On October 17-21, 2011, the Department of Oriental Written Monuments of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences hosted a problem - based methodological conference "Oriental Written Monuments: the experience of Researchers, translators and publishers". It was the result of the seminar "Textology and Source Studies of the East", which brought together scientists representing various areas of work with written sources: philologists, historians, linguists, numismatists, art historians and, of course, translators of written monuments. There were 14 presentations, including two by our colleague from the University of Tartu (Estonia) V. V. Sazonov.

The conference focused on problems that textologists and source scientists have to solve almost daily. This is, firstly, the problem of reliable reading of the text and its interpretation; secondly, the study of the cultural and historical context, of which the monument is a part. Finally, the third, and perhaps the most difficult, task is to adequately convey the text in translation, in all the wide range of meanings embedded in it. Therefore, from a methodological point of view, the combination of reports on sources that are very diverse in genre, language, and chronological terms within the same conference turned out to be mutually useful and fruitful.

Goncharov's report "Numismatic source as an archaeological source" described the contradiction that arises between the results of the analysis of numismatic sources.

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finds from a particular medieval settlement and the data provided by the archaeological material.

In recent years, with the help of coins, the researcher has clarified the names and periods of existence of several Golden Horde cities. The name Gulistan was established for the Tsarevskoye settlement, which was previously considered the remains of the city of Saray al-Jadida, under which it existed from the beginning of the 1340s to 1368/69. The name Saray al-Jadida refers to the city located on the site of a Saltpeter settlement (30s of the XIV-beginning of the XVI century).kala in the basin of the lower Syr Darya River was considered to be the remains of a large city of Jend, which existed since the 10th century, although no coins older than the 13th century have been found on the site of the ancient settlement, and this leaves open the question of which city was on the site of Jan-kala. The same situation is typical for the Sygnak settlement: historians attribute the appearance of the settlement (and, accordingly, the city of the same name) to the VI century, but during excavations there it was not possible to find coins older than the end of the XIII century. It is obvious that such a written monument as a complex of coins, among the historical sources obtained by archaeological means, requires more careful attention.

Report of L. V. Goryaeva " Malay Chronicle of the XIV century . "The Tale of the Rajahs of Pasey: Reading, Interpreting, Commenting" was dedicated to her experience in translating the earliest monument of Malay historiography. Being essentially a mythologized dynastic history, "The Tale of the Rajahs of Pasey" combines features typical of both chronicles and oral and written epics. The already confirmed facts of political and economic history are presented in accordance with the traditional Malay concept of the state and are intricately intertwined with semi-folklore epic motifs. These features of the monument dictate the need for its comprehensive commentary: historical and geographical, ethnographic, linguistic, literary studies. In turn, all these types of comments are based on the authenticity of the text to be translated.

Although The Tale of the Rajahs of Pasey was published several times, both in Arabic (1849) and Latin (1914, 1962, 1987, and 1999), and twice translated into European languages - French (1874) and English (1962), there are still many obscure passages in its text. Referring to the facsimile of the main (most complete) manuscript of the monument allowed L. V. Goryaeva to offer her own interpretation of a number of words and make some clarifications and corrections in their transliteration and translation.

On the experience of a workshop on reading and commenting on the texts of a Persian Sufi poet of the XII-XIII centuries. Farid al-din Attar reported to L. G. Lahuti. The workshop led by her has been working in the Department of Monuments of Writing of the Peoples of the East of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 2010. As the main text for her work, she chose the "Introduction" to the famous poem "Mantik at-tair" ("Conversations of Birds").

Working on Attar's poems provides good hermeneutical reading skills. Reading "Mantik at-tayr" requires a deep knowledge of the Persian poetic tradition, the ability to navigate Sufi and philosophical topics, and familiarity with the entire body of texts of the poet. A separate problem is the vocabulary: many words have not yet been fixed in their later meaning, and it is often important to take into account the internal form of the word.

The Introduction is also interesting because it provides clues to the interpretation of many of the parables in Attar's other poems. When working on the translation, his other works are also used, as well as texts to which Attar has allusions. When working, such key issues for the publisher as the structure and volume of the comment are solved. The translation is being prepared for publication.

D. V. Mikulsky's report "North African oral folk art in the studies of Libyan and Algerian folklorists" reviewed an important element of traditional Arabic literature of the so-called vernacular (the term of Academician A. E. Krymsky) literature. In the Eastern Arab world, such works were performed orally until the first third of the twentieth century, and their written-handwritten and printed - versions have survived to this day. In North African countries, Sirat Bani Hilal (The Epic of the Banu Hilal Tribe) and Maghazi (folklore stories about the military exploits of the Prophet Muhammad and his companions) are still spoken (or have just ceased to exist) along with other works. The works of the Libyan folklorist A. M. Burkhana (who studied the oral versions of the Syrah that exist in Libya) and the Algerian researcher A. Burayu (whose work is devoted to rudimentary versions of the Syrah that still exist in Algeria, and Maghazi) are devoted to the analysis of these works and the traditions of their existence. Although both works are relatively weak in theory, they represent important sources of information on the North African oral epic tradition.

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Suffice it to note that A. M. Burkhana publishes in this work records of nine oral "Libyan" versions of the Syrah.

The authors provide interesting and sometimes unique information about the social status of the storytellers of Sira and Magizi, the manner of performance of works of both genres, the structure of passages performed in one session, and the ratio of poems and prose in them. The Siri have a Bedouin-tribal character, while the Maghazi affirm the principles of pan-Algerian unity based on Islam. The Algerian folklorist explains this transformation by the formation of the Algerian national identity in the course of the struggle against French colonial rule.

Materials from Libyan and Algerian researchers also shed light on the genesis of Sira and maghazi. According to A. M. Burkhana, the Sira was originally created among the descendants of Banu Hilal, and then it was remade by professional storytellers for urban listeners; on the basis of the oral urban tradition in the East of the Arab world, in al-Mashriq, handwritten and printed versions of the Sira appeared. On the contrary, according to Burayou, compositions of the maghazi genre have made the opposite journey: initially appearing in handwritten and printed form (printed versions of them were published in Cairo and Tunis), they entered the repertoire of Algerian folk storytellers and, having been transformed in the course of oral existence, acquired the character of monuments of the oral epic tradition.

The data provided by A. M. Burhana and A. Burayu indicate not only the preservation of one of the most important elements of traditional culture in Libya and Algeria - the oral epic tradition, but also the tradition of the entire North African society to a large extent.

In the report "Amateur collector and academic source studies" V. N. Nastich noted that numismatics as a scientific discipline emerged as a result of the development of amateur collecting, with which it was initially and closely interrelated. In the pre-revolutionary era, wealthy collectors provided their collections to specialists for publication, gave them to museums, and financially helped scientists who were engaged in the study of Oriental antiquities.

During the Soviet era, only professional work with written monuments, including coins, was recognized as legal in academic institutions or museums; museum employees were tacitly prohibited from owning personal collections, and private individuals were not allowed to enter museum and library collections. Nevertheless, amateur collecting continued to exist in the Soviet Union.

After the collapse of the USSR, a spontaneous market for ancient artifacts was formed in Russia and the CIS countries, supplied by "black diggers" to meet private collecting demand. Outdated customs regulations, poorly coordinated and poorly organized actions of state bodies could not prevent the destruction of archaeological sites, looting and criminal export of cultural property. And the poor budget of science and culture and, as a result, a sharp decline in the qualification of specialists led to the fact that amateur collectors gradually occupy the "strategic boundaries" left by professionals: they are increasingly publishing articles and catalogues, participating in conferences, and even defending their dissertations. However, without a basic history and Oriental studies education, most of them remain amateurs of a very low scientific level. We have to admit with bitterness that the" golden age " of Russian Oriental numismatics with its achievements and priorities is already behind us, and we can expect to improve the situation in the foreseeable future only if regular and sufficient funding of domestic science is provided.

D. I. Onayeva's report "Translation of Ris al-Mutanabbi (problems of commenting)" was devoted to the tasks facing a researcher who seeks to reveal all the layers of meanings contained in the philosophical lyrics of Abu-l-Tayyib al-Mutanabbi, a great poet and a famous master of the heroic genre. From the corpus of al-Mutanabbi's Divan, which contains 342 poems, 14 poems of an elegiac nature, called risa, were selected for translation. A small amount of material - 368 beits arranged chronologically-confirmed the evidence of al-Mutanabbi's contemporaries that the poet himself strictly selected poems for his "Divan".

When commenting on the translation, explanations (sharkh) were used by six authoritative commentators of the poet's work, some of whom were actually his contemporaries, while others lived already in the early XX century. At the same time, even contemporaries often did not understand the hidden meaning of Mutanabbi's philosophical lyrics, which caused fierce disputes among commentators. Among them:-

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In addition, numerous archaisms should be noted, using them, the poet wanted to emphasize his commitment to the Arab tradition and Jahili ideals in contrast to the Shuubite sentiments of the main mass of the multinational cultural community on the eve of the collapse of the empire. When working on the commentary, it was necessary to additionally translate a large number of poems by other poets, called "poetic borrowings", which were included in the commentary, according to tradition, in order to demonstrate the similarity of the motives used by the poet.

N. I. Prigarina's report "Presentation of a literary monument from the point of view of style and commentary" discussed the principles of presentation and problems of style and commentary of medieval literary monuments. As an example, the 17th-century poem "Phulban" ("Flower Garden"), written in Deccan Urdu (Dakhini), was chosen. This poem was first translated into European languages by I. V. Zotova, who sought to create an extremely adequate philological translation. The monument was fully rededicated in the Main Editorial Office of the Eastern literature publishing house "Nauka", but then due to problems with funding, the work lay idle for almost 15 years.

Currently, "Phulban" is accepted for publication by Ladomir publishing house for the "Literary Monuments" series. The publishers of this series are primarily driven by the desire to present the literary merits of the poem in the most prominent way, which allowed it to retain its significance in the history of literature. Therefore, the editing process, in which the speaker participates as a responsible editor, consists in "transposing" the philological translation into a literary one: in getting rid of literalism, strict adherence to the syntactic constructions of the original, prose phrases that arise when literally reproducing tropes, etc. This helps to recreate the figurative dominant of a literary text that combines the aesthetics of Indian and Persian literature. Being the first monument of Muslim (Shiite) literature to be prepared in Ladomir, the text should, in the publisher's opinion, contain a detailed commentary that gives the most complete picture of the features of Hindu-Muslim discourse in its connection with the Quranic and Sufi traditions, as well as the tradition of Sanskrit literature.

V. V. Sazonov's report "The Hittite myth of slaying the Dragon: Teshub and Illuyanka" was devoted to the issues and difficulties associated with the translation of the Hittite myth of the slaying of the dragon of Illuyanka by the god Teshub: a typical myth about the slaying of a serpent or dragon by a cultural hero (in this case, the supreme god of the Hittite pantheon - Teshub). In many Indo-European myths and legends, the dragon or serpent appears as the embodiment of evil - for example, in India (the battle of Indra and Vritra), in the ancient Greeks-the battle of St. George with a dragon, etc.

The importance of this myth for the Hittites (their royal ideology, religion) cannot be underestimated. The myth was recited during the ritual festival of Purulli, which is associated with many other important rituals and cults among the Hittites, with the cult of the god of thunder, etc. The main character and "cultural hero" of the myth is Teshub, the god of thunder and rain, the head of the Hittite pantheon. The Hittite texts usually used the Sumerian EZEN together with the words purulli to denote the Purulli festivals, and both of these words mean "spring". It was in spring that the Hittite New Year was celebrated, and its celebration was extremely important for the welfare of the country, just as in Mesopotamia the New Year's holiday of Akitu, held in the month of Nisannu, i.e. in March, was important.

During purulli, the myth of the slaying of the dragon Illuyanka by the god Teshub was usually recited. Illuyanka was considered the personification of evil and winter, and Teshub, respectively, was the personification of good and spring, the annual spring rebirth of nature. Etymologically, the word purulli means "on the earth": it seems that the myth of Illuyanka and Teshub was closely related to the earth and the cult of the earth. For the royal power, this ritual was of fundamental importance, the great king of the Hittites himself had to participate in it.

Translating the myth from cuneiform fragments did not present any difficulties for the researcher, although some of the phrases and lines were badly destroyed and could only be partially read, which was the biggest problem in translation.

In the second report ("One Middle Assyrian legal document of the era of Tiglath-Pileser I"), V. V. Sazonov presented his analysis of a curious legal document of the Middle Assyrian era, the act on the redemption of a slave by himself, stored in the Museum of Art of the University of Tartu. Written in the Middle Assyrian dialect of the Akkadian language, the text dates back to the beginning of the reign of one of the last Middle Assyrian kings, Tiglath-Pileser I (reigned

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c. 1115-1077 BC). The cuneiform tablet containing this document is quite well preserved, and despite the partially destroyed lines, the content of the text as a whole is not affected.

The report of N. I. Serikov "Electronic library of Arabic manuscripts" summed up the results of many years of work of the scientist on the creation of a universal electronic library of Arabic manuscripts (http://wamcp.bibalex.org/). The work involved the development of electronic standards for cataloging manuscripts, creating a publicly accessible shell and a corresponding website and filling it with data.

According to the standards developed by the author of the report, any manuscript can be simultaneously presented as a museum storage unit, as a historical object, and directly as the author's text of the essay or written document contained in it.

Any manuscript is initially signed using minimal machine-readable elements, and as a result, an independent set of metadata is created. The metadata used for one essay, if the latter is found in other manuscripts, can be used repeatedly, which reduces the cost of cataloging by an order of magnitude. The proposed standards can become the basic ones for creating electronic manuscript libraries of any composition and level of complexity and allow not only to study any manuscripts (not necessarily Oriental) according to the above parameters, but also to optimize the input of new information.

S. A. Serova's report "Universals of Chinese culture and early theater" touched upon the relationship between ritual and theatrical performance in the traditional culture of China. As the researcher notes, the cradle of Chinese theatrical art was shamanism, shamanic ritual and, finally, shamanic no-culture (from which much later flowed into Taoism). No-si (religious spectacle, early theater) absorbed the characteristic features of shamanic action: the fundamental importance of rhythm, melody, the symbolism of all expressive means inherent in shamanic culture, and the canons of stage performance. The first plots of the early theater were, in fact,the same plots of religious worship.

Thus, the traditional culture of China, where everything is connected to everything, exists in a single space that connects different levels of existence, and forms universals that are equally relevant to life and art.

In the report of T. V. Metchikova " Problems of translation of literature devoted to Islam and Sufism (on the example of translation from English). based on the Russian version of the book "The Vision of Islam" by S. Muraty and U. Chittika)," a very important issue was raised regarding the adequate translation of texts and certain concepts related to the Islamic worldview into European languages. When translating an essay containing these concepts from English to Russian, the main problem of translation arises: the question of terminology. In addition to the terms themselves, which are often not translated, there are also Quranic quotations," beautiful names " of God, etc. In the absence of an Arabic term, there is a danger of completely overturning the author's idea if you follow only the English original without seeing the Arabic one behind it.

Using examples related to the use of individual words in the original English, the researcher shows how easy it is to fall into the mistake of choosing words that seem more euphonious in Russian. In her opinion, when translating this kind of literature, it is very convenient to adopt the principle of a single terminology throughout the text and translate the same English words with the same Russian words in the name of logical harmony of presentation.

M. V. Toropygina's report " Genre characteristics of the poetological treatise of Kamono Temei (1154-1216)" Mumese" ("Notes without a title")" was devoted to the work related to the genre of karon (theory of poetry). However, the range of issues raised by the author of the treatise goes beyond a purely theoretical understanding of poetry: in addition to reasoning about the styles of poetry, concepts of modern and old poems, poetic techniques, successful and unsuccessful use of vocabulary, the treatise contains a number of practical tips: how to prepare for a poetry tournament, what examples to use when writing poetry and prose. Kamo-noTemei describes the literary situation of his time and earlier, which he knows well from conversations with his teacher, the poet Xiong'e (1113 -?). A special vividness of the work is given by legends and literary anecdotes, given by the author in large numbers. This construction of the text allows us to define this work as a poetical treatise (karon) in the style of zuihitsu ("following the brush", essay).

In her report "Two sources on the history of Malay law and features of the penal system of the Malacca Sultanate" S. V. Thor gave a source-study description of ma-

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Lai legal monuments " Undang-undang Melaka "("Malacca Code") and " Undang-undang Laut "("Maritime Code"). The text of the codes, which contain rich material on various aspects of Malay society in the 14th and 16th centuries, clearly emphasizes the priority of Muslim norms, but the adat norms associated with the Indo-Buddhist tradition are not always abolished. This often led to the fact that the decisions made on certain legal incidents could be ambiguous, and the final verdict was in the hands of the judge. The analysis of the text allowed the researcher to trace the influence of general Muslim Sharia norms on the Malay legal system and identify the main features of legal regulation in the Malacca Sultanate in the XV-XVI centuries.

At the final meeting, the conference participants decided to make it an annual event. A recommendation was also made to publish a collection of reports and presentations made at the conference. It is generally agreed that such a collection should be compiled based on the materials of two conferences-2011 and 2012, but in electronic form, the abstracts of reports read at the first of them will appear on the website of the Institute of Information Technology of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

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