The Legend of the First Jangarchi in David Kugultinov and Basang Dordzhiev’s Lyrics

The article examines the legend of the first jangarchi (Kalm. ‘reciter of the Jangar epic’) in poems of such Kalmyk poets as David Kugultinov and Basang Dordzhiev.
When it came to choose between two legends ― of a man or a girl to have performed the first song about Jangar and his heroes ― the young poets preferred the legend called ‘The Birth of Jangariada’, thus underlying the Jangar epic’s recitational practices in the context of gender.
Each of the poems by these authors has two variants written at different times.
D. Kugultinov’s Jangarchi Küükn (Jangarchi Girl) was included in his first book Baγ Nasna Shülgüd (Poems of the Youth, 1940). The epigraph containing words of an elderly jangarchi was used to establish a connection between the legend of the first jangarchi and Jangarchi Küükn. The poem ― apart from the title and epigraph ― consists of 35 unversed lines. The 1963 and 1981 editions ― apart from the title and epigraph ― contain already 40 lines divided in 10 quatrains. As compared to the first variant, the second one was essentially restructured not only in terms of its form but also in terms of contents.
D. Kugultinov’s poem depicts a girl who sings a song to Jangar’s heroes. According to the 1940 text, the girl sings to Jangar Khan and his warriors, according to the 1963/1981 texts ― to Jangar’s heroes. The first variant pays great attention to the girl’s beauty, while the second one basically characterizes the heroes. Variant one also mentions no musical accompaniment, there is no motif of the warriors’ self-understanding via the song, nor can one trace any motif of kneeling to the girl who thus virtually immortalized their deeds of valor.
Our comparative analysis of the 1940 and 1963/1981 editions has showed that the author turned to different strategies to reproduce the folklore plot, structural and compositional features, artistic and pictorial devices, epic formulas, rhyme system, to combine unrhymed lines, different types anaphora ― sound, lexical and syntactical ones. From a perspective of its form, the initial variant is incomplete, while the second one testifies of the attained poetic mastery.
The Russian translation by Ya. Kozlovsky clarifies the poetics of the second variant of the original text.
B. Dordhiev’s To Jangarchi Girl (1941, 1959) is essentially comic and proves a poetic reechoing of D. Kugultinov’s text. Variant one contains 9 quatrains and 36 lines, and in the second variant 32 lines divided into two parts consisting of 20 and 12 lines respectively.
Both the variants begin with an appeal to the jangarchi girl where the poet admires her beauty and talent, thus entering a competition for her love with poets David Kugultinov and Lidzhi Indzhiev. He introduces the names of his friends and shows his knowledge of their works, e.g., when reconsiders the motif of dream from D. Kugultinov’s poem.
Turning to the legend of the first jangarchi, both David Kugultinov and Basang Dordzhiev displayed different poetic strategies, but they were united in the aspiration to pay tribute to the folk genius. The choice of a jangarchi girl as the main character was evidently determined by their intention to underline the grand role of female taletellers.
Both the compositions are folklore-related in terms of their form and contents. In Kugultinov’s works, the folklore tradition can be traced in the plot, epic formulas, metaphors, and is revealed in the fact that the poet compares the girl to the fabulous beauty Aragni Dagni. In Dordzhiev’s works, the folklore tradition manifests itself in parallels between the girl’s beauty and that of the moon, an eternal star.
The difference between D. Kugultinov’s variants is determined by improvements of form and contents, and that of Dorzhievs’ ― by a reduction of the text (by the last quatrain) and softening of the playful intonation.

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