Description
This volume narrates the cultural exchanges between India and Russia, beginning with Russian words cognate to Sanskrit called `paternal language’ by a Russian linguist. Indian items have been exhumed from the 8-9th century layers of Kiev. Indian colony in Astrakhan on the Volga River, first contact of Russians with Buddhism in 1716, reference to Sanskrit in a novel written in 1784, the volume comes down to the troika of Blavatsky. Tolstoy and Roerichs and their historic contributions. It sketches the many-sided and manifold researches of Russian scholars on Sanskrit and Indian languages, excavations of Central Asian sites, extensive studies on Tibetan and Mongolian Buddhism. Genocide of Buddhism in Mongolia in the agonised narratives of Prof. Rinchen to Prof. RaghuVira: millions of xylographs burnt, two lakh Lamas shot or conflagrated, all monasteries razed to the ground in a massive butchery of extermination. Research on Buddhism by Buryat scholars in the safety of Leningrad, and my visits to the Ivolginsky monastery which had to be constructed a third time, as the earlier two were destroyed by fire, excavation of Buddhist sites in Central Asia (like Kara-tepe and Ajina-tepe) and discoveries therefrom. A bird’s eye-view of Buddhist datsans functioning in Russia today and their six major festivities during holy days. It presents a wide-ranging birds-eyeview of the cultural evolution of Tibetan and Mongolian lands, of Central Asian kingdoms and of Indological studies in Russia.
