together with M. V. Sofronov, Evgeny Ivanovich was engaged in deciphering Tangut phonetic tables, the results of which were published in the joint " Study on the phonetics of the Tangut language (preliminary results) "(Moscow: IVL, 1963). The monograph outlined

a technique that makes it possible to determine the reading of signs contained in phonetic dictionaries of the Tangut language. The paper describes the main external (Tibetan and Chinese) and internal (phonetic tables and dictionaries) sources for reconstructing the phonetics of the Tangut language. In 1963, Mr. Kychanov prepared another work, "Only Writing Sounds" (Moscow: Nauka, GRVL, 1965), intended for a wide range of readers. In this short monograph, which is a series of essays on the history of Tangut studies, his wonderful literary and narrative gift was revealed.

It should be noted that E. I. Kychanov's organizational skills were immediately noted and used by the management: after being hired, he served as a scientific secretary of the Far Eastern Cabinet of the LO YVES AN for two years, and in 1964 was elected chairman of the trade union committee. In January 1963, the Tangut group was organized as part of the Far Eastern Cabinet under the leadership of E. I. Kychanov. The work of its members was distributed as follows: B. S. Kolokolov was assigned to work with the monuments of Chinese classics translated from Chinese, K. B. Keping was assigned to work with non-canonical translated works, as well as the study of the grammar of the Tangut language, L. P. Tersntyev-Katansky was to study the book culture of the Tanguts. E. I. Kychanov began to study the original Tangut texts. works, in particular to the translation of the collection of proverbs of the XII century "Newly collected precious paired sayings". A facsimile and study of this monument was published by him ^{in 1974.1}

The group had two other common topics: painting and translating the dictionaries "Sea of Writing" and " Sea of Writing, mixed categories "in order to expand the repertoire of well-known Tangut signs and words, as well as preparing for machine translation of the Tangut text of the Sunzi military treatise. The first topic ended with the facsimile publication of both monuments in 1969.2 The ^second topic was planned in collaboration with a working group established at the Institute of Mathematics in Akademgorodok, Novosibirsk, but it was not developed, and the treatise itself was published by K. B. Koeping ^{in 1979.3}

From March to July 1964, E. I. Kychanov was in Beijing at the Higher Preparatory School for Foreign Students. According to E. I. Kychanov, the topic related to the study of the small people who lived in ancient times on the territory of the People's Republic of China did not meet with the enthusiasm of the internship leaders from the Chinese side, so formally he was not given a scientific supervisor and his stay in China was reduced only to improvement in the language. with the outstanding researcher Wang Jing-zhu, who since the 1930s conducted research in the field of Tangut studies, but then these attempts did not get any results, and Kichanov met with Wang Jing-zhu only in 1989.

Since May 1965, E. I. Kychanov worked as a senior researcher at the LO IVE Academy of Sciences, and in June 1965, the head of the LO IVE Academy of Sciences, Yu. A. Petrosyan, invited him to the position of his deputy for science. Evgeny Ivanovich remained in this post until January 1, 1997.

In 1966, together with V. S. Kolokolov, E. I. Kychanov published facsimiles of Tangut translations of Chinese classical works "Lun yu", "Meng-tzu" and "Xiao jing" from the collection of YVES AN ⁴. An important part of this work was the Tangut-Chinese dictionary with 1,350 characters found in the published texts. Many of these signs were not included in the dictionary of N. A. Nevsky and were identified for the first time. In addition, the work was provided with a Chinese-Tangut dictionary, a table of cursive elements of Tangut characters, as well as the text of chapter IV of the Xiao Jing with parallel writing of standard Tangut characters and corresponding Chinese characters. The introduction of unique texts into scientific circulation was of great importance for studying the ideology of China and Xi Xia and became an important contribution to the deciphering of the Tangut script.

¹ Newly collected precious paired sayings. Facsimile of a woodcutter. Ed. text, trans. Translated from Tangut, introductory article and comm. by E. I. Kychanov, Moscow: Nauka, GRVL, 1974 (Pamyatniki pismennosti Vostoka. XL).

² Morse code. Facsimile of Tangut woodcuts. Translated from Tangut, introductory article and attached by K. B. Keping, B. S. Kolokolov, E. I. Kychanov and A. P. Tsrsntsva-Katanskogo. Part I 2. Moscow: Nauka, GRVL, 1969 (Monuments of Oriental Writing. XXV, 1—2).

³ Sun Tzu in Tangut translation. Facsimile of a woodcutter. Ed. text, transl., introduction., comment., grammar. Essay, dictionary and adj. by K. B. Keping, Moscow, 1979 (Monuments of Writing in the East. XLIX).

⁴ Chinese classics in Tangut translation (Lun yu, Meng zi, Xiao jing). Facsimiles of texts. V. S. Kolokolova and E. I. Kychanova, Dictionary and Decree, Moscow: Nauka, GRVL, 1966 (Pamyatniki pismennosti Vostoka, IV).

In 1968, one of the main works of E. I. Kychanov, "An Essay on the history of the Tangut State", was published, which he defended in 1970 as a doctoral dissertation. This work was the first in the world science to present the history of the Tangut people from the time of their birth to their tragic death in 1227.The issues of ethnogenesis, formation and consolidation of the state of Western Xia, its political, economic and military history, as well as the peculiarities of the original culture, religion and writing of the Tanguts were covered in detail. The book showed that Western Xia played an important political role in Central Asia and for two and a half centuries was one of the three most powerful states in the Far East, along with Sung China and Khitan Liao (later Jin). In a review of this work, J. R. R. Tolkien writes: Clawson noted: "It is hardly an exaggeration to say that if Barthold had had the same interests and knowledge, he would have written a book like this 'Sketch of the History of the Tangut State', and there can be no higher praise."

In 1969, Evgeny Ivanovich started working on the topic "Monuments of Tangut legislation", setting out to translate "The amended and newly approved code of laws of the motto of the reign of Heavenly Prosperity (1149-1168)". The work on this unique and voluminous (20 chapters, 1,460 articles) monument of Far Eastern law lasted for almost 20 years and ended with a fundamental 4-volume publication in 1987-1989 in the series "Monuments of Oriental Writing" of the GDVL. This work attracted the attention of specialists, was partially published in China in 1987.5, and in 1997 was ^awarded the S. F. Oldenburg Prize of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

In addition to the fact that during the preparation of this publication E. I. Kychanov identified and worked out many other monuments of Tangut legislation, he approached the solution of a number of major problems of the state structure and legal regulation of nomadic and semi-nomadic societies of the peoples of Asia. Studying the social structure of the Tanguts, he sought parallels in the history of China, Tibet and Mongolia. As a result, dozens of articles were published that covered the issues of state administration and estate division in China and Central Asia, the role of slavery and forced labor in economic activity in the East in the Middle Ages.

The study of the Tangut Code led E. I. Kychanov to study medieval Chinese law. In Russia, apart from the publications of Alexey Leontiev at the end of the eighteenth century, there was almost no study of old Chinese law. The result of E. I. Kychanov's work on studying the legislation of the Tang and Song dynasties was the monograph "Fundamentals of Medieval Chinese Law (VII-XIII centuries) "(Moscow, 1986), which for the first time presented the main provisions of traditional Chinese law in a systematic and complete form. This reference book has no analogues in the world of Sinology yet.

Studying the history of the Tangut ethnogenesis and their fate after the Mongol conquest, E. I. Kychanov became interested in the ethnic and political history of the neighboring peoples: Khitan, Jurchen, Oirats, Mongols. The most striking result of his research in this direction in 1970-1980 was a series of popular science works that presented historical portraits of the rulers of the nomadic world: "The life of Temujin, who thought to conquer the world "(Moscow: Nauka, GRVL, 1973), "Narration about the Oirat Galdans Boshoktu Khan" (Novosibirsk: Nauka, SB, 1980), "Abakhai" (Novosibirsk: Nauka, SB, 1986), etc. Later, Genghis Khan's biography was translated into Mongolian (2000), and Galdan's biography in Russian was republished in the capital of Kalmykia, Elista (1999).

It should be noted that E. I. Kychanov highly appreciated the achievements of Japanese tangutologists and always tried to get access to Japanese literature in the areas he studied. In 1967, the outstanding Tangut scholar Nishida Tatsuo visited LO YIWAN for the first time, and then in 1975 E. I. Kychanov visited Kyoto for the first time as part of a scientific exchange at Ritsumeikan University. Since the late 1960s, he has maintained scientific contacts with European researchers of Central Asia: Louis Gambis, Herbert Franke, Eric Grinstead, Maria Ferenczi, Djordem Kara, Ralf Stein, and others.

Until the early 1980s, China remained a closed country for domestic researchers. E. I. Kychanov was able to get acquainted with modern works in Chinese on the history of law and Tangut studies in 1978 in Copenhagen during a research internship at the NIAS (Nordic Institute for Asian Studies). But direct personal contacts with Chinese tangutologists

⁵ Xi Xia fa dian-Tien-sheng zheng gai jiu ding xin liulin (di 1-7 zhang) [Revised and re-approved Code of the Motto of the Reign of Heavenly Prosperity (Chapters 1-7)]    1988.

They were established only nine years later, when professors Li Fan-wen and Shi Jin-bo, who now occupy a leading position in Chinese Tangut studies, arrived in Leningrad in the winter of 1987. They were aware of the works of E. I. Kychanov, some of which were translated into Chinese in 1978. And in 1989, Evgeny Ivanovich visited China for the first time after a long break.

It was during this period that the Academy of Social Sciences of the People's Republic of China turned to the leadership of the USSR Academy of Sciences with a proposal to fully publish facsimiles of handwritten materials from Dunhuang and Harahoto, stored in the LO YIWU Academy of Sciences. The proposal was met with agreement, which marked the beginning of many years of cooperation. As part of this publishing project in 1993-2000 in LO (St. Petersburg.F) The Institute of Photography of the Russian Academy of Sciences received several visits from a group of researchers and photographers led by Shi Jin-bo. It included Tangut scholars Bai Bin and Nie Hong-yin, as well as employees of the Shanghai Ancient Book publishing house Jiang Wei-sun and Yan Ke-qin. The editor on the Russian side was E. I. Kychanov. The result was the publication of 14 volumes of Tangut written monuments. The publication of the collection from Harahoto gave a powerful impetus to the development of tangut studies all over the world, primarily in China.

In 1990-2000, major generalizing works of E. I. Kychanov were published, on which he worked for many years. In 1997, the monograph "Nomadic States from the Huns to the Manchus" was published (Moscow: East Lit. Russian Academy of Sciences), which contains an analysis of the processes of statehood formation among nomadic peoples of Central Asia. The book is the result of E. I. Kychanov's study of the structure of societies of peoples adjacent to China and their state ideology. In this paper, the problem of identifying common and special features in the formation of non-Han nomadic states was raised, and a methodology for studying the features of their political and administrative management was proposed. The second extended edition of the monograph was published in 2010.

In 1999, the publication of Kyoto University published "Catalog of Tangut Buddhist Monuments of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences". At one time, the list of 1963 compiled by E. I. Kychanov together with Z. I. Gorbacheva included a description of the non-Buddhist part of the Tangut fund, while Buddhist monuments in the Tangut language were only listed. It took E. I. Kychanov more than 30 years to identify and identify Buddhist works from Khara-Khoto. Now the full contents of the Tangut Fund of the Institute of Internal Affairs of the Russian Academy of Sciences, with the exception of the collection of administrative and economic documents, were presented to the scientific community.

In 2006, an outstanding work was published, which became the result of more than 40 years of work by E. I. Kychanov, "Tangut-Chinese-Russian-English dictionary". From the very first days of working on the Tangut foundation in 1959, the scientist kept a working file-dictionary, which he expanded and supplemented throughout his life, taking into account both his own data revealed during the decryption of handwritten texts and data published in the works of colleagues. Therefore, the dictionary was the result that summarized the achievements of world science in deciphering the Tangut script over the entire history of its development, and has no analogues ⁶. The dictionary was particularly noted in the RAS Report among achievements for 2006.

In 2008, he joined the Publishing house of the Faculty of Philology and Arts of St. Petersburg.GU published a collection of articles by E. I. Kychanov "History of the Tangut state", which combined more than 50 articles on the history, law, military affairs and culture of Xi Xia. The publication of articles from different years was not only of fundamental scientific importance, but also showed the dynamics of research on the problem, ways to improve translations and interpretation of sources, and changes in approaches to the study of the Tangut civilization.

In addition to his general works, E. I. Kychanov continued to publish research and translations of Tangut monuments that are of lasting importance for studying the history and culture of the Far Eastern region. In 2000, a study of the apocryphal work "Writing at the Altar on the Reconciliation of Confucius" was published, which is a rare surviving example of a discussion between Taoists and Confucians during the "hundred Schools" period or immediately after it7. This work, the Chinese original of which has not been preserved, testifies to the prevalence of Taoist ideas in the state of Xi Xia and their influence on a certain part of its population.

⁶ Dictionary of the Tangut (Si Xia) language. Tangut-Russian-English-Chinese dictionary. Comp. Kychanov E. I., S. Lrakava. Kyoto, 2006.

⁷ Entry at the altar of the reconciliation of Confucius. Facsimile of the manuscript / Ed. text, translated from Tangut, vst. art., comment. and the dictionary of V. I. Kychanov. Russian Academy of Sciences, 2000.

Devoting all his energy and time to scientific work, Kychanov also carried out a lot of scientific and organizational work at the Institute. While serving as Deputy Director for Science at LO YIWAN AN, he was in charge of the Far East sector from 1978, and after its reorganization from 1983, the sector of historiography and source studies of China and Central Asia. In a difficult time, from 1997 to 2003, he was the Director of the St. Petersburg Branch of the Institute of Information Technology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He was a member of many editorial boards, academic and dissertation councils, and was awarded the title of honorary professor at a number of foreign universities. Evgeny Ivanovich has trained dozens of post-graduate students of LO (SPb.F) IB of the Academy of Sciences and students of the Eastern Faculty of St. Petersburg State University. In 1986, he was awarded the academic title of professor.

Until his last days, until his illness weakened him, E. I. Kychanov worked tirelessly for the benefit of science. He prepared documents from Khara-Khoto for publication, and together with K. M. Bogdanov worked on the processing of the Tangut fund, which was aimed at taking into account the entire set of achievements in identifying and connecting monuments of Tangut writing.

Evgeny Ivanovich was an outstanding man who possessed a rare innate talent for research work. Linking his scientific destiny with Tantu studies, he wrote one of the brightest pages in the history of this complex discipline, which is the pride of Russian Oriental studies. At the same time, he brilliantly developed many topical issues of the history of statehood, law, ethnogenesis, and the written heritage of the peoples of China and Central Asia.

It will be difficult for us without Evgeny Ivanovich, we will miss his constant wise support, optimism, and friendly attention.

Eternal memory to him!

I. F. POPOVA

Permanent link to this publication: