This textbook is the first book in a planned series of textbooks on the history, theory and methodology of linguistics. Here are essays devoted to the history of the formation and development of original linguistic thought in the countries of the East and in the countries of the Western world, where the linguistic tradition developed on the basis of Greco-Roman ideas on the philosophy of language and grammar. The reader will pay attention to the fact that the formation and development of linguistics in the eastern and western cultural areas followed largely their own paths, reflecting the characteristics of both their languages and their cultures, and that only in the last one or two centuries there has been a reorientation of a number of eastern schools towards European ones. (most recently with an emphasis on American) principles of language description. At the same time, he will notice many similarities in the history of our science in different cultural areas, dictated by the internal logic of linguistics itself. The book is intended for students - linguists and philologists working on linguistic educational and scientific literature, preparing for seminars, writing abstracts on general linguistics , as well as general theoretical sections of coursework and diploma essays on the language of the specialty, preparing for the exam in this discipline. At the same time, it can serve as a help for applicants planning to enter graduate school in linguistic specialties, and for graduate students preparing to take the candidate’s exam in general linguistics; a manual for linguist teachers working to improve their qualifications; a source of information for persons interested purely for educational purposes in the problems of theoretical linguistics and its history in the context of the history of world culture.