Early Russo-Indian relations in modern Russian historiography

Russia has long-standing and multilateral contacts with major Eastern countries, including India. Their development is influenced by many factors, among which is the practice of building a dialog acquired by the states in previous periods of interaction. Turning to the origins of Russo-Indian contacts allows us to understand the problems of the formation of the image of the «other» in Russian history and culture. The article offers the author's interpretation of the experience of comprehension of historiographical and specific-historical components of the study of the phenomenon of the history of the original Russo-Indian relations accumulated in the modern Russian historical-scientific discourse. Early Russian-Indian communications were built from the moment when the oldest description of India, contained in translated Byzantine literature, appeared in Russia until the seventeenth century inclusive, when the transition from casual to more or less solid Russo-Indian relations began and the systematization of information about India in Russia began. Modern Russian historiography of the “Russia-India” topic is represented by historiography belonging to the post-Soviet period, chronologically covering the 1990s of XX - the first quarter of XXI centuries and characterized by a shift of emphasis from the study of specific forms of ready-made knowledge to the analysis of the process of its acquisition. Its main methodological postulates, correlating with the general theory of communication, as well as intercultural and interethnic communication as its special sections, act as an explanatory tool for studying the history of early experiences of Russo-Indian contacts. In particular, maxims of the communication process are applied to consider in the studies of Indologists the mechanisms of formation of “world pictures”, perception, cultural contexts and religious ethics of the participants of interaction. The historiographical process is interpreted within the framework of the conceptualist paradigm, which consists in considering the theoretical and empirical resources of researchers on the problem under study, the results of their scientific research. Traditional methods of historiographical research are used: interdisciplinary, periodization, retrospective and prospective analysis, problem-chronological.