Archimandrite Daniil – Another Personality of a 19th Century Russian Orthodox Sinologist?

The article presents, clarifies and discusses biographical facts of the Russian sinologist, Archimandrite Daniil (Dmitriy Petrovich Sivillov, 1798-1877), related to his place of birth, social origin, education, career in the Russian Orthodox Church and the time of his death. Fr. Daniil was a member of the 10th Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Beijing, the first head of the first Chinese language department (cathedra) in Russia at the Imperial Kazan University, rector of monasteries in Moscow, Kazan, the Trans-Baikal Territory and the Yaroslavl Diocese. Comparisons with the emblematic figure of the Russian Sinology in the first half of the 19th century Archimandrite Hyacinth (Nikita Yakovlevich Bichurin, 1777-1853) demoted to monks, but obtained acclaim both from the Russian and European scholarly communities, convince that Fr. Daniel and Fr. Hyacinth had shared common traits of their background, education, and early church careers. Hence, they ought to share the Orthodox worldview, and the ‘confrontation’ between Fr. Hyacinth and the Russian Orthodox Church, which is emphasized in the Soviet historiography, is somewhat exaggerated. Monastic status of the both influenced their personal lives, but the priorities of the sinology pursuits of these two talented people were recognized by the Church, so it left them enough space to engage in Chinese studies. In general, the inconsistency of the methodology of modern Russian historiography of 19th-century Russian Chinese studies is noted, since formally priority is given to historiography as the history of academic historical studies, but mostly published works that had been in the public historical knowledge domain are taken into consideration. At the same time, most of the professional works of this period remain in the archives and have not been made public, that is, they have not received the status of historiographical facts either in the narrow or in the broad sense of the definition of historiography.