Bibliography – The Reality of Myth

Contents | Note | Ch.1 | Ch.2 | Ch.3 | Ch.4 | Ch.5 | Ch.6 | Ch.7 | Ch.8 | Ch.9 | Bibl. | Footnotes

Bibliography

Abaev, I. V. “Arkhaichnye formy religioznoy teorii i praktiki v chan'-buddizme” (Archaic forms of religious theory and practice in Chan Buddhism). In Buddizm i srednevekovaya kul'tura Tsentral'noy Azii (Buddhism and Medieval culture of Central Asia). Novosibirsk: Nauka, 1980.

Adler, A. What Life Should Mean to You. New York: Capricorn, 1958.

Bakhtin, M. Rabelais and His World. Indiana University Press, 2009.

Bezhin, L. E. Pod Znakom “Vetra i Potoka” (Under the sign of “Wind and Stream”). Moscow: Nauka, 1982.

Boas, F. Indianische sagen von der nord-Pacifischen kuste Americas. Berlin, 1895.

Brabyn, Howard. “Native Language and the Brain”, UNESCO Courier, No. 3, 1982, pp. 10-12.

Confucius, The Analects – 13. English translation: James Legge. Source: www.ctext.org Edited by Cambridge Chinese Classics www.camcc.org.

Dandamaev, M. A. Vavilonskie pistsy (Babylonian scribes). Moscow: Nauka, 1983.

Dyrenkova, N. P. “Poluchenie shamanskogo dara po vozzreniyam turetskikh plemen Sibiri” (Receiving the shamanic gift according to the views of Siberian Turkic tribes). In Sbornik Muzeya Etnografii i Antropologii AN SSSR (Collection of the Museum of Ethnography and Anthropology of the USSR Academy of Sciences). Leningrad, 1930. Vol. IX, pp. 267-293.

Eisenstein, Sergei. “Montazh (1938)”. In Eisenstein, Sergei. Izbrannye Sochineniya v Shesti Tomakh (“Montage”. In Selected works in six volumes), vol. 2. Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1964. English translation: Eisenstein, Sergei. “Montage in 1938”. https://www.robertspahr.com/teaching/ela/montage1938.pdf

Etkind, Efim. Razgovor o stikhakh (Conversation about verses). Moscow: Detskaya literatura, 1970.

Fedorenko, I. S. Kitayskoe literaturnoe nasledie i sovremennost' (Chinese literary heritage and modernity). Moscow: Khudozhestvennaya literatura, 1982.

Foulkes, D. “Theories of Dream Formation.” In Charles T. Tart, ed. Altered States of Consciousness: A Book of Readings. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1963.

Frantsev, Yu. P. Nauchnyy Ateizm (Scientific atheism). Moscow, 1972.

Goethe, J. W. Sobranie sochineniy v desyati tomakh (Collected works in ten volumes). Vol. 2. Moscow: Khudozhestvennaya literatura, 1976.

“Golden Millet Dream.” https://keatschinese.com/china-culture-resources/golden-millet-dream/

Hadamard, J. An Essay on the Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field. Garden City: Dover Publication, 1954.

Jung, Carl. Symbols of Transformation (Collected Works of C. G. Jung Vol.5). Princeton University Press, 1977.

Klochkov, Igor S. Dukhovnaya kul'tura Vavilonii: chelovek, sud'ba, vremya (Spiritual culture of Babylonia: man, fate, time). Moscow: Nauka, 1983.

Laozi, Tao Te Ching. Translation by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English. https://www.wussu.com/laotzu/laotzu50.html.

Levi, V. Iskusstvo Byt' Soboy (The Art of being yourself). Moscow, 1977. English version is In Touch & In Tune, trans. by Michelle MacGrath, https://levi.ru/article.php?id_catalog=41.

Liezi. “Yang Zhu.” https://www.sacred-texts.com/tao/ycgp/ycgp03.htm.

Lisevich, I. S. Literaturnaya mysl' Kitaya na rubezhe drevnosti i Srednikh Vekov (Literary thought of China at the turn of Antiquity and the Middle Ages). Moscow: Nauka, 1979.

Losev, Alexey. Antichnaya mifologiya v eyo istoricheskom razvitii (Ancient mythology in its historical development). Moscow: Gosudarstvenny uchebno-pedagogichesky institute, 1957.

Luria, A. R., & Vinogradova, O. S. “An Objective Investigation of the Dynamics of Semantic Systems”. British Journal of Psychology, 1959, 50: 89-105.

Malyavin, V. V. “Filosofiya Chzhuan-tszy: zabyt'e probuzhdeniya, nemoe slovo” (Philosophy of Zhuangzi: forgetting of awakening, silent word). In Eds L. S. Vasiliev and E. B. Porshneva, Dao i Daosizm v Kitae (Tao and Taoism in China). Moscow: Nauka, 1982, p. 43. (available in https://www.abirus.ru/user/ files/Ebooks/dao_i_daosizm_v_kitae.pdf).

Massé, Henry. Islam. Whitefish MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2007.

Nalimov, Vasily. Veroyatnostnaya model' yazyka (Probabilistic model of language). Moscow: Nauka, 1981.

Narayan, Rasipuram Krishnaswami. “Lavana.” In Gods, Demons and Others. New York: The Viking Press, 1964.

Nikitina, M. Preface to the collection of Korean lyrics of the 8th-9th centuries Bambuk v snegu (Bamboo in snow). Moscow: Nauka, 1978.

Osgood, Charles. “Psycholinguistics.” In S. Koch (Ed.), Psychology: A Study of a Science. Vol. 6. McGraw-Hill, 1963, pp. 244-316.

Plato. Cratylus. Translated by Benjamin Jowett, http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/cratylus.html.

Pomerants, G. S. “Traditsiya i neposredstvennost' v buddizme chan' (dzen)” (Tradition and Immediacy in Chan (Zen) Buddhism). In Rol' traditsii v istorii i kul'ture Kitaya (Role of tradition in history and culture of China). Moscow, 1972.

Porshnev, B. “Kontrsuggestiya i istoriya”. In B. F. Porshnev and L. I. Antsiferova eds. Istoriya i psikhologiya (“Counter-suggestion and history.” In History and psychology). Moscow: Nauka, 1971.

Propp, Vladimir Ya. Historical Roots of the Wondertale. Transl. by Miriam Shrager, Sibelan Forrester, and Russel Scott Valentino, Afterword by Sergei Nekliudov. Indiana University Press, 2025.

Pukhnachev, Yury. Chislo i mysl’: Chetyre izmereniya iskusstva (Number and thought: four dimensions of art). Issue 4. Moscow: Znanie, 1981.

Rybakov, B. A. Yazychestvo Drevnikh Slavyan (Paganism of the Ancient Slavs). Moscow: Nauka, 1981.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. Nausea. Transl. from the French by Lloyd Alexander. Norfolk CT: New Directions, 1949.

Shidfar, B. Ya. Abu Nuvas (Abu Nuwas). Moscow: Nauka, 1978.

Slobin, Dan I. Psycholinguistics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971.

Somadeva. Ocean of the Streams of Story, Chapter 69. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Katha_Sarit_Sagara/Chapter_69.

Tsvetaeva, Marina. “Svodnye tetradi I, 1921-1932.” In Izbrannaya proza v dvukh tomakh 1917-1937 (“Collated notebooks I, 1921-1932.” In Selected prose in two volumes 1917-1937), vol. 1. Rossica Publishers, 1977.

________. Sochineniya v dvukh tomakh (Works in two volumes). Vol. 2. Moscow: Khudozhestvennaya literatura, 1980.

Tynyanov, Yury. “Promezhutok.” In Poetika. Istoriya literatury. Kino (“Interval,” in Poetics. History of Literature. Cinema). Moscow: Nauka, 1977.

Ullman, M. “Dreaming, Life Style, and Physiology: A Comment on Adler's View of the Dream”. Journal of Individual Psychology, 18(1), 1962: 18–25.

Vasiliev, L. S. Problemy genezisa kitayskogo gosudarstva (Problems of the genesis of the Chinese State). Moscow: Nauka, 1983.

Zavadskaya, E. V. “Filosofsko-esteticheskiy smysl tak nazyvaemogo 'bozhestvennogo griba' ('Linchzhi') v iskusstve Kitaya” (Philosophical and aesthetic meaning of the so-called 'Divine Mushroom' ('Lingzhi') in Chinese art). In Nauchnye soobshcheniya Gosudarstvennogo Muzeya Iskusstva Narodov Vostoka (Scientific Reports of the State Museum of Art of the Peoples of the East). Moscow: USSR Academy of Sciences Publishing, 1971.

________. Kul'tura Vostoka v sovremennom Zapadnom mire (Culture of the East in the Modern Western World). Moscow: Nauka, 1977.

________. “Daosskaya Poetika Stranstviy” (Taoist poetics of wandering). In Dao i Daosizm v Kitae (Tao and Taoism in China). Moscow: Nauka, 1982.

________. “Missiya slova v ‘Lun'-Yue’” (The Mission of the Word in “Lun Yu”). In Konfutsianstvo v Kitae (Confucianism in China). Moscow: Nauka, 1982.

________. Mudroe vdokhnovenie (Wise inspiration). Moscow: Nauka, 1983.

Zhuangzi. The Great and Most Honoured Master (English translation: James Legge). https://www.taoistic.com/chuangtzu/chuangtzu-06.htm.

Translators’ note. Writing in early 1980s, the author probably related to such Sosnora’s collections of poems as “Crystal” (1977), “Verses” (1977) and “Moon Song” (1982).↩︎
Tynyanov, Yury. “Promezhutok.” In Poetika. Istoriya literatury. Kino (“Interval,” in Poetics. History of literature. Cinema). Moscow: Nauka, 1977, pp. 188-189.↩︎
From our point of view, the entire field of word meanings is realized in a phrase when this field consists of a single seme.↩︎
Nalimov, Vasily. Veroyatnostnaya model' yazyka (Probabilistic model of language). Moscow: Nauka, 1981, p. 217.↩︎
On the word meaning field, see ibid., p. 217; on the Bayesian language model, see ibid., pp. 74-96, 217-218.↩︎
Narayan, Rasipuram Krishnaswami. “Lavana.” In Gods, Demons and Others. New York: The Viking Press, 1964, pp. 15-23.↩︎
“Golden Millet Dream.” https://keatschinese.com/china-culture-resources/golden-millet-dream/.↩︎
Translators’ note. No definite female personality stands behind the poem’s metaphor. Based on biographical context, scholars suggest one of three women: Maria Volkonskaya, Natalia Goncharova or Anna Olenina.↩︎
The leading seme of a verse is the seme representing the psychological state that the poem suggests. Sometimes to designate this psychological state, one can find an existing word in the language that names the emotion.↩︎
Pukhnachev, Yury. Chislo i mysl’: Chetyre izmereniya iskusstva (Number and thought: four dimensions of art). Issue 4. Moscow: Znanie, 1981, pp. 101-102.↩︎
“In fact, much of the understanding of certain kinds of poetry is based on this ability to find interpretations for grammatically unusual constructions – an activity which can be especially pleasurable”. Slobin, Dan I. Psycholinguistics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971, pp. 4-5.↩︎
Tsvetaeva, Marina. “Svodnye tetradi I, 1921-1932.” In Izbrannaya proza v dvukh tomakh 1917-1937 (“Collated notebooks I, 1921-1932.” In Selected prose in two volumes 1917-1937), vol. 1. Rossica Publishers, 1977, p. 238.↩︎
Pukhnachev, Yury. Chislo i mysl’: Chetyre izmereniya iskusstva (Number and thought: four dimensions of art). Issue 4. Moscow: Znanie, 1981, p. 75.↩︎
The objects are united by containing a common seme, through which they form a semantic series that creates a suggestion formula.↩︎
Eisenstein, Sergei. “Montage in 1938”. https://www.robertspahr.com/teaching/ela/montage1938.pdf ↩︎
Translators’ note. In fact, this poem has seven lines (https://allpoetry.com/Bo-beh-o-bi-Sang-The-Lips). It remains unclear whether Arkady Burshtein used some censored Soviet edition or some other source. In any case, this circumstance does not compromise his analytical method.↩︎
Translators’ note. Russian: “guby” – гу́бы.↩︎
Translators’ note. Russian: “vzory” – взо́ры.↩︎
Translators’ note. Russian: “tzep’” – цепь.↩︎
Etkind, Efim. Razgovor o stikhakh (Conversation about verses). Moscow: Detskaya literatura, 1970, p. 54. In our model, in connection with the montage (inertial) nature of perception, we can speak about temporal (by inertia, for the duration of perceiving a given work) fixing of a seme to a sound, with the selection of sounds possibly not being arbitrary but historically conditioned.↩︎
Perhaps this phenomenon is somehow connected with relationships of inversion symmetry? By the way, non-perception of “outside” is analogous to non-perception of “not” in formulas of hypnosis and self-suggestion.↩︎
In modern linguistics, a productive model of word formation is understood as that method of forming new words from a given word stem which is widely used in contemporary language.↩︎
Here are the lines:

“God's little bird knows not

Neither care nor labor,

Does not busily weave

A long-lasting nest”

And here is M. I. Tsvetaeva's commentary on them: “So what does it [God's little bird – A. B.] do then? And who then weaves the nest? And are there really such birds, except for the cuckoo, which isn't a little bird but a whole big bird? These verses were clearly written about a butterfly. But such is the power of poetic melody that no one, it seems, for more than a hundred years, thought to verify this little bird. And least of all – the then six-year-old – me. If it's said so – then so. In verses – that's how it is”. (Cited from: Tsvetaeva, Marina. Sochineniya v dvukh tomakh (Works in two volumes). Vol. 2. Moscow: Khudozhestvennaya literatura, 1980, p. 346.)↩︎
Translators’ note. For reading about Natalia Bechtereva’s research see her The Neurophysiological aspects of human mental activity. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.↩︎
Translators’ note. Russian: зáумь; literally “beyond mind”.↩︎
Naturally, the creation of suggestion formula is not the only purpose of arts.↩︎
https://www.culture.ru/poems/46102/s-chuzhoi-storony.↩︎
https://www.culture.ru/poems/37198/na-severe-dikom-stoit-odinoko.↩︎
https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Ein_Fichtenbaum_steht_einsam.↩︎
See, for example, B. Porshnev's article “Kontrsuggestiya i istoriya”. In B. F. Porshnev and L. I. Antsiferova eds. Istoriya i psikhologiya (“Counter-suggestion and history.” In History and psychology). Moscow: Nauka, 1971.↩︎
Slobin, D. Psycholinguistics, p. 93. Slobin refers here to Charles Osgood’s “Psycholinguistics.” In S. Koch (Ed.), Psychology: A Study of a Science. Vol. 6, McGraw-Hill,1963, pp. 244-316.↩︎
Slobin, D. Psycholinguistics, p. 85. Slobin refers to Luria, A. R., & Vinogradova, O. S. “An Objective Investigation of the Dynamics of Semantic Systems.” British Journal of Psychology, 1959, 50:89-105.↩︎
Ibid.↩︎
Y is constant for a given recipient at a given moment in time. In our limited model, we will consider Y a constant value not just at a given moment, but always.↩︎
“We know the word – a code designation of a semantic field and some unclear description of this field, given through other, similar code designations. All the diversity of semantic content remains hidden – it is revealed only through the potential possibility of constructing an unlimited set of phrases. The continuous semantic content standing behind the discrete symbols of language proves to be fundamentally immeasurable. Only individual fragments are accessible to us, arising in our interpretation of certain phrases”. Nalimov V. Veroyatnostnaya model yazyka, pp. 218-219.↩︎
Following Popper, we propose the following model for extracting meaning from word combinations. Let there be a set of words (X₁, X₂, ..., X_n), and each word has a corresponding meaning field with the same name. When we use a word in a phrase, the fields X₁, X₂, …, X_n overlap, and that segment which is common to all fields, conditionally speaking, will be extracted in each word. If for some word no common seme (segment of meaning field) is found, then this word does not combine with the other word fields of the phrase. Since in our case the common seme is present in words of a given semantic series by condition, the problem of word compatibility in a phrase is removed.↩︎
Translators’ note. This is an English translation by Claude AI of a Russian translation by B. Pasternak, quoted by the author from Goethe J. W. Sobranie sochineniy v desyati tomakh (Collected works in ten volumes). Vol. 2. Moscow: Khudozhestvennaya literatura, 1976, p. 12. Below is another English translation from the original German by Bayard Taylor, found at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/14591/14591-h/14591-h.htm#I. It preserves the juxtaposition – just the different words are chosen: “discordant tones” – “consonance”:

Go, find yourself a more obedient slave!

What! shall the Poet that which Nature gave,

The highest right, supreme Humanity,

Forfeit so wantonly, to swell your treasure?

Whence o’er the heart his empire free?

The elements of Life how conquers he?

Is’t not his heart’s accord, urged outward far and dim,

To wind the world in unison with him?

When on the spindle, spun to endless distance,

By Nature’s listless hand the thread is twirled,

And the discordant tones of all existence

In sullen jangle are together hurled,

Who, then, the changeless orders of creation

Divides, and kindles into rhythmic dance?

Who brings the One to join the general ordination,

Where it may throb in grandest consonance?

Who bids the storm to passion stir the bosom?

In brooding souls the sunset burn above?

Who scatters every fairest April blossom

Along the shining path of Love?

Who braids the noteless leaves to crowns, requiting

Desert with fame, in Action’s every field?

Who makes Olympus sure, the Gods uniting?

The might of Man, as in the Bard revealed.

Here is the original German text, found at https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/21000/pg21000-images.html:

Geh hin und such dir einen andern Knecht!

Der Dichter sollte wohl das höchste Recht,

Das Menschenrecht, das ihm Natur vergönnt,

Um deinetwillen freventlich verscherzen!

Wodurch bewegt er alle Herzen?

Wodurch besiegt er jedes Element?

Ist es der Einklang nicht? der aus dem Busen dringt,

Und in sein Herz die Welt zurücke schlingt.

Wenn die Natur des Fadens ew’ge Länge,

Gleichgültig drehend, auf die Spindel zwingt,

Wenn aller Wesen unharmon’sche Menge

Verdrießlich durch einander klingt;

Wer theilt die fließend immer gleiche Reihe

Belebend ab, daß sie sich rythmisch regt?

Wer ruft das Einzelne zur allgemeinen Weihe?

Wo es in herrlichen Accorden schlägt,

Wer läßt den Sturm zu Leidenschaften wüthen?

Das Abendroth im ernsten Sinne glühn?

Wer schüttet alle schönen Frühlingsblüten

Auf der Geliebten Pfade hin?

Wer flicht die unbedeutend grünen Blätter

Zum Ehrenkranz Verdiensten jeder Art?

Wer sichert den Olymp? vereinet Götter?

Des Menschen Kraft im Dichter offenbart.

Too keep the fun going, another AI-generated English translation of the original gives this:

Go and find yourself another servant!

Should the poet frivolously squander

The highest right, the human right,

That Nature grants him, all for your sake?

How does he move all hearts?

How does he conquer every element?

Is it not the harmony that flows from his breast,

And draws the world back into his heart?

When Nature, indifferently turning,

Forces the eternal thread upon the spindle,

When the discordant multitude of beings

Jangles unpleasantly through one another;

Who divides the ever-flowing uniform series

Animating it, so that it stirs rhythmically?

Who summons the individual to universal consecration,

Where it strikes in glorious harmonies?

Who lets the storm rage into passions?

The sunset glow with solemn meaning?

Who scatters all the beautiful spring blossoms

Along the beloved's paths?

Who weaves the insignificant green leaves

Into a wreath of honor for merits of every kind?

Who secures Olympus? unites the gods?

The human power revealed in the poet.

↩︎
Losev, Alexey. Antichnaya mifologiya v eyo istoricheskom razvitii (Ancient mythology in its historical development). Moscow: Gosudarstvenny uchebno-pedagogichesky institute, 1957, p. 430.↩︎
Slobin, Psycholinguistics, p. 78.↩︎
Ibid., p. 83.↩︎
Nalimov, V. Veroyatnostnaya model’ yazyka, p. 224.↩︎
Hadamard, J. An Essay on the Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field. Garden City: Dover Publication, 1954, p. 112.↩︎
Jung, Carl. Symbols of Transformation (Collected Works of C. G. Jung Vol.5). Princeton University Press, 1977. ↩︎

Nalimov, V. Veroyatnostnaya model’ yazyka, p. 252.↩︎
If a human of the Mousterian period saw, say, some animal, it was immediately placed in their representation among other phenomena of the surrounding world that evoked the same or similar psychological state (i.e., a semantic series emerged).↩︎
Propp, Vladimir Ya. Historical Roots of the Wondertale. Transl. by Miriam Shrager, Sibelan Forrester and Russel Scott Valentino, Afterword by Sergei Nekliudov. Indiana University Press, 2025.↩︎
Tsvetaeva, Marina. Sochineniya v dvukh tomakh, vol. 2, p. 379.↩︎
Ibid., p. 309.↩︎
Probably everything connected with the word “rod” [family/kin/genus] evokes a strong sense of life's fullness at the level of archetypal consciousness. Later, in Chapter 7, we will return to this problem. Here we will only note that for humans of the Mousterian and Neolithic periods, “Native land” meant life in the direct sense – this was the land where the animals that Mousterian humans hunted bred, and where the millet that Neolithic humans gathered grew. Loss of native land meant starvation death at that time. We focus on Neolithic humans because this period likely gave rise to the thought archetypes that correspond to the mythologemes we seek.↩︎
Adler A. What Life Should Mean to You. New York: Capricorn, 1958.↩︎
Foulkes D. “Theories of Dream Formation.” In Charles T. Tart, ed. Altered States of Consciousness: A Book of Readings. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1963, p. 121.↩︎
Ullman, M. “Dreaming, Life Style, and Physiology: A Comment on Adler's View of the Dream”. Journal of Individual Psychology, 18(1), 1962: 18–25.↩︎
Nalimov, V. Veroyatnostnaya Model' Yazyka, pp. 233-234.↩︎
This especially applies to childhood memories, which most often appear in dreams, since in childhood everything is remembered much more emotionally. Childhood memories are simply more saturated with emotional semes.↩︎
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Nausea. Transl. from the French by Lloyd Alexander. Norfolk CT: New Directions, 1949, pp. 56-58.↩︎
But not necessarily at the moment when the signal is fixed by the sense organs. Psychologists Fodor, Bever, and Garrett from Massachusetts Institute of Technology tried to identify the boundaries of syntagms (a syntagm is a set of words grammatically connected with each other and forming a semantic unity. The set of words forming a phrase can always be grouped into factor sets of words (syntagms) when perceiving a sentence. In doing this, they based their work on the Gestalt psychology assumption that units of perception maintain their integrity, resist breaks (in other words, perception has inertia). In Fodor and Bever's experiment, subjects listened to a sentence, during which at some point a click would sound. Immediately after listening, subjects had to write down the sentence they heard and indicate where they heard the click. If any syntagm was a unit of perception, subjects usually claimed they heard the click at the boundary between parts of the sentence, although it was actually given within this syntagm (Cited from: Slobin D. Psycholinguistics, p. 25). Important for us is the conclusion that follows from the described experiment: between the perception of a signal by sense organs and its processing by consciousness, a certain period of time elapses, during which the processing of the previous signal is completed. Whether the delayed information undergoes any processing before becoming accessible, we do not know. But we know that if it does undergo processing, this processing does not transform the signal beyond recognition.↩︎
Klochkov, Igor S. Dukhovnaya kul'tura Vavilonii: chelovek, sud'ba, vremya (Spiritual culture of Babylonia: man, fate, time). Moscow: Nauka, 1983, pp. 162-163.↩︎
More precisely, the experience of illusory reality is suggested.↩︎
Similar thoughts were expressed in the 19th century by a German linguist and were supported by Charles Darwin.↩︎
We have used some statements about language cited in Nalimov V. Psikholingvistica, p. 10.↩︎
Cited from https://www.bible.com/bible/97/GEN.2.20-22.MSG↩︎
English translation: James Legge. Source: www.ctext.org Edited by Cambridge Chinese Classics www.camcc.org↩︎
As E. V. Zavadskaya writes, “The philosophical-ethical nature of the word is postulated in the 'Lun Yu' with all definiteness. At the word level, chaos is ordered into cosmos, for in the word resides the thing”. <…> “...The word in the philosophical context of 'Lun Yu' appears as a constant, primordial property of being.” <…> The theory of “correcting names”, developed later by Confucians, in its fundamental principles is laid down in the “Lun Yu” primarily in the philosophy of the word, presented in this monument. See Zavadskaya, E. V. “Missiya slova v ‘Lun'-Yue’” (The Mission of the Word in “Lun Yu”). In Konfutsianstvo v Kitae (Confucianism in China). Moscow: Nauka, 1982, pp. 38-41.↩︎
Plato. Cratylus. Translated by Benjamin Jowett, http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/cratylus.html.↩︎
In the ancient Indian tradition, it is said that names were given to things as a result of the act of creation by the lord of speech – the Universal Craftsman.↩︎
English translation: James Legge. Source: https://www.international.ucla.edu/ccs/article/18488#:~:text=%22 If%20names%20be%20not%20correct,and%20music%20do%20not%20flourish.↩︎
Vowel sounds are carriers of emotion. In modern languages, there are fewer vowel sounds than consonants. However, languages have been preserved (Japanese and Polynesian) in which vowel sounds constitute the majority. Moreover, the acoustic structure of Japanese vowel sounds strikingly resembles, as Japanese psychologists discovered, natural sounds – cicada chirping, wind noise, etc. Japanese scientists managed to discover a connection between features of the native language and the distribution of brain hemisphere functions.

Speakers of Japanese and Polynesian languages perceive all natural sounds, as well as sounds associated with emotions, with the left hemisphere, and all unnatural sounds with the right. Thus, for Japanese and Polynesians, the left hemisphere handles playing the qin, kan, other Japanese and Chinese instruments, natural sounds, vowel sounds. The right hemisphere perceives consonant sounds, unnatural sounds (explosions, metal hitting metal, playing European musical instruments). Europeans, however, do not have such a clear division of natural and unnatural sounds by hemispheres. The European's left hemisphere perceives both vowels and consonants intermixed.

However, this difference in hemisphere operation is not hereditary. For a European born in Japan who considers Japanese their native language, the hemispheres work according to the “Japanese” type.

Information about these studies can be found in Howard Brabyn's article “Native Language and the Brain,” UNESCO Courier, No. 3, 1982, pp. 10-12.

For us this information is important because languages consisting predominantly of vowels have been preserved. These are island languages, probably preserving the sound structure of languages from the pre-Aryan, Austronesian period.

European languages, in our opinion, gradually changed their linguistic structure under the influence of the course toward industrialization taken by the Aryan tribes, tribes of conquerors conquering the world thanks to their chariots. To have chariots, one had to possess metallurgy skills: without a bronze bushing, a chariot could not be made. The Aryans, who created the religious cult of chariots, must have attached enormous importance to the art of metal processing. This is reflected in Aryan myths about Hephaestus. The role of natural sounds in their lives must have steadily decreased, while the role of unnatural, industrial noises increased.↩︎
Translators’ note. This is similar to how in English, the word “deer” was originally a general term for any animal (from Old English “deor” meaning “animal, beast”), but became a euphemism for a specific forest creature whose true name was taboo and eventually lost.↩︎
“Attempts at slacking off and carelessness were severely punished by contempt and mockery, which was a very severe sanction in a collective where prestige is valued above all”. Vasiliev L. S. Problemy genezisa kitayskogo gosudarstva (Problems of the genesis of the Chinese State). Moscow: Nauka, 1983, p. 15.↩︎
Translated by AI.↩︎
Dandamaev, M. A. Vavilonskie pistsy (Babylonian scribes). Moscow: Nauka, 1983, p. 7.↩︎
The view of the hieroglyph as a thought embodied in bodily structure, possessing skeleton, muscles, beautiful flesh, body movements, its tension, has long been established in Chinese calligraphy theory and was partly transferred to painting theory for the historical designation of strokes and other technical elements of writing: “meat”, “blood”, “arteries”, “breathing”, etc.

“... As a consequence of likening the structure of the hieroglyph to the human body came the use of such concepts as ‘meat’, ‘innards’, ‘blood’, ‘arteries’ in artistic analysis of calligraphy. Later Jiang Kui (1155-1221), the greatest theorist of calligraphy, in his treatise Xu Shu Pu (‘Introduction to Calligraphy’) would strengthen this physiologism in the perception of art even further. He would write, for example, about prose that has violations of artistic form as about a person without an eye”. Zavadskaya, E. V. Mudroe vdokhnovenie (Wise inspiration). Moscow: Nauka, 1983, pp. 105-106.↩︎
Fyodor Tyutchev (1803-1873).↩︎
Tao Te Ching, Verse 56.↩︎
Cited from: Malyavin, V. V. “Filosofiya Chzhuan-tszy: zabyt'e probuzhdeniya, nemoe slovo” (Philosophy of Zhuangzi: forgetting of awakening, silent word). In Eds L. S. Vasiliev and E. B. Porshneva, Dao i Daosizm v Kitae (Tao and Taoism in China). Moscow: Nauka, 1982, p. 43. (available in https://www.abirus.ru/user/ files/Ebooks/dao_i_daosizm_v_kitae.pdf).↩︎

Contents | Note | Ch.1 | Ch.2 | Ch.3 | Ch.4 | Ch.5 | Ch.6 | Ch.7 | Ch.8 | Ch.9 | Bibl. | Footnotes