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Эпиграфика как ключевой источник по плаваниям Чжэн Хэ и её современная интерпретация: исследование, перевод и комментарии
Zheng He expeditions (1405–1433) can be rightfully considered one of the most significant events in the history of China and international relations. Research on them began in the late 19th century and continues up to this day. The main difficulty in studying these expeditions is considered to be a small quantity of primary sources – most of such documents were intentionally destroyed in 1470s. The surviving written evidence has already been thoroughly studied and translated into European languages. Nevertheless, epigraphic sources received much less attention, works on some of them are absent from both Western and Russian historiography. This article aims to address this gap, providing the reader with a general understanding of types and specific features of such sources, which provide additional information on Zheng He’s personality, the preparation and progress of the expeditions. This paper analyzes well-known epigraphical sources such as “Ma Hazhi’s epitaph”, “Galle trilingual stele”, “Inscription on stone in the palace of the Celestial Spouse at Liujiagang in eastern Lu in memory of the contacts with the barbarians”, “Record of the miraculous answer to prayer of the goddess, the Celestial Spouse”, as well as the lesser known “Record of the reconstruction of the devout mosque”, “Memorial inscription about Zheng He visiting [a cemetery] and burning incenses [while] passing through Quanzhou on the way down to the foreign [countries]” and “Stele fragment at Nanjing’s Jinghai temple”. An appendix to this paper includes the translation of several epigraphical sources by A.A. Bokshchanin (1935–2014) and the author of this article.