On December 14-16, 2015, the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences hosted the Roerich Readings on the topic "Problems of Text Formation and Culture in Ancient and Medieval India and Central Asia".

Opening the conference, Director of the Institute V. P. Androsov reminded that the Roerich Readings have been held at the Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences for more than half a century. He suggested that the program should include an ordinal number of readings to emphasize their regular nature and importance for the history of the Institute.

Most of the lectures were devoted to literature, fine arts, and the history of those countries and peoples that belong to the geographical area of Yu. N.Roerich's research interests.

In the report "Problems of dating the Bhamakhi Treatise and ways to solve it" Yu. M. Alikhanov (MSU ISAA) touched upon the topic of dating early texts. In her opinion, when determining the time of writing a text, it is important to take into account not only the "external" data contained in it (references, references, etc.), but also its internal connection with the works of a particular period (topics, problems, or artistic techniques characteristic of that time). Thus, Bhamakhi's treatise "Poetic Ornaments" is usually dated to the seventh century on the basis of the fact that it mentions the grammarian Nyasakara, whose identification and dating of the time of his life are not determined. Meanwhile, at least two fragments of the treatise reveal Bhamakha's interest in problems that also concerned Kalidasa and, as far as the preserved material allows, lost their relevance in the post-Gupta period. The first of these problems is the appeal to the natural messenger in epistles. Bhamaha attributed this treatment to the confusion of the hero's mind when separated from his beloved. In "Meghaduta" ("Cloud-messenger") Kalidasa also has a corresponding explanation. The second problem is how to fairly evaluate literary works. Both authors urge critics not to follow generally accepted criteria, but to rely in their judgment on a thorough analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of the text. A. M. Dubyansky (ISAA MSU) in his report "The image of a stream in Tamil poetry" showed that a water stream (river, stream) is often found in ancient and medieval Tamil poetry. This image can carry a different semantic load depending on the ideas or poetic tasks of the work. So, in the collection of heroic poetry "Purananuru" in a small poem of didactic orientation, the motive of impermanence of existence is clearly present:

TYULINA Elena Valerievna-Candidate of Historical Sciences, Senior Researcher at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, tyulina57@mail.ru.

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the author compares human life with a raft rushing in a stormy stream during a thunderstorm. In the context of early Tamil love poetry, kurinji and marudam refer to or describe the streams with which the idea of fertility is associated. As a rule, these are descriptions of bathing in the "new water" together with girls during a holiday associated with high water on the river. The speaker gave several examples of using the image of flow in Tamil bhakti poetry. In the Tamil Saivite canon, he emphasized the lengthy description of the Kaveri River in the introductory part of Periyapuranam, a twelfth-century poem by Sekkizhara.

In the report "Kavya style in two descriptions of the sleeping harem - in the Ramayana and in the Life of the Buddha by Ashvaghoshi", A. G. Guria (ISAA MSU) compared a short (19 stanzas) episode from the poem by Ashvaghoshi, where sleeping women from the harem of Prince Siddhartha are described, with the description in the V book of the Ramayana ("Ramayana").Sundarakande") of Ravana's sleeping wives, whom Hanuman sees in his palace in Lanka while searching for Sita. The report examines individual textual similarities, analyzes a number of descriptive stanzas and the structure of descriptions of the epic. It was noted that these works were addressed to different audiences, which predetermined the differences in their artistic characteristics.

In the report "The image of Soma in the Vedic and Epic traditions", D. S. Shaposhnikova (MSU) spoke about the image of Soma in the Rig Veda and Atharvaveda, contrary to the generally accepted opinion, not related to the image of the Moon, as well as about a possible ritual of its veneration. In addition, it showed how much ideas about the Catfish have changed in the epic tradition.

The report of E. A. Yuditskaya (MSU) " The birth of a hero or sacred character in the Indian narrative tradition (on the interpretation of the composition "Maya's Dream") " was devoted to the legend of the birth of the Buddha as a variant of a universal plot, parallels of which are present in the mythology and folklore of many peoples. One of the elements of this plot is a prophetic dream. In the Buddhist tradition, this is the "Dream of Maya", which announces the impending birth of a great man. The report was based on the material of the Buddhist hagiographic tradition, which consists of texts of different genres, characterized by a specific composition. Parallels from other traditions were considered, which allowed us to look at the element of a prophetic dream as the most important plot-forming mechanism and show some of its differences characteristic of Buddhism.

E. V. Tyulina (IV RAS) in her report "The rite of consecration of a statue (adhivasana) and its role in the texts on construction (vastuvidya) in the Puranas" investigated the ritual of consecration of statues described in the texts on vastuvidya, which are part of the three Puranas - "Garuda", "Matsya" and "Agni" (VI-X centuries). The term adhivasana is derived from the verb vas - "to live, to dwell" with the prefix adhi - and translates as "settling". The adhivasana ritual consists of successive links that reproduce creation: the emergence of Brahman; the " subtle elements "(sound, touch, form, taste, smell).; The" big " elements (earth, water, fire, wind, space), etc. Ritual plays an important role in the vastuvidya texts. It is this principle that underlies the structure used to describe and explain certain actions and rituals in the manufacture of statues.

Yu. S. Ashmanova (MSU) made a presentation on "The Mughal concept of God's choice and luminosity and its visual embodiment". This concept was formulated during the time of Padishah Akbar. According to it, the Mughal ruler acted as a mediator between the earthly and heavenly worlds without any intermediaries. This was reflected in the official chronicle and in poetic panegyrics - in the use of lush epithets and laudatory names, in which the ruler was called radiating divine light and likened to the sun. Under Akbar, solar symbols began to adorn the attributes of royal power and the palace chambers of the ruler. In the Mughal concept of luminosity, there was a contamination of ideas and concepts of various cultures and religions. The Mughal version was based on the mystical ancient Iranian concept of divine radiance (khwarena, hurra, farr), which was supplemented by the Zoroastrian cult of light and fire, as well as the Hindu cult of Surya. All these traditions were artfully interwoven into the fabric of Muslim philosophical thought. Under Padishah Jahangir, the political concept of God's choice and luminosity took on a visible form in the form of a halo around the head or the entire figure of the ruler. This method of portraying the Mughal lords persisted as long as the Mughal school of painting existed.

The topic of the report by E. D. Ogneva (Institute of Internal Affairs of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine) is " The White Elder. Tank from the collection of the Cabinet of Yuri Roerich in the Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences)". On the tank, the White Elder is represented in the center of the composition, but not frontally, but in a foreshortened image. Behind him are folded, peaked mountains, and in front of him is a ridge with low wooded peaks in a bend in the river. To the left is a three-stemmed tree growing from a single root, and to the right is an image of Amitayus. In lowercase

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there are animals: seven ungulates marked with ribbons, as well as a pair of grayish-white legged birds with red beaks, tufts and legs. The speaker suggested that this is an image of saterleh - the rite of initiation of an animal to spirits, performed by a shaman. During the ritual, animals marked with consecrated ribbons were not slaughtered, but released into the wild. Seterlech, addressed to the White Elder, was performed on the 2nd day of the first month of summer. Confirmation that it is he who is depicted on the tank is the landscape features characteristic of this time. According to the speaker, the tank with the image of the White Elder in the collection of tanks of the Roerich Cabinet is unique and has no analogues in the currently known pictorial reproductions of this character.

In his report "Unknown illustrated manuscript from Nepal from the collection of Yu. N.Roerich's Cabinet of the Institute of Natural Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences", D. I. Zhutaev (Institute of Natural Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences) spoke about a handwritten text depicting the three-faced, eight-armed goddess of earth, fertility and prosperity Vasudhara. The text is the first page of a manual for performing a ritual dedicated to this goddess, called vasudāara-(devĪ) - vrata. The speaker considers the guide (vrata) as a genre of Newar Buddhist literature. In conclusion, he touched upon the iconography of the goddess Vasudhara, her role in the pantheon and ritual of Indian and Newari Buddhism.

V. V. Vertogradova's report "From India to Kara Tepe: towards a typology of the Ancient Indian epigraphic text" was devoted to inscriptions on ceramic vessels from Kara Tepe from excavations in the 1960s and 1980s, in which she took part.

N. R. Lidova (IMLI RAS) in the report " The language of the priest - the language of the poet. On the sacredness of speech in the oldest forms of Sanskrit drama " considered the hypothesis: just as the literary drama was preceded by the ritual drama, the artistic language of the theater was preceded by the sacred language, which for a long time formed the entire speech component of stage action. "Natyashastra" gives many reasons to believe that the drama was originally a continuation of the ritual and was played out immediately after it as an integral part of a religious ceremony. It was mainly a mimic action, for which speech was not the main means of expression. As for the verbal component of action, the creators of Natyashastra called it bharati vritti, which is conventionally translated as "verbal style" or "verbal manner" of presentation. The main element of this style is speech, while the definition of "Natyashastra" implies a special verbal activity endowed with characteristic distinctive features. The combination of these features allowed the speaker to assume that initially bharati vritti was used to describe not just stage speech, but sacred speech.

The report of S. I. Ryzhakova (IEA RAS) "Sanskritization of performance: transformations of the traditions of Bhuta-kolam (Tulunadu) and Chhau (Orissa)" was based on her field ethnographic research of the last two years. It is known that most of the so-called performative traditions of India by the beginning of the 20th century were occupied by groups of low social status, but there is a tendency to Sanskritize them (the term of the anthropologist M. N. Srinivas, 1930s-1950s). Sanskritization is understood as "social cultivation", raising the social status of traditions to the theories prescribed in Sanskrit treatises of different times, such as "Natyashastra". The report focused on two traditions: chhau (seraikela chhau from Orissa first of all) and bhuta-kolam from Tulunadu (South Kannara and North Malabar). V. M. Yakovlev (Moscow) in the report "Ways of song texts - translations and examples of metaphony" spoke about the peculiarities of interpretation and translation into Japanese of songs "In English". on the hills of Manchuria" and "Coachman, don't drive your horses".

A. K. Vasiliev (MSU) in his report "Didactics and symbolism in Tibetan literature (on the example of "Songs about the Yak Horn" from the collection "One Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa")" noted the "two-layered" artistic world of this work, thanks to which it is popular both among monastics and ordinary readers. On the one hand, the text contains moral teachings of a general nature, including judgments of "folk wisdom" that repeat or imitate proverbs and sayings in form. On the other hand, the Song is rich in references to the mystical and philosophical concepts of Tantric Buddhism: it mentions many texts and teachings that are familiar only to highly educated monks. What lay readers perceived as fascinating accounts of Milarepa's miraculous powers had a deep symbolic meaning for Vajrayana scholars and indicated the secret teachings they were familiar with. The speaker gave examples of the use of didactics and symbolism in the specified text,

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as well as their combination, so that the text could have a double reading, depending on the worldview and level of education of the reader.

In her report "The sacred geography of Bodh Gaya and the textual tradition" N. V. Alexandrova (RSUH) showed that to understand the history of the formation of the complex of sacred loci grouped around Bodh Gaya, revered as the place of enlightenment of the Buddha, it is necessary to refer to texts containing relevant subjects, as well as texts of the pilgrimage tradition. Analyzing them, we encounter contradictions, with changing ideas about the loci themselves and related plots. Thus, the pilgrim text of Xuan Tsang, when comparing its information with later ideas about the sacred geography of Bodhgaya, shows a picture of the mobility of loci that change over time their bindings to certain subjects and, in general, the variability of their entire complex. Referring to even earlier monuments allows us to deepen the retrospective of the development of subjects related to the enlightenment of the Buddha. Thus, in the sutra preserved in the translation of Zhi-qian ("The Sutra told by the Buddha about the good appearance of the prince", the beginning of the third century), the order of presentation completely diverges from later stereotypes. Here the state of asceticism turns into the attainment of enlightenment, which, firstly, implies the absence of a conceptual opposition between the two and, secondly, gives a different picture of the spatial arrangement of events.
K. P. Shrestha (Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences) in his report "Nagas as characters of Nepalese legends" considered the features of the description of nagoya in the folklore and literature of Nepal, highlighting the Nepalese tradition itself and borrowing from Indian culture.

The report "On Brahmanical Etymologies" by S. S. Tavastsherna (St. Petersburg State University) was devoted to the so-called brahmanical etymologies that spread in India during the formation of Brahmanical prose. These etymologies ("semantic etymologies" in Bronkhorst's terms) received various definitions: antihistoric, false, absurd, and even ridiculous. In the report, they were considered from the point of view of their function in language practice and ritual. For example, one of the functions is mnemonic. We must not forget that the literature of Brahman is texts designed for memorization. Of course, brahmanas are works of ritual and mystical nature that contain secret knowledge. Therefore, "etymologies" were always accompanied by the formula "ua evam veda". That is, the authors of these texts deliberately established a new connection between a well-known and understandable word and another hidden one. Apart from the mystical context, we can add that this language activity (or even a game) was intended to give ordinary words an additional, higher meaning, and if the word is "dark" or borrowed from another language, then it had to be given the "correct" meaning.

S. O. Tsvetkova (St. Petersburg)GU) in her report "Kabir's Sermon: some peculiarities of language and style" noted that in North India in the 15th century, each religious school of bhaktas had its own schools of preaching with their characteristic features of language, terminology and style. An interesting phenomenon in the context of these processes are the works of Kabir (1440-1518), a major North Indian mystic and preacher of nirguna bhakti. Kabir's sermon and mystical confession combines terminology and styles developed in the preaching schools of a number of religious movements: Siddhas, Naths, Sufis, and Vishnu Bhaktas. This synthesis is usually considered by researchers as a result of the" influence " of various doctrines on Kabir's preaching. According to the speaker, the stylistic and terminological diversity in Kabir's poems is a conscious method that the preacher used when addressing representatives of religious communities. Kabir's preaching style is based on the mystical symbolic style of the early writings of the Nath Yogis and their" twilight language " (sandhyā bhākhā). The features of the further development of this style in the poet's preaching, his methods of constructing mystical symbols and allegories, as well as some examples of "mimicry" of Kabir's preaching verses under the style of preaching of Vishnu Bhaktas were considered.

T. P. Selivanova (SPb.In her report "Changing inter-caste relations in pre-Muslim Kashmir", she noted that the Kashmiri chronicles of the 12th-16th centuries are replete with maxims about the veneration of Brahmins, their special authority, gifts of land to them-agrahar, precious temple utensils, market buildings, etc. However, they often mention the oppression of Brahmins, which occurred during times of turmoil or war, when the rulers needed funds, i.e. the lowering of the status of Brahmins is associated with changing socio-economic conditions. Valuable utensils were seized from churches, their lands were taxed, and their peasants were sent to carry cargo. Chronicles report on the protests of the Brahmans, the most effective

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one of them was a hunger strike by members of the parishad, directed against the actions of officials and accompanied by the cessation of rituals. Socio-economic conditions could also lead to an increase in the status of certain groups of the population, for example, the Lavan ethnic caste group , a Tibeto-Burmese tribe that appeared in Kashmir before the tenth century. Its members, seizing and buying up land, tried to achieve the status equal to the Rajputs, and get posts in the state, which they largely succeeded in. Weak rulers sought to attract them as allies, while strong ones sought to free themselves from them. The struggle of ethnocast groups against them was continuous, and by the middle of the twelfth century it seemed to have become insignificant. But later chronicles show that after some time they regained their former influence and even under the Muslims periodically controlled all aspects of the life of the state. Thus, the caste system in Kashmir was not strictly hierarchical, but capable of adapting to new conditions.

M. Fomin (University of Ulster, North. Ireland) in the report "The theme of the royal hunt (based on the written monuments of India and Ireland) "showed that the theme of the" royal hunt " often correlates with the theme of the expulsion of righteous kings into the wild forest. Looking at the descriptions of the expulsion of kings based on the materials of the Sanskrit epic, as well as descriptions of the royal hunt in the chronicles of Lanka and Buddhist jatakas, he saw the following trend: the stay in the forest of the righteous king was accompanied not only by fighting with wild animals and supernatural beings (deer hunting, fights with wild boars, lions, boas, rakshasas, yakshas, nagas), but also a sermon of a philosophical and theological nature, conducted in the form of a dispute between the king and the sage who also visited this place.

In his report "On the term Tathagata in the Pali Canon", E. G. Vyrshchikov (Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences) considered various interpretations of this term, which in late antiquity was used as a synonym for the word "Buddha". Interpretations and translations of the term depend primarily on the division of the compound word tathagata (tathā-gata or tathā-āgata) and the translation of the participles gata (from ch.gam) and āgata (from ch. āgam). The speaker believes that the most accurate interpretation was proposed by V. V. Vertogradova. In her opinion, it is necessary to break up the word as tathā-āgata and translate the term as "in" such" (i.e., firmly) abiding", because the verb āgam, in addition to the meaning" to come, to approach", which in this case most researchers consider the main one, has the meaning " to be, to be (in some place). place)". The speaker provided additional evidence from Buddhist literature confirming the correctness of this translation.

A. V. Lozhkina's (MSU) report "Problems of interpretation of the concept of eight refutations in the Kathavatthu" was devoted to the study of fragment 1.1.1-1.1.16 of the first chapter of the Kathavatthu, called "Eight Refutations". The Kathavatthu is a unique text from the Abhidhamma-Pitaka of the Pali canon, revealing the discussion issues of the early Buddhist schools. The report described all eight refutations, analyzed the main terms used in the discussion: niggaha ("refutation"), anuloma ("direct proof"), patikamma ("proof from the opposite"), upanayana ("proof by comparison"), niggamana ("conclusion"). As an illustration, the content and construction of the "First Refutation" was revealed, in which these structural elements of the discussion were used. Analysis of the text structure allows us to get closer to understanding how the formal and logical structure of the text affects the presentation of its content.

In his report "Socio-philosophical concepts of Kalachakra Tantra with some parallels in Kashmiri Shaivism" A. A. Mekhakyan (International Center of the Roerichs, Moscow) showed that the teaching of Kalachakra Tantra proceeds from the fundamental concept of homogeneity, or homogeneity of man, society and the cosmos. According to the anthroposocial concept of Kalachakra, any changes in an individual, whether negative or positive, can affect the entire society. The Kalachakra doctrine is expressed in the Ganachakra mandala, which is an image of an ideal community dominated by spiritual wisdom, gnosis (skt. jñāna). In the Kalachakra teaching, an important place is occupied by the concept of the inseparability of the social organism from the cosmos, which is confirmed in the doctrine of the presence of 36 social classes in "all the qualities of nature" (skt. gunas, prakrti). The Kalachakra Tantra doctrine is also expressed in the semiotics of the colors of the Kalachakra sand mandala, which, in turn, represent different social groups. For example, white, red, yellow, and black are associated with brahmans, kshatriyas, vaisyas, and sudras, respectively, while green is associated with the lower domba caste. Thus, the mandala represents a socially integrated ideal society.

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E. S. Lepekhova's report "Buddha Vairocana and the cosmology of the Avatamsaka Sutra in Japan" was related to the study of the position of Buddha Vairocana in the cosmology of the Avatamsaka Sutra (Chinese: Huayang-ching, Japanese: Kegon-kyo) and the interpretation of this topic in Japanese Buddhism. B. The Avatamsaka Sutra came to Japan from China. In Japan, the founder of this school (Japanese: "Kegon-shu") is considered to be the Korean monk Simsan, who began to preach this sutra in 740. Further development of Kagon-shu in Japan was associated with the capital's Todaiji Temple and the veneration of the Mahavairochana Buddha statue, built in 743-752. In the teachings of the Kegon school, the Buddha Vairocana (Japanese: Birusyana, Dainiti Nerai) occupies a special place. The report was devoted to a comparative analysis of the concepts of various "bodies" of Vairocana Buddha in the Kegon-shu cosmology and how the above-mentioned statue corresponds to this cosmology.

The report "Recollection as the basis for the identity of the" I "in Abhinavagupta's Ishvarapratyabhijna-vimarshini" by S. C. Ofertas (IB RAS) continued a series of his speeches devoted to the dispute between the creators of pratyabhijna and Buddhists about the presence or absence of a subject subjective entity. In the report, he considered the issue of recollection, which is impossible in the Buddhist approach, since it is assumed that any consciousness is instantly aware only of itself, and in this case the present consciousness-memory cannot contain the past consciousness-experience. The Buddhist depicted in the work offers a theory of impressions-samskaras. However, this theory does not answer the question of how exactly "that" experience is assembled from these disparate impressions in memory and how it relates to the actual object, which does not transform into another one with each new consciousness. For the followers of pratyabhijni, this means that memory has a more "intimate" relation to the essence of a person, without which the unity of a person disintegrates, and even the possibility of some primary "obvious and direct" perception of pratyaksha (on which all Buddhist epistemology is based) does not arise.

The report of G. G. Khmurkin (IIET RAS) "On the Indian names of zero" was devoted to the study of zero notation in the Indian bhuta-samkhya system ("calculus of entities"). This is the name of a method of writing a number, in which each digit was designated by a Sanskrit word expressing a concept somehow associated with the corresponding digit; these words-numbers were written one after another and collectively corresponded to the modern positional notation of the number. The meanings of all the many terms that denote zero are grouped around the following concepts:: 1) roundness (hole, hole, edge of the vessel, etc.); 2) fullness, plumpness, increase in size, swelling; 3) emptiness; 4) infertility, inefficiency; 5) falsity; 6) defectiveness, inferiority, lack; 7) atmosphere, atmospheric phenomena (cloud, etc.); 8) sky; 9) ether; 10) space. The speaker analyzed the above-mentioned names, which allowed him to draw preliminary conclusions about their semantics and the original form of the symbol.

I. A. Karysheva (IB RAS) in her report "Indian Gans in the mirror of Chinese guas" tried to show a clear connection between the system of Indian gans (stop) and the system of Chinese guas (trigrams). The Indian gan system was first described by the mathematician Pingala in his treatise "Chandashastra". This system is used to construct Sanskrit versification, which is called qualitative, i.e. based on the alternation of long and short syllables, in contrast to the Russian syllabic-tonic, based on a combination of stressed and unstressed syllables. The report presented several schemes of combinations of gan and gua, reflecting the features of these systems, and it was shown that the order of arrangement of three syllables in the Indian gans coincides with the order of arrangement of features in the Chinese gua when they are arranged according to the binary number system. The discrepancy in other schemes indicates different goals for using the gan and gua systems. In ancient India, gans were used exclusively for versification, in ancient China, guas were used much more widely. The speaker came to the conclusion that the Gana-gua language is universal, able to express different aspects of life depending on the goal set.

V. V. Tishin (Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences) report "Merchants" or "Rich people"? On the history of the Bayat tribal division" he devoted one of the most important problems facing researchers of the history of the Eurasian steppes-the interpretation of numerous and diverse ethnonyms related to nomadic societies. Since they, with rare exceptions, did not have their own written tradition, there are great difficulties in attributing and linking the various names of individual nomadic groups found in the sources. The report referred to such names of tribal divisions as bayat, bayawut, bay'ud.

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The speaker analyzed all cases of their mention in various linguistic traditions, showed possible variants of their etymology and semantics.

Yu. I. Drobyshev (Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences) in his report "The Turkic Khagan and the Sasanian Shahanshah: on the issue of ideological borrowing of ancient Turks from Iranians" compared the ancient Turkic and Sasanian concepts of supreme power. He compared some of the most important ideas about the nature and functions of supreme power and its bearers in the Turkic Khaganate centered on Orkhon and in Sasanian Iran: titulature, sources of legitimation, investiture, endowing them with sacred power, cosmological and priestly functions, posthumous role. He found more similarities than expected, which may indicate the existence of ideological borrowings.

In her report "Yuri Roerich and the Buddhist Temple in St. Petersburg", L. M. Shustova (Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences) recalled that 2015 marked the centenary of the consecration of the Buddhist temple in St. Petersburg. From the very beginning, its history is connected with the activities of the Roerich family - N. K. Roerich (1884-1947) was among other representatives of the Russian intelligentsia in the Committee for the Construction of the church. As an artist, he participated in the design of the temple. During its construction, Nicholas Roerich met with the Hambo Lama Agvan Lobsang Dorzhiev (1854-1938), from whom he first learned about Shambhala, which later inspired him to go on an expedition to Tibet. The church's cultural and educational activities were aimed at bringing Russia closer to Mongolia and Tibet. N. K. Roerich, as well as his wife Elena Ivanovna and eldest son Yuri, were involved in this work. This determines the range of future interests of Yu. N. Roerich and his scientific work. Shustova told about the history of the church in the Soviet and post-Soviet times and about the fate of scientists and cultural figures who are somehow connected with it as the most important center of culture.

The Roerich Readings were attended by scientists of various specialties: philologists, philosophers, linguists, historians, cultural scientists, art historians, and ethnographers. Such interdisciplinary cooperation is determined by the breadth of scientific interests of Yu. N. Roerich himself, whose research shows an example of the synthesis of various branches of humanitarian knowledge.

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