EACS-2016. Book of Abstracts

Institute of Oriental Manuscripts, Russian Academy of Sciences www.orientalstudies.ru The Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Rus- sian Academy of Sciences is one of the oldest cen- ters of Oriental Studies both in Russia and in Eu- rope. It was established on November 11 (23) 1818 as the Asiatic Museum of the St. Petersburg Impe- rial Academy of Sciences with the main purpose to collect and to study the Oriental manuscripts and early printed books. In 1930 the Museum was re- organized into the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, and after the IOS moved to Moscow in 1951, it existed as the Leningrad (then St. Petersburg) Branch of the In- stitute of Oriental Studies. On June 19, 2007, the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences ordered to reorganize the St. Petersburg Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies into the Institute of Oriental Man- uscripts of the RAS. The collection of the Asiatic Museum now kept by the IOM includes 115,000 items in 65 living and dead languages and is a real treasury of cultures of the peoples of Asia. The Chinese collection at the IOM contains unique documents of the 1st–13th centuries from Turfan, Dunhuang and Khara-Khoto, as well as rare manuscripts and prints from the 18th and 19th centuries, beautifully decorated ma­ nuscripts and albums of the Qing Imperial Library in Shenyang, rare historical and literary works, maps, popular prints and dictionaries. The research fields of the Institute’s Sinolo- gists include literature, law, religion, political ide- ology, as well as other aspects of history and cul- ture of pre-modern China, though processing and study of manuscripts collections remains the core of the academic activities and research projects of the Institute’s scholars. The researchers of the IOM contributed with their monographs and translations into the study of Chinese classics (V. M. Alekseev, Yu. K. Shchutsky, B. A. Vassiliev), Dunhuang stud- ies (L. N. Menshikov, L. I. Chuguevsky), Tangut stu­ dies (N. A. Nevsky, E. I. Kychanov, V. S. Kolokolov, K. B. Kepping), Chinese history and ideology (A. S. Martynov, Yu. L. Kroll).