The outline of the N.Ya.Bichurin biography can be found in many encyclopedic, science-related, and religious sources, and is not a purpose of this posting; to see what's out there, click on the header above; it has other links. What these sources are at best skipping is the genius of  N.Bichurin. To begin with, N.Ya.Bichurin was a Türkic Chuvash village boy from an area that in poverty was barely above that of its Russian occupiers. The name of the village was Bichera, in Russified articulation Pichura, which in Türkic is a lucid "pauper, derelict". His motherland was overrun by invaders two centuries earlier, legally the Chuvashes became aliens in their own land, but their life did not change much, instead of being Tatar serfs they became the Russian serfs, as rural and forsaken as ever. Aside from more ruthless exactions, the only real change was a forced conversion by a church that was a mercilessly mean attribute of the state. His father was a village deacon, evidently of local extraction without a face or surname, as indicated by the boy receiving a surname when he already attended a Kazan seminary. The clergy working in Chuvash or Tatar were a precious commodity, but they needed a sizable parish to generate subsistence income; his father may have served a cluster of villages and their cemeteries. The only way to break from the foreshadowing gloom of life in Bichera was to ride the religion. In a feudal state held together by force and subjugation, religious conversion was an only path to a measure of equality, at least it certified that you were a human being. So, the Bichurin boy learned Russian, went to a missionary note singing school as for a grammar school, then to seminary, then to a theological academy in Kazan, where in addition to his native Chuvash and Tatar, and the Russian as a second language, he received Latin, Greek, and French, obtained his graduation papers in 1799, with accolades, and a last name. The mind, memory, and carrier of the young clergyman were meteoric, soon he was appointed a prior in a Kazan capital monastery, and in 1802 was given a rank of Archimandrite (that is, a Chuvash boy was not only running the Türkic, Mari, and Russian monks, but also running their Russian overseers).

Школьная ода, приписываемая Никите Пичуринскому, 1795
Чувашский текст	Перевод
Паян эпир айла тайнатпар, Поре перле хперпе пахатпар. Паян эпир ытах савнатпар, Пурсе соратна санан кон Сана, атия, пос сакма, тав тавма киленетпер. Сана тава, атте, пире врентнишен, Рехмет сана хаварманнпшен. Ваталиччен телейле пол, Намай сол порниччен сыв пол.	Сей день мы, низко кланяясь, Все вместе радостно взираем на тебя. Сей день мы очень веселимся, В день рождения твоего Тебе, отцу, поклониться пришли мы, Слава тебе, отец, за обучение нас, Хвала тебе, что не оставил нас. Будь счастлив до преклонных лет И будь здоров на много лет.

And then his carrier crushed. N.Bichurin was exiled to Irkutsk in Siberia, as a prior in a missionary monastery and a rector of an Orthodox Christian seminary. Things were getting worse, in 1805 N.Bichurin was ousted, stripped of his Archimandrite title, and shipped to Tobolsk monastery as a teacher of rhetoric without a right for church services. The official line is vague: for violation of monastic rules and conflict with seminarists; what is hidden behind that formulation was never disclosed in the past 200 years, but can be fairly inferred. (нарушение монашеского устава: содержание в монастыре под видом послушника бывшей крепостной, приехавшей с ним из Казани)  The ruthless colonial policies, fractioning and pauperizing of native Siberian population, huntdown and shoot-down of tribute evaders and resisters was a century-old state policy. Not only for a man of Türkic extraction, but also for enlightened Russians who chanced to witness the scene, the treatment of aboriginal peoples was immoral and revolting. In the Tobolsk monastery the defrocked N.Bichurin was incarcerated for two years; and then an imperial prescript, following a chain of diplomatic events, resurrected N.Bichurin as an Archimandrite Iakinth, a head of a theological mission to Peking attached to a diplomatic mission, all that without rescinding the defrocking order or exile sentence. Technically, N.Bichurin remained defrocked and exiled. That assignment gave N.Bichurin a chance to first learn the spoken Mongolian, and then the spoken and written Chinese and Manchu, a Tungusic language, and also Tibetan and Korean. The assignment was supposed to last for 10 years, but extended for 13. During that time, N.Bichurin collected Chinese and Manchu lexicon compatible with "Kansi tsydyan" encyclopedic dictionary that surpassed anything available outside of China, served as unofficial translator for Chinese foreign office for western languages correspondence, translated multi-volume "Tuntsyan Ganmu" (pinyin Tongjian), a capital work on the Chinese history compiled in the 12th c., various encyclopedias, official statistical descriptions of the Chinese empire, and other works.

A glimpse into N.Bichurin beliefs is given by his objections to western and religious views that ridiculed Chinese customs and  traditions, depicted China as a barbarous and ignorant state, and justified predatory plundering policies toward China. Among most impressive Chinese achievements, N.Bichurin wrote about smallpox vaccination, a technique discovered in the West a century later. For his transgressions, N.Bichurin became an object of a favorite Russian sport of fingering, tattling, and snitching on to all offices from Irkutsk to St.Petersburg, accused in sins from inattention to the office duties to forsaking the church services. When the distractions of the Napoleonic wars were over, the state became functional again, and in 1921 N.Bichurin was replaced. In addition to his notes and materials, N.Bichurin brought back 6.4 tons of Chinese literature for libraries and Oriental schools. N.Bichurin was irreplaceable in his knowledge and and linguistic capabilities.

 And still his carrier crushed. A church court sentenced the former Head of the Mission Archimandrite Iakinth to stripping his title (again!), and an incarceration for life in the Valaam monastery as a lowly monk. The Valaam monastery was a northern-most fortress on the islands in the Arctic Sea, that was the worst punishment in the imperial Russia short of execution. When Bolsheviks in Russia came to power, before they invented Gulag, they send their former friends and allies to die in the Valaam monastery. It is non-industrial scale, but still worked fine. In the Russian Orthodox Christian encyclopedias and dictionaries, N.Bichurin is invariably called "Archimandrite Iakinth", and the little occasions of stripping the Archimandrite title and for life incarcerations are joyously skipped over. The loyal scientific literature and encyclopedias drum up his "Russianness", mention his defrocking, but still use the moniker "Archimandrite Iakinth" instead of the moniker "Nikita Bichurin". Even his village deacon father was posthumously given a fake Russian name Yakov Danilovich Bichurin and promoted to a priest. For now, his real name, like the name of his father, remains unknown in the foggy depictions of the Potemkin-type portrayals.

N.Bichurin's personal library was left at his friend in Petersburg. Many N.Bichurin's works published after his return to Petersburg were created in Valaam, due to his phenomenal memory and daily work. Another turn of luck, caused by N.Bichurin's unique knowledge, compelled another imperial edict, with a proscription of holding him in the Alexandr-Nevsky cloister in St.Petersburg. N.Bichurin's life sentence was never commuted, and he served it to the last day. That is the place where he is resting now, in a cemetery restricted to "who-is-who" in the imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet Russia.

The apotheosis of N.Bichurin work started with his return from the Valaam incarceration. Never again he obtained any religious hierarchical titles, dying as a lowly monk. His energy was limitless, contents pioneering, comments biting, and  publications uncounted. After a few fruitful years, N.Bichurin chanced to return to Siberia attached to a scientific expedition, and at that time he met revolutionaries exiled to Siberia, got closely acquainted with them, including Bestujev, and established especially close relations with Bestujev. Apparently, during his stay in Kyakhta, influenced by his revolutionary soulmates, N.Bichurin decided to finally break with monasticism. You can't find that little nub in the published biographies. In the October of 1831, N.Bichurin applied to the Sinode (Russian equivalent of Curia, an arm of the state apparatus) to revoke his monk status. The Czar, and not the Sinode, had to make an abysmal decision. To strip a monk status meant to exile and incarcerate him. The answer was no, keep the lousy but needed monk incarcerated in the Alexander-Nevsky cloister in St.Petersburg, not allowing him to leave the monasticism. He was born a serf, and the state held him a serf for all his life.

Another interesting tidbit, not ever mentioned in the biographies, is the N.Bichurin's personal life. From the biographical descriptions one would conclude that there was absolutely none, like with his social beliefs. And that would be expected, given N.Bichurin's lifetime status of the monk. The monks are not supposed to go around producing kids, engaging in sexual affairs, or discussing the merits of the social revolutions. If they do, nowadays they get expelled and defrocked, in the 19th century they may have been exiled and defrocked, or executed and defrocked. In the N.Bichurin's case he was defrocked twice, and twice incarcerated. Something must be grossly amiss both in the monking (as in "to monk", a lifelong occupation of a monk) and in the biography departments, because in the 1888 N.S. Moller published his interviews with a N.Bichurin's granddaughter, which leads one to suspect that she had a parent that was a child of  N.Bichurin, possibly born around the 1830's. With that tidbit, we can expect that there was a some type of family relations, parental care, and lifelong attachments unbecoming to a reputable monk in a good standing. Though Orthodox Christian clergy are allowed, and even encouraged to have a family, that does not apply to N.Bichurin, who was explicitly stripped from a right for the church services. What kind of tortures and sacrifices were inflicted on his family by the church and the state remain unrecognized.

So, his publications kept coming out under the "father Iakinth" name. There were hundreds of them between 1831 and 1853. N.Bichurin's crown work was a 1851 publication of the "Collection of information on peoples in Central Asia in ancient times". In 1831  N.Bichurin was elected a member of Paris Asian Society. That started his triumphal membership in the Western "who-is-who" academies and societies. Most of this poor Chuvash boy's works were translated into European languages, and learned by the European Sinologists. Klaport remarked that N.Bichurin alone did as much as could be done by a school of a whole Sinologist Scientific Society. More then that, nobody dared to correct or finesse his translations. As the appreciation of N.Bichurin's work grew, in the minds of his international colleagues he became to represent the Russian science, and most likely that was how he was taking it, a Chuvash smart boy was a Russian science. Like in the evolutionary process, the hidden genes of a most ancient Türkic tribe rose to the top of the modern scientific knowledge. No Turkologist can create a work that does not use N.Bichurin's work at its foundation. The life of N.Bichurin is an achievement of the science that can't be forgotten. Still during his lifetime, N.Bichurin received highest recognition and accolades, but it is his intellectual inheritance that preserved his name for future generations. When we see the name "father Iakinth", we should remember that N.Bichurin had shed that skin as far back as 1831, and from that time on, only the audacity of the regime kept that name alive.

Many works that followed in the N.Bichurin's tracks diverged from his beliefs. The most important of them was the discovery of the Türkic inscriptions from the Second Türkic and Türgesh Kaganates. They disproved a concept held by N.Bichurin, and confirmed a concept of Deguignes, in respect to the Türkic vs. Mongolic origin of the Huns and other Türkic tribes. Ironically, N.Bichurin encountered and translated dozens of the original Türkic words cited in the Chinese annals, he knew them as the words of his native language, and clearly stated that they were Türkic, but still held to the idea that these people were Mongols. N.Bichurin can't be held to the modern knowledge of the all historical problems, but his achievements were that he made ample Chinese sources accessible, introduced his followers to China, and in his works did much to dissipate the ignorant views on the Oriental countries and people, and dismantle the racist superiority complex. None of the N.Bichurin's historical misinterpretations tinges the legacy of his inheritance, which stands as proudly today as it did in the 19th century.