The article deals with the “Remembrance of Jaʻfar Sadiq”, opening chapter of the largest Persian hagiographic compendium “Remembrances of God’s friends” of Farid aldin ʻAttar (d. 1221). Apologetic aspects of this remembrance in the context of the earlier Sufi hagiographic tradition are primarily considered. In addition, the motives, partly revealing the author’s conception of this book, have been found.

The article discusses certain peculiarities of Persian linguistic terminology, employed to describe the Old Iranian verbal system. It includes individual dictionary entries containing the names of the various verbal categories of the Old Persian and Avestan languages. Each dictionary entry is accompanied with assorted examples of how these words are used in modern Persian-language descriptions of Old Iranian.

The present paper deals with the problem of the authorial motivation for writing self-narrative in Persian up to the 18th century. Some authors explicitly wrote about the reasons for speaking about themselves, and one of the arguments is that the author had to write a self-account so as to overcome his troubles and grief. This argument is the only one that is related to the author’s inner world. The traditional ideas of self-narrative as a cure are examined in the paper.

The article focuses on contemporary ideas of two characters of Kazakh demonology - peri and djinn - received during field research of 2009-2013 among Kazakh people living in North East Kazakhstan. It clarifies functional and semantic characteristics of these characters that are realized through healing practice and ceremonial life (beliefs, prohibitions and instructions) and are rather contradictory in folk beliefs. Special attention is given to the role of Islam in the appearing of new descriptive models of these characters.

Ladakh, which is now a region in Indian Jammu and Kashmir, once used to be an independent state, whose roots can be traced back to the Xth century. Due to a number of reasons, this region hasn’t yet been well studied. The article is dedicated to the researchers of this region and their works.

According to ancient Buddhist hagiographic texts, Buddha's mother Maya died on the seventh day after his birth. In this paper I will show how did ancient Buddhist authors attempt to justify this sorrowful event. Besides I will try to find out if there is any connection between this episode of the Buddhist legend and some typical stories and characters from ancient Indian epic and brahmanic literature.

In the past 30-40 years national garment ao dai has become one of the most recognizable elements of Vietnamese material culture, as well as the symbol of women’s beauty, grace and traditions. Studying and close analysis of the costume’s construction allow us to conclude that the garment itself has absorbed many features of Vietnamese and Chinese traditional clothing. However, the final stage of ao dai’s modernization has been due to the designer’s work. During the different periods of Vietnamese history ao dai embodied certain social and cultural processes that took place in Vietnam.

The paper constitutes the second part of an attempt to sum up some of the main current problems of interpretation and translation of ancient texts written in the Old Chinese language of the 1st millennium B.C. (the first part was also published in «RSUH Bulletin» in 2012). The second part briefly analyzes the last of the key theoretical issues facing the researcher (the relationship between the «natural» and «artificial» components in the linguistic rules governing the construction of Old Chinese texts), the rest of the paper being given over to considerations of a methodological character on the possible future framework for an «ideal» dictionary of Old Chinese that would adequately reflect our current knowledge on this language and would be equally well adapted for the needs of the student and the qualified researcher alike.

The natural factor has a great influence on the development of a certain culture and becoming of a civilization. A human-nature relations are found in mythology, politics, religion. Japanese culture, forged amidst water, in different historical periods had different views on this element of nature. The article deals with those views. The special attention is paid to the image of the sea in Japanese culture through centuries.

The article discusses the question of composing poems on prescribed topics, which was usual practice in composing classical Japanese poetry (waka). Analyzed is the text of Shotetsu monogatari written by poet Shotetsu in the middle of the XVth century Shotetsu highlights a number of problems in concern with the composing poems on prescribed topics, such as what kinds of topics are existed; what are the number of characters in the topic; which topics are easy and which topics are difficult for the poet; which topics should be chosen for poetry matches or meetings; on what topics is better to train young authors. Shotetsu examines a lot of specific examples of writing poems on a particular topic. The text of Shotetsu monogatari shows that the composition of poems on prescribed topics, dated back to the IXth century remained highly relevant at the end of the classical period of waka poetry.