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The Tyva Republic, within the Russian Federation, has acquired its present name in 1991. It was formerly known as the Tuvinian Autonomous Region within the USSR. Its common names in the past centuries were Uryankhaiskii Krai or Soyotskii Krai. In modern Russian, it is known under the name Tuva (not Tyva), which will be used further in the text. This country, for example, embraces the sources of the great Siberian river Yenisei and its capital, the town of Kyzyl, represents the geographical centre of Asia. To date, this vast and clear cut territory was hitherto almost unexplored in odonatological respect. In particular, it was not visited by the outstanding Siberian odonatologist B. F. Belyshev. Scarce materials from the recent Tuvinian territory were mentioned by Valle (1942), who considered it to be Mongolian. In the only paper concerning the dragonflies of Tuva in particular (two localities in its very south) 14 species were reported (Zaika & Kosterin 1990). The "transitional form between Ophiogomphus serpentinus and O. reductus” considered in that work, however, turned out to be the Chinese-Mongolian species Ophiogomphus spinicornis (Kosterin, 1999). Finally, one of us published two works on the general lentic fauna of the Ubsu-Nur Hollow in general (Zaika, 1996) and Lake Tere-Khol' in particular (Zaika, 1999), where 26 and 9 species were listed, respectively. The latter work was based on larval identification. Because this is difficult, this information should be taken with caution. The presence of species such as Ischnura pumilio and Cordulia aenea was not confirmed by records of adults and may be erroneous.
IAD annual report 2003
(2003)
First, why I have avoided to use in this paper the expression ‘the Composite Culture’, which even is used in our Constitution of India to describe unified one culture of our country.1 It is because such a demand is not only against one of the basic realities of our Indian way of life, it also goes against the divine will, which was and is behind this created world with different shades and colours. In this regard the following observation made by Dr. Ram Singh is also noteworthy: It is debatable issue whether there is a separate entity called “composite culture” of India, or it is merely the interaction of various cultures which, instead of resulting into an integrated culture, are still in a position to maintain their separate identities. Beside what Dr. Ram Singh says, the reality is that multi or pluralism is part of our Indian or even Asian way of life. It is quite a different thing, if some of us are not willing to accept this truth. But it is still there, in the form of multi-cultures, multi-languages, multireligions and multiethnicities. Therefore the question of ‘composite culture’ is not only debatable, but also a doubtful principle, unless we are willing to take it as an eschatology reality. I do not intend to deal with this point in detail here, because of the time factor. But we may be able to come back to this question of ‘composite culture, in our discussion if you will wish to do so. ...