On September 26-27, 2013, the Russian State University for the Humanities hosted the international seminar "White Spots in the Study of South Asia-2". The seminar was organized by the RSUH International Educational and Scientific Center for South Asian Studies.

The seminar was held with the financial support of the Russian Humanitarian Science Foundation.

The International Organizing Committee of the seminar included William Vanderbok (Association for South Asian Studies, USA), Dominik Wujastyk (University of Vienna), A. G. Matveeva (RSUH), A. A. Popova( RSUH), S. D. Serebryany (RSUH), A. A. Stolyarov (IB RAS and RSUH). The seminar was attended by 18 specialists representing research centers in Russia, India, Nepal, Belgium, and the United States. The working language of the seminar was English.

As it was two years ago, the main questions for discussion were formulated for potential participants: 1) what we don't know about South Asia, what is still unknown in it, and 2) what problems that have not yet been studied should scientists pay attention to - in the very near future and in the long term. These questions relate to both classical Indology and contemporary South Asian studies.

A. G. Matveeva, RSUH Assistant Rector for International Centers, and William Vanderbocke, President of the American Association for South Asian Studies, delivered welcoming speeches at the opening of the seminar.

18 reports were heard and discussed at the seminar.

On the first day of the seminar, ten reports of the so-called "traditional" cycle are presented. The report "White spots in the Tale of the Bracelet "was made by A.M. Dubyansky (ISAA MSU and IVKA RSUH). The epic "Shilappadikaram (the tale of the bracelet)", being a monument of ancient Tamil literature, contains many "white spots", such as problems of dating, authorship, composition, style, origins of the plot, etc.The speaker focused on two of them: the problems of the authorship of the poem and its poetic genre.

During the subsequent Internet communication session with the University of Utah (USA), Associate Professor of the University of the Kyrgyz Republic. Everert read the report "Bonbibi as a Muslim goddess". Based on the indisputable fact that many deities of India were equally revered by representatives of different faiths, K. Everert considered the process of transformation of the perception of one of the Indian minor deities-the guardian goddess of forests, revered by the population of the Sundarban forest region (West Bengal and Bangladesh) in the context of the growth of fundamentalist sentiments among both Hindus and Muslims. The author of the report fears that with the current level of intolerance, the existence of movements such as Sufism may be jeopardized.

L. B. Alaev (Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences) in his report "Indian Rural community: ideologeme and real institution" questioned a number of fundamental ideas about the system of relations that existed in the traditional rural society of India, such as the concept of "republic in miniature", the problem of self-sufficiency of the Indian village, the concept of the village as an isolated social unit, the role of rural communities in their relations with the state.

A. A. Vigasin (ISAA MSU) spoke about the unique Gandavyuha manuscript from the Moscow collection. The manuscript of one of the most revered texts of Mahayana Buddhism is kept at the International Roerich Center in Moscow. The place of origin of the manuscript is Nepal, it dates from about the XI or XII century. The unique feature of the Moscow manuscript is that it contains 144 palm leaves, mostly with illustrations. So far, 38 palm leaves from this manuscript have been known to be preserved in American museums and private collections.

collections. The report was accompanied by a demonstration of illustrations. The message aroused great interest among the audience; suggestions were received to publish its critical edition as soon as possible, along with well-known sheets from other collections.

A. A. Stolyarov (IB RAS, RSUH) presented the report "The first questions that arise in the study of early medieval North-Indian charters". In his opinion, there are two fundamental questions: what is the initial number of awards and what is their origin? Both belong to the unsolvable group: first, we know only the approximate number of letters of grant discovered and published, a considerable number of which are currently listed as lost. It is almost impossible to estimate at least approximately how many of them there were initially. However, if there is information about the general population of discovered and published texts, one can try to estimate their initial number in the areas of their greatest concentration, provided that the tradition is chronologically continuous. Secondly, it is also impossible to trace the origin of this group of texts, since only chartered letters made on eternal material have survived to our time. In narrative and epigraphic texts, there are only references to other types of donations that were recorded on other materials. Unfortunately, none of these documents have been preserved. But even if such a text was found, it could only provide indirect information about how the form of the royal land grant was formed. After all, the tradition of drawing up charters existed in India for more than a thousand years from the beginning of the IV to the end of the XV century and later. At the same time, throughout the millennium, the structure of the so-called "donation" part remained virtually unchanged.

S. V. Kullanda (IB RAS) in his report "Unidentified loanwords in Indo-Iranian languages"made an attempt to raise the etymology of a number of unethymologized Indo-Iranian lexemes to the North Caucasian languages. The post was replete with a large number of examples.

Two reports on the problems of Sikhism were prepared by teachers of the ISAA MSU. L. V. Khokhlova spoke about the relationship between myth and reality in Sikhism, drawing the attention of the audience to the fact that sources on the history of Sikhs before the beginning of the XIX century, including sacred books, were written down some time later, sometimes quite a long time after the events that took place. Rather, they should be considered a subjective interpretation. In different epochs, the sacred books themselves were perceived differently. Moreover, different social groups have their own ideas about both the events of Sikh history and the content of sacred books. L. V. Khokhlova paid special attention to the phenomenon of so-called "popular" Sikhism, which is still relatively poorly studied.

The topic of A. V. Bochkovskaya's report was "A Spiritual Answer to Any Question": Punjabi Neo-Gurus and their "alternative" Texts [on the example of Dera Sacha Saud]." The speaker considered new phenomena in the spiritual practice of Sikhism that are widespread among its adherents, who come from traditionally lower castes.

R. B. Rybakov (IB RAS) made a report "The mystery of the last year of Vivekananda's life". The reasons for the sudden departure of the brightest personality in the prime of life remain and will remain an undoubted mystery. The speaker outlined the main events leading up to Vivekananda's departure, commenting on them in detail. He paid special attention to the last days and hours of Vivekananda's life.

The final presentation of the first day was a report by Miroz Shakya, coordinator of the project on digitization of Sanskrit Buddhist texts at the University of the West (California), on "Problems of preserving Sanskrit Buddhist texts by digitization". The speaker spoke about the work on the reconstruction of the Sanskrit canon of Buddhist texts, first undertaken by the Nagarjuna Institute of Nepal and the University of California West, about the significance and difficulties of this work.

On the second day of the seminar, eight reports were heard, mainly related to the current problems of development of the South Asian region.

J. Pellegrino (University of South Georgia, USA, member of the Board of Directors of the Association for South Asian Studies (USA), editor of the journal Copy: Journal of South Asian Studies), in his report "All of us Yashoda: Shaping Future South Asian Specialists", drew attention to the problem of generational conflict. Who will be the future researchers and teachers in the field of South Asian studies? Is it possible to create and maintain a scientific interest in studying narrow problems in geography and demography,

history, philology and culture in the context of globalization and the dominance of "transnationalism"? What will be the new methods of acquiring new knowledge about the regions and peoples of the world, as well as teaching them? These and other issues related to the category of "eternal" were discussed during the presentation.

V. Vanderbock, President of the Association for South Asian Studies (USA), in his report "Caste, elections, and the method of ecological inference: the case of Karnataka" suggested applying a relatively recently developed method of ecological inference to study the impact of caste on the results of elections at various levels, taking as an example the parliamentary elections to the Legislative Assembly of Karnataka.

A number of ambiguities related to the biography of Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) were clarified in the report of S. D. Serebryany, Director of the Institute of Higher Humanities Studies of the Russian State Pedagogical University, "Rabindranath Tagore, the Nobel Prize, the poet's perception of Russia and his perception in Russia". Tagore was the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. This happened in 1913. Moreover, the prize was awarded not for one poem "Gitanjali", as is commonly believed, but for a number of works published by Tagore in 1912-1913.A large number of "white spots" concerning R. Tagore's brief visit to Russia in September 1930 can be eliminated only after the opening of the secret archives of the Soviet special services. Tagore's "Letters on Russia", which he published after his trip, are known only in abridged translations into English and Russian, and for different reasons in both versions, different places were reduced. To top it off, Russian poets who translated Tagore, such as B. Pasternak and A. Akhmatova, had a low opinion of his poems.

The topic of perception of Russia in India was continued in the report "Krishna Kanta Khandiki and his contribution to the Study of Russia in India"by Kandarp Das (University of Gauhati, Assam, India). The speaker drew attention to the little-known pages of the life of K. K. Handika (pronounced Hondika, 1898-1982), an outstanding Sanskrit scholar, founder (1948) and first Vice-chancellor (until 1957) of Gauhati University. K. K. Khandika's serious hobby was Russian literature. In the 1920s, he published several works on European and Russian literature and Russian theater. K. K. Handiki gave Gauhati University a personal library containing books in 11 languages, including Russian. The study of this collection could be the subject of a joint project of Assamese and Russian specialists.

Raee Kalia (City University of New York) in his report "Modernism, modernization and construction of postcolonial India" spoke about one of the periods of construction of the young Indian state - the period of construction of modern cities-Chandigarh, Bhubaneswar and Gandhinagar, which were the embodiment of ambitious ideas of politicians and Western urban planners.

Bhupen Sharma (Gauhati University, Assam, India), in his report "Decentralization and regional planning in the paradigm of India's economic development", spoke about the inconsistency of the announced program for building local government institutions with the real centralization policy pursued by governments in the center and in the field.

T. P. Shaumyan (IB RAS) presented "Two versions of the annexation of Kashmir to India." She reviewed the events of Kashmir's history at the end of October 1947, when the Maharaja of the principality, Hari Singh, signed the Act of Annexation to prevent the advance of Pakistani troops and eliminate the possibility of its territory joining Pakistan. Whether Indian troops entered Kashmir before or after the Maharaja signed the Act is a question that can hardly be answered definitively, either now or in the future. T. L. Shaumyan's report caused a great discussion.

The final report of the seminar was made by Professor Baladas Ghoshal (Univ. Jawaharlal Nehru, Delhi) "Problems of' soft power ' and 'clash of civilizations'". The speaker focused on two seemingly purely theoretical issues: will "soft power" or the ability of the state to achieve the desired results based on voluntary participation, sympathy and attractiveness ever be able to displace" hard power " based on coercion, and is S. Huntington's statement about the "clash of civilizations" fair in the context of the rapid "Arabization" of Islam and the significant transformation of Islamic societies and states in Asia what can lead to the radicalization of other religions, and in the future - the confrontation of Asian societies and states, based on a religious principle? The message was accompanied by examples and aroused great interest among listeners.

Following the final report, a unanimous decision was made to convene the next, third workshop in 2015 and to publish the proceedings of this workshop by that date.

At the end of the seminar, a solemn presentation of the honorary award of the Association of South Asian Studies (USA) for 2013 for high achievements in the academic field to A.M. Dubyansky, an outstanding Russian indologist and Tamil scholar, took place. The plate presented to Alexander Mikhailovich was engraved with the Russian text: "Your scientific works and numerous studies in the field of Tamil studies and Indology have earned you a reputation as one of the most outstanding experts on South Asia in the world. Your dedication to educating a new generation of scientists not only defines the very essence of the title "professor", but also makes this title an honor." And then in English: "With deep respect and best wishes. Board of Directors of the Association for South Asian Studies."

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