This article is devoted to the study of the Buddha’s image as it manifested in the pages of an important Sanskrit text of Hinduism, perhaps the most influential Purana – the Bhagavata Purana, or Bhagavata, which contains descriptions of various avatars of Vishnu-Krishna. This study is limited to the analysis of the second stanza in the Bhagavata Purana that glorifies the Buddha. Among the approximately eighteen thousand stanzas of the Bhagavata Purana, the person of Buddha is mentioned seven times. The most conceptual moment of this verse is the notion of upadharma (literally, “semblance of a teaching,” i.e., something that resembles the true teaching, but is not it in the absolute sense).

 The article presents an analysis of this stanza by various medieval and modern Indian commentators (Sridhara, Vishvanatha Chakravarti, Madhva, Vallabha, Jiva Gosvami, Viraraghava, Vijayadhvaja, Sukadeva, Giridhara, Vamshidhara, Bhaktivedanta). According to many of them, a verse from the second Canto of the Bhagavata Purana mentions a personality of Buddha different from the historical Siddhartha Gautama, who lived 2500 years ago. It may be noted that later interpreters of the Bhagavata text began to treat Buddhism more tolerantly than medieval commentators (the same tendency is observed in Buddhism in relation to Hinduism).

This article is a continuation of a previously published study concerning the analysis of the mention of the person of Buddha in the stanza-glorification from the first Canto of the Bhagavata Purana.

The article is devoted to the analysis of the embedded narrative about the epic hero’s visit to Buddhist hell in the structure of an archaic epic text. The purpose of the study is to show the influence of Buddhism on the content of the epic text, as well as to identify elements of ancient beliefs in the structure of the epic tale. The material of the study was the epic text “The Best of Men, Three-Year-Old Mekele”, recorded in 1879 in Western Mongolia. To achieve this goal, an interdisciplinary approach was used including the methods of religious studies, epic studies and textual analysis. The structure of the epic text includes a plot about the hero’s visit to Buddhist hell for the sake of freeing all living beings from the torments of hell. The reason for the epic hero’s departure to the other world is the absence of a son – an heir and continuer of the family. The hero descends into the world of the dead, receives instructions from the Lord of Hell himself, and empties all the departments of hell. The space of the archaic epic text organically combines layers of ancient beliefs and Buddhism from different periods. The presence of such elements in the text of the epic tale indicates different stages of development of ancient epic texts, the degree of transformation of the archaic core of the epic, conditioned by the laws of the cultural uniqueness of the ethnic group. The motif of the hero of the epic seeing the Buddhist hell is a late inclusion of the Buddhist plot in the structure of the archaic epic.

The article is devoted to the heritage of the khurul “Sera Tosam Ling” (Tib. Se ra thos bsam gling; lit. ‘Abode of listening and reflection’), which until 1931 was located on the territory of the Khoshutov aimag of the IkiTsokhurovsky ulus of Kalmykia. The study is based on published and archival sources, as well as on personal materials from expeditionary research in 20032022. The main relics of the “Sera Tosam Ling” khurul for several centuries were two shrines “Khoshuda khoir shar burkhn” – statuettes depicting Buddha Akshobhya and Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara. In 2021, the shrines, along with other cult items, were returned to the khurul by the keepers. Part of the material heritage (figurines depicting burkhans, kurde prayer wheels, lampadas, manuscripts, etc.) of the “Sera Tosam Ling” khurul is still kept in private collections. The collection of manuscripts includes seven manuscripts in the Oirat language and four manuscripts in the Tibetan language. These manuscripts were a small part of the significant collection of the khurul library “Sera Tosam Ling”, after the closing of the khurul, they were carefully kept in the families of the relatives of the clergy. Manuscripts from the collections belong to various genres of Buddhist literature. All these writings were cultivated among believers, who invited a clergyman to the house to read and explain sacred texts to believers. The Oirat part of the works was translated in the 17^th century by the outstanding Oirat educator Zaya Pandita Namkhai Jamtso. Manuscripts preserved in the families of clergymen’s relatives are a valuable source for the study of ancient written literature, the history of Buddhism and the culture of the Kalmyks.

The article is dedicated to the Vietnamese Buddhist temple “Thatched Hut”, built in the Moscow region (the Vietnamese name of the temple is Thảo Đường). The founder of the Vietnamese Buddhist community is the Russian scientist and teacher of Vietnamese language in higher education Inna Anatolyevna Malkhanova (1939–2019). Her husband, Vietnamese Nguyên Minh Cẫ n (1928–2016) made a great contribution to the creation of ̀ this community in Moscow. Both of them are revered in the “Thatched Hut” as its founders, and rituals are performed in their honor in front of a special altar. Currently, four nuns live in the temple, moreover lay people come regularly. The temple is not only a place of Buddhist practices, but also a community center for Vietnamese living in Moscow (mostly women).

The temple has not been previously studied by researchers and has not been described in scientific publications. We regularly visit the temple with RSUH students as part of their educational practice (once or twice a semester, starting from 2022). This allowed us to collect material on the history and current state of the temple. Of particular significance is the material that one of the authors, Kamila Soboleva, who managed to collect in the autumn of 2024 during two months living in the monastery as a Buddhist nun and was able to describe the monastery’s way of life using the participant observation method.

The article represents two interviews recorded in March 2025 with bhikkhu Topper Paññāvudho thera, a representative of the Theravada community in St. Petersburg, and bhikkhu Buddhañāno thera, a representative of Theravada community in Moscow and the Moscow region.

Bhikkhu Topper Paññāvudho thera is the oldest Buddhist monk of the Theravada tradition of Russian origin, permanently residing in Russia, the head of the Buddhist community in St. Petersburg, and also the owner of the portal “Theravada.ru”. The interview touches upon the issues of his life path, his conversion to Buddhism (first to the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism, then to Theravāda), the history of modern Russian Theravada, monastic life in Russia and interfaith Buddhist dialogue.

Bhikkhu Buddhañāno thera is a Moscow Buddhist monk of the Theravada tradition, who also permanently resides in Russia, co-founder of the local religious organization “Theravāda Buddhist community” (Moscow Region, Balashikha city). The interview is devoted to the history of bhikkhu Buddhañāno’s religious conversion, his monastic experience in traditional Theravāda countries (Thailand and Sri Lanka), the peculiarities of the structure of the monastic institution and the problems faced by monks of European origin.

This article carries out a study of two ideological papers (treatise “Ideology of Socialism” and essay “Socialist ideology and Burmese history”), written by two famous Burmese communists: thakin Soe and thakin Than Tun. An unusual modernistic interpretation of famous Buddhist narrative from Aggañña-sutta could be seen as a peculiar point of such publications, which provides an opportunity for their study, comparison and in-depth analysis. Soe and Than Tun referred to the famous Buddhist legend to explain the issues of state origin and the social stratification. In their understanding such processes were facilitated by the emergence of private ownership. Their interpretation has much in common with Marxist theory of State origin. However, both theorists paid due attention to a Buddhist moral understanding of history. They presented private property as an attribute of Self-illusion as well as a key factor in moral decline of ancient beings.

Current paper helps to develop a more comprehensive understanding of Buddhist-Marxist synthesis in history of Burma. Also, according to a Theory of radical tradition, a substantive understanding of current political situation in Myanmar necessitates the study of Burmese protestant intellectual views. In that context a study of thakin philosophical thought becomes relevant nowadays.

The article analyses the social and cultural dynamics of the historical development of the cult of saints in Indonesia. The author studies modernization and traditionalism, which influenced significantly the history of the cult of saints in the social history of Indonesian Islam. The author highlights several elements of the modern social history of the cult of saints in Islam in Indonesia. It is assumed that 1) images of saints have become invented cultural and social constructs, 2) folk Islam is a space for the development of ideas about saints, 3) ziyarat has become a universal form of functioning of the cult of saints, 4) ziyarat practices are integrated into the modern economic model, 5) saints have become the object of consistent marketization and therefore mass culture is turning into one of the spaces for the development of their images. Analysing the role of the Ummah, the author believes that 1) the development of the cult of saints in the history of the Indonesian Muslim Ummah became the result of the transformation of folk Islam, 2) the development of ideas about saints in Islam became a form of folk memorial culture, 3) the history of the cult of saints in Indonesian Islam actualised adaptive potential of the Ummah, its reaction to the secularization of society. It is assumed that the process of modernization and secularization in Indonesia influenced the cult of saints significantly. The author of the article shows that the history of the cult of saints actualised the contradictions in the development of the Muslim Ummah in contexts of parallel co-development and simultaneous co-functioning of “high” (“scholarly”) and “low” (“folk”) Islam.