Articles

“Chinese Manuscripts” from Father Alexiy Vinogradov’ Archive and an Unfinished Project by Palladius Kafarov

Vostok/Oriens '2015, №3

 
The article concerns an archive material “Opisanie gorodskogo bita kitaycev XIX veka” (“Description of the city life of the Chinese in the nineteenth century”) which was found in the archive of Alexiy (Vinogradov) (1845–1919) who was an orthodox missionary, sinologist, art historian, a specialist on the history of the Bible and a member of the sixteenth (1881–1887, seventeenth (between 1896 and 1898) of the Russian Ecclesiastical mission (REM) in Beijing. The Archive inventory of the Russian National Library where the material is kept now ascribes it to Pyotr Ivanovich Kafarov (1817–1878), also known by his monastic name Palladius, a participant of the twelfth mission (1840–1849), the head of the thirteenth (1850–1858, and fifteenth (1865–1878) (REM), one of the most famous Russian sinologists, who made a significant contribution to the development of study in the East (Sinology, Mongolian studies). He found and published one of the major sources of Mongolian history “the Secret history of Mongols” and almost completed the first full-Chinese first full Chinese-Russian dictionary in which Palladius, among other things, described the specific terms of traditional Chinese religions in detail. The paper tends to describe the material, determine the authorship of the source and its dating. Based on the conducted research, the author comes to the conclusion that the source may be connected with the activity of participants in the thirteenth REM (1850–1858) in Beijing.

Keywords: Russian Ecclesiastic mission in Beijing, Alexiy Vinogradov, archive, Palladius Kafarov, Russia, China, city life

Pages: С. 36–46