The Goryeosa is the principal source of official Korean history (정사. 正史) critical to studying that period of history and including data on politics, economy, society, culture, and biographies of public figures of the Goryeo Dynasty. Therefore, wide ranges of studies have been done on Goryeosa in South Korea such as history study, manuscript analysis, literature study and culture studies. Our scholars have studied the Goryeosa in great detail, e. g. in such works as Correspondent Letters of Mongolia and Korea between the 13th and 14th Centuries by B. Sumiyabaatar, Tradition of Communication between Mongolia and Korea by B. Lkhagvaa, etc. There is a lot of information and facts related to Mongolia in the Goryeosa, and when it comes to certain figures, one can mention 136 letters sent from Mongolia to Goryeo and 171 letters sent from Goryeo to Mongolia from 1218 to 1294 included into the Goryeosa’s 'Sega' Section identified by Sc. D. B. Sumiyabaatar in his research. The present articles examines 620 communication letters and other related information and facts of the two countries recorded between the years 1270 to 1280, and shows additional detailed studies of the Goryeosa to be conducted by Mongolian scholars are significantly required. The paper aims to insure letters and edicts sent by the Great Khan of the Mongol Empire to the Goryeo Kingdom by stressing information and facts related to Mongolian language, culture, historical monuments, politics and foreign relations as described in the Goryeosa’s 'Sega' Section (1270-1280) which contains important information about the history and culture of the Middle Ages of not only Korea but also those of Mongolia. The mentioned 'Sega' Section (1270-1280) contains a total of 620 documents related to Mongolia of which 34 ones are edicts and records about the edicts sent by the Mongolian Great Khan to Goryeo, of which 16 papers in Chinese and 18 ones contain their related information. The titles indicate edicts sent to Goryeo’s King by the Mongolian Great Khan during the period under consideration can be divided into two main sections, namely: firstly, letter documents, and, secondly, edicts or instruction edicts. The five edicts of the total 34 edicts are referred to as 'edicts' or 'shengzhi (聖旨)' in an ancient Korean copy of the Goryeosa. The others are referred to as 'letters' in the original. This is based on an ancient Korean hardcopy since we have no Mongolian copy of the edicts. Therefore, this research leads us to reclaim what edicts and letters in the dynastic period actually are, including their forms and distinctiveness. Several dozens of communication and official letters related to different periods of Mongolian history have survived as real hardcopies and indirect copies. The documents transcribed by the Mongolian Great Khan and his royal princes can be deliberated by categorizing as of edicts, words, letters and authorized passages. This explains what the king’s edicts are, i. e. letters and written transcripts in relation to our subject. The edict is “a decree and resolution issued by the Great Khan in Mongolian is 'zarlig', while a direction and decree by other king’s royalty, queens, heads of regions, ministers and officials is called 'word', and this can be viewed as the uniqueness of chancellery recording of the Dai Yuan Dynasty which expands around 100 years from the declaration of the Dai Yuan Empire by Kublai Khan in 1260 to Toghon Temur Khan's leaving Daidu in 1368”. Edicts of Mongolian Kings begin with “Under the Eternal Universe’s Power” and the translation of the word in Chinese is 上天眷命; the phrase is commonly used in all edicts and letters once passed in the written form under administration of the Great Yuan Empire. The Dai Yuan Empire’s Khan’s edicts were called differently - 'shengzhi (聖旨)' and 'zhao (詔)', and this was strictly observed. 'Shengzhi' is a Chinese translation of the word 'edict' from Mongolian, while 'zhao' means 'edict' as originally written in Chinese. The above mentioned edicts had been originally written in Mongolian or square script, and were later translated into Chinese. However, there is no Chinese translation of the phrase “Under the Eternal Universe’s Power” which is written in beginning of the Mongolian Khan’s edicts. Except for this, considering whether the original Mongolian edict was translated to Chinese raises the question where the original Mongolian hardcopy is. Also, these are not full length edicts and their indirect data drawing our major interest. This might be explained in connection with the Square Script. The letter of January - 'black dog day' - 1273 notes that “... the King has received the Huangdi’s letter brought by Yuan Empire’s ambassador, but it was written in newly created Mongolian script and there was no person to translate, thus, the Mongolian ambassador provided contents description”. The newly created Mongolian script is certainly the Square Script. The Square Script had been created in 1269, and from that period onward the edicts and orders were written in Square Script, not in the traditional Mongolian script. This can be found in late Korean information source: “There are two types form in Mongolian script. One is called Uigurjin (Mongolian script) while another one is Durvuljin (Square Script). In the early time, the Square Script (Durvuljin) was used in letter and official documents and Mongolian script was used in running every day matters”. The edicts of Kublai Khan on spreading of the Square script provided a very clear paragraph about it: “Any jade stamp and issued edicts should be written in new Mongolian script (square script) and attach other national script with it”. Thus, from here we may draw an assumption that the edicts studied here had been sent to Goryeo not only written in Square Script, written in Chinese, and the edicts noted in the Goryeosa may have direct reflection of that. Examining the edicts sent to Goryeo by the Mongolian Great Khan from 1270 to 1280 included in the Goryeosa and among them the edicts submitted in 1273, one can clearly see all of them were indirect implications. From this perspective, the edicts subject to our study here can be separated into three categories by their contents, namely the edicts with their contents fully noted, the edicts with contents not fully noted in Chinese and only briefly noted contents, and the edicts with contents not noted at all. a) The edicts with contents fully noted or as full Chinese source. Edicts of this type number 16. On those could not see content’s general form and phrase words of Mongolian official document uniqueness of that time period. It can be explained as followed. 1. From the Kublai Khan’s period, the Great Khan’s edicts begin with “Under the Eternal Universe’s Power, with Great Ingenious Benevolence Khan’s Edicts this is”, i. e. the three rows of firm phrases, and on the above edicts these phrases are absent. 2. These edicts were written as 'zhao' (or 'letter') in Chinese that raises the probability of them having been written in Chinese from the start. Based on these, the edicts discussed here were noted in the Goryeosa not as Mongolian original script but rather written keeping content and compositing Korean sources form by breaking the Chinese script’s distinctiveness. b) The edicts with contents not fully noted, and only brief content noted in Chinese original. These types of edicts number 13 within the scope of our study. This can be explained by that as firstly the edict’s content and importance were not so high therefore it was probably just briefly noted. Nonetheless, one cannot deny the connection between the introduction of Square Script or new script and the fact that the Great Khan’s letters had not been fully recorded. At least two of the Mongolian Great Khan’s letters were received a year, and as was mentioned previously the letters sent from January of 1273 to August of 1274 and received during this a year and seven month period, i. e. the six Grand Khan’s letters, were not fully noted in the source and only it’s content was written and this draws great interest. c) The ambassador came to Goryeo from Mongolia, and we found four records about the contents of the letters which were not noted but only described the arriving date of the ambassador in Goreyo and how the Grand Khan’s letter was brought and received. These letters may be connected to the reputation and sore truth of history of the Goryeo dynasty. If the above mentioned information existed, the King’s transcript minister should have at least briefly noted the content of the letter, not mentioning writing in full. Whereas, it was not noted at all and this attracts significant interest. This may be explained, in some way, in connection with Yan Seongji (양성지. 梁誠之)’s proposition of: "The “Goryeosa” have many notes about protest and unrest and describes bare truth in many instances … protests and unrests were not only in the previous dynasty, it is present in any country at any generation, he underlined that the Goryeo dynasty cannot be compared with land owned by under Chinese medieval royals, and this should not be reason of the point of the matter, even “The History of Yuan” is spread by the Ming dynasty, the Goryeosa should not be held and not spreading, if there is something not to be exposed there is a way to distribute leaving sensitive sections” … in 1451, the Goryeosa was ready but for long time it had not been announced, and the government was demanded to announce it many times in the year 1469.

The article is a summary of the report made at the Days of Institute of Oriental Studies (RAS) at Kalmyk State University on 26 April 2017. It deals with the issues and trends related to the topic of civilizational world order poorly understood in modern science. The paper analyzes the place assigned to nomadic peoples within the conceptions developed by N. Danilevsky, P. Sorokin, A. J. Toynbee and O. Spengler. According to N. Danilevsky, nomads of Innermost Asia are a long-extinct community that had once acted as a 'negative history maker'. P. Sorokin refutes the priority of microcategories for dividing humanity into monotypic social communities and stresses that the number of 'minor cultural systems is virtually unlimited'; enclosing the term 'civilization' in quotation marks he thus applies it to any communities, including disorganized populations, i.e. unlike Danilevsky with his theory of 'historical-cultural types', - attaches the term not only to 'positive history makers', but also to those referred to as 'negative' and 'passive'. As for A. J. Toynbee, he divides all civilizations into three types, the civilization of Innermost Asia being designated as a long-extinct civilization of Type Three (nomads) and further as that of Type Two (Far Eastern Christian civilization). So, he suggests that present-day inhabitants of Innermost Asia are just remnants of the past. And just like Danilevsky and Toynbee, Spengler considered the Mongolian vector to be long-obsolete. Thus, world order schemes established by classic researchers of civiliography do not mention the contemporary Mongolian civilization. The paper suggests that the classics of civiliography should be thoroughly revisited with due regard of the reshaped historical conditions, new experiences and knowledge accumuated by humanity. Nowadays when it necessary to evaluate a generalized image, activities, and mututal relations of diverse peoples, any attempts to maintain the idea of differences between nations by the criteria of 'cultural development' shall result in ethnic collisions The discovery of Mongolian civilization in the classical civilizational picture of the modern world liberated from nomadophobia by Pitirim Sorokin has actual value. It seems this can help the theorists of civiliography and geopolitics cope with the trend of combining the two incompatible notions - on the one hand, the concept of 'chosen' and 'exceptional' nations and, on the other hand, that of a diverse and multipolar world.

The article deals with the history of combat operations for the defense of Don River crossings in the Manych and Sala River valleys conducted by the 110th Separate Kalmyk Cavalry Division (in the stanitsas of Bagaevskaya, Melikhovskaya and Razdorskaya) in July of 1942. After the heavy defeats of the late 1941 - early 1942 the German military command realized the impossibility of conducting strategic operations on all fronts, and chose the South direction as the main one within the new campaign aiming to secure the Caucasian oil fields and, thus, win the war not by direct attacks but as a result of economic oppression. The Wehrmacht planned to encircle and eliminate troops of the Southwestern and Southern Fronts within a chain of operations on the right bank of the Don - so as to clear the way towards their goal. So, Army Group South accumulated large forces equipped with latest military machinery and weapons. During the Donbass defensive operation of 1942 the Soviet troops attempted to counter the attacks of fascist forces but were defeated. And those were Don River crossings - including the mentioned ones - that proved critical to the rescue of Southern Front units. The rivers crossings next to the stanitsas of Bagaevskaya, Melikhovskaya and Razdorskaya were defended by the 110th Separate Kalmyk Cavalry Division. The national military unit had been formed shortly before in Kalmykia, had no combat experience, and became fully armed (except for air defense guns) only on the eve of the battles. Nonetheless, the 110th Cavalry Division was perfectly manned (including with those from the discontinued 111th Kalmyk Cavalry Division), its soldiers had passed full training courses, were acquainted with and trusted their commanding officers. The Soviet top military were well aware that a cavalary division was not designed for such defense activities, especially on the 58 km long front, but no infantry units that could replace the Kalmyk cavalry were found. Recognizing the importance of those river crossings, the Germans had constantly bombed the area, and then forwarded there the most elite division of the Wehrmacht - the Panzer Grenadier Division Grossdeutschland. Still, due to efficient actions, valour and tremendous efforts of soldiers and officers who worked and defended the crossings, they managed to rescue and transport to the southern bank over 425 thousand people, 215 tanks, approximately 1 300 artillery pieces, over 8 thousand tractors and trucks (including multiple rocket launchers), 10 thousand carts, 22 thousand horces, etc. It was through those river crossings that the bulk of the 37th, 24th and 9th Armies as well as diverse remnants of some other armies of the former Southwestern Front - that had played a significant role in the Battle of the Caucasus at the initial stage - were evacuated. As a result, the German top military's plans of encircling the troops of the Southern and Southwestern Fronts were disrupted, which proved crucial to the general failure in achieving the main goal of the 1942 campaign. And the 110th Separate Kalmyk Cavalry Division largely contributed to this failure of the Wehrmacht.

Magic and religion have been studied by different researchers through the examples of multiple ethnic cultures of the world. Nowadays there lots of materials on the topic of magic, myth, ritual, cult, and religion, e. g., works by J. Frazer, E. Tailor, B. Malinovsky, L. Levy-Bruhl, A. Radcliffe-Brown, C. Levy-Strauss, A. Zolotarev, S. Tokarev, M. Mauss, E. Evans-Pritchard, M. Eliade, G. Dumezil, A. Losev, V. Propp, V. Ivanov, E. Meletinsky, Yu. Semenov, Z. Sokolova, etc. With evidence from classic ethnological writings, the author’s field data, folklore, ethnomusicological and ethnographic works dealing with livestock breeding magic inherent to societies traditionally engaged in such economic activities, the article attempts to examine magic practices of present-day Altaians. The paper considers magic methods used nowadays by Altaian herders and aiming to protect the livestock and facilitate its multiplication. Livestock breeding magic of the Altaians exists in the forms of verbal-actional unities, i.e. any magic activity includes both verbal and corresponding actional components. Thus, in Altaian livestock breeding magic a word is by all means accompanied by an action. In the aftermath of a magic ritual the farmer does expect some measurable results: growth of livestock numbers, improvement of livestock's health and fleshing conditions, and eventually - prosperity for the family. So, whether the farmer herds, waters or tends for his/her animals, he/she applies some traditional magic methods in everyday work. Such methods include the use of placenta, navel cords, and bones of consumed animals. The magic actions are supposed to facilitate the growth of the herders’ wealth and preserve their delightful happiness. Such rituals are performed by regular people, owners of the livestock, who teach them to their children. The practives aim to preserve the happiness and wealth of a certain family. Whether a human being shall be rich or poor is, according to the traditional beliefs of the Altains, determined at birth and through the subsequent allotment of destiny. A rich man is a healthy man who can live long and have multiple children, grandchildren, and livestock. Until today within the system of Altaian ethnic values there are beliefs that a human's well being is determined by the number of livestock owned, which is illustrated by the phrasal unit attu-tondu 'he who rides a horse and wears a fur coat', i. e. a rich and wealthy individual.

The paper examines migrations of Mongolian-speaking groups - Khori-Tumats, Khorchins, Barguts and Daurs - from Eastern Transbaikalia to Manchuria in the 13-17th centuries. In the first half of the 17th century, the Daur people were closely linked with the Manchu, and some Manchu clans could have actually been of Daur origin. The Daurs had been nominally affiliated with the Khorchins from 1634 to 1692, and later were included in the banner system by the Kangxi Emperor. Buryat folklore and chronicles show the Khorchins had originated from Eastern Transbaikalia. Khorchins were a close ally of Manchus, in 1606 they presented Nurhaci his first title of ‘khan’ - Kundulun Khan. Manchus had had a significant influence on the Barguts’ ethnic process. The latter were separated into different groups, many of them being relocated to Mukden where some called them - a ‘Ninth Banner’. The Barguts resettled to Manchurian heartland gradually assimilated into Manchu society and were subsequently sinicized together with the Manchu people. Their descendants remember about their Mongolian origin till nowadays. Manchu chronicles noted some Mongolian origin of the Yehe clan - the leading one within the Hulun Alliance of Manchuria. Sources specified founders of this clan as ‘Tumets’. The paper refutes the opinion according to which the Yehe had been established during the period of Altan Khan’s campaigns. Yehe Bujai Prince (ruled in the 1590s) was a sixth-generation descendant of the Yehe clan’s founder Shingen Darkhan, i.e. the latter had been born approximately in the mid-15th century. South Mongolian Altan Khan was born in 1507, thus, the invasion of the Tumets to Hulun cannot be dated to this time. We consider the theory which identifies Yehe Tumets as Khori-Tumats to be more correct. With reference to manuscript sources, published scholarly works and folklore, the article provides an overview of migrations of significant Mongolic groups from Transbaikalia to present-day Heilongjiang, Jilin, and Liaoning. It shows that from the 13th to the 17th centuries - driven by different reasons - Khori-Tumats, Khorchins, Barguts and Daurs moved southwards and eastwards deep into the territory of Manchuria, appearing from time to time near the borders of Ming China. The circumstances under which some of the tribes (e.g., Muu-Mingan and Gorlos) got resettled are to be investigated in future, just like the case with the Three Uriankhai Guards that had been under the dominion of the Ming in the 15-16th centuries and bordered upon Jurchen territories. In general, the scale of migrations of Mongolic groups from Transbaikalia (or across Transbaikalia when it comes to Khori-Tumats) to Manchuria is impressive enough. Already by the early period of Nurhaci's activities aimed at uniting the Jurchen tribes, his neighboring areas were inhabited by Mongols of the Hulun alliance. In the north, the Nen River Valley was inhabited by the Khorchin and Gorlos. The Mongolian language ans script were quite wedespread all over the region. The establishment and consolidation of the Manchu Empire resulted in further migrations of other ethnic Mongolian groups - completely or partly originating from Transbaikalia - to Manchuria. The Manchu rulers put an end to the military, political and cultural pressure of Mongols, bringing the migration processes under their control, which in its turn resulted in the Manchu cultural pressure on Mongols. Some minor Mongolic groups were gradually and overwhelmingly assimilated by the Manchu, with separate populations finally cinicized. The research scrutinizes mutual influences between Daurs and Manchus, and suggests that some Daur clans could have formed part of the Manchu population. It notes that the Daurs had been nominally affiliated with the Khorchins for some time, and also mentions ethnic ties of Khorchins with Transbaikalia, including the related claims of Manchus on the territory. Again, special attention is given to supposed Mongolian roots of the Yehe clan.

The article attempts to measure the frequency use of analytical word forms in Mongolian. One of the difficulties is that the boundaries of the framework for such analytical constructions are unclear enough. The ranking list comprises not all structural analytical models of Mongolian syntactic molecules, but rather - the most commonly used ones. The threshold requirement for an analytical word form to be included in the list is 312 instances within the General Corpus of Mongolian (GCM-1a / Rus. ГКМЯ-1a), or 275 ipm. The work shows most commonly used analytical word forms with an absolute frequency of over 10 instances, a relative one of theirs being 9 ipm. The GCM-1a contains 1 818 such word forms. Zone one of a dictionary entry contains (in bold underscore, plain font) the conditional lexeme to which this analytical word form is referred to (the dictionary contains a total of 635 conditional lexemes). A conditional lexeme is a general designation for a lexeme as such and a quasi-lexeme (a homonymic bunch of lexemes bound in terms of morphological homonymy). Zone two (in bold non-underscore, plain font) represents a grammeme (a grammatical form) to which the synthetic word form belongs and that acts as an autosemantic component of this analytical word form. Zone three (in bold non-underscore italics) shows the very synthetic word form functioning as an autosemantic component of the analytical form. Zone four (in regular non-underscore italics) contains the structural analytical model according to which this analytical form is arranged. The functional component of the model is shown in its quasi-orthographic form, and the autosemantic one is replaced by the general symbol Z. Zone five (in bold non-underscore, plain font) describes the relative frequency of this analytical word form in the GCM-1a expressed in ipm (a minimum of 9).

The article deals with the lexis denoting headgears and ornaments in the major Mongolic languages, such as Khalkha, Buryat, and Kalmyk. Due to the fact that no profound research in the field had been carried out, it appeared necessary to have a closer look at the subject in question. The main goal of the study was to find out which of the terms for headgears and ornaments were indigenous to the Mongolic languages and which of them had been borrowed from others. It was relatively easy to trace the origin of the words already described in the dictionaries and scholarly works. For instance, the word малгай ‘hat, headgear’ is unilaterally defined as an indigenous Mongolian word, and its variations can be found in the majority of modern Mongolic languages and dialects. The names of several headgears worn by lamas apparently derive from Tibetan - шанам ཞྭ་སྣམ་ zhwa snam ‘woolly felt of yellow or red of which lam caps are made’; шашир (шасир) ཞྭ་སེར་ zhwa ser ‘yellow hat’; гомшоо སྒོམ་ཞྭ་ sgom zhwa ‘meditation hat’. Such words as лоовууз ‘fur hat’, юүдэн ‘hood’, жинс ‘jewel or bead on a Qing official’s hat that indicates his rank’, found in Khalkha, are clearly of Chinese origin. In some particular cases it was quite difficult to find the exact matches for the Chinese borrowings. Thus, no matches for the words as follows were discovered: лоовууз ‘fur hat’, юүдэн ‘hood’, сампин ‘knot on top of a traditional Mongolian hat’, бонс ‘the biggest of the rosary beads’, and гуу ‘charm-box’ (or is it Tibetan ka’u?), though the article suggests some versions of their Chinese counterparts. The most complicated task was to identify Turkic borrowings from indigenous Mongolic words later borrowed by Turks. In many cases, it is not clear whether those were Mongols who borrowed this or that word from Turks or those were Turks who borrowed that particular word from Mongols. Following the suit of the previous researchers, when it comes to the supposedly Turkic borrowings, the paper carefully offers to compare the Mongolic and the Turkic version of the word, e. g. the Mongolian boγtu ‘tall hat worn by married women’ and the Turkic boγtak ‘tall decorated hat’. All in all, indigenous Mongolic words are well interlaced with Chinese, Tibetan, and Turkic borrowings which shows that Mongols have had their own culture of making and wearing headgears, but, on the other hand, quite a large number of loanwords in this lexical group implies its proneness to outer influence.

With evidence from Kalmyk and Uighur languages, the article discusses some features of polysemous lexical forms in the light of modern psycholinguistic approaches and aspects of cognitive linguistics. According to the theory of multilevel values of polysemy, a word is represented as a set of interrelated variants united by one underlying dominant. Depending on the context, the dominant value may be the main and potential ones. The analysis of the linguistic materials confirms the view that lexical and grammatical variations of words and verbal meanings do not exist outside the context and experience of verbal communication. The word and its meaning is considered as a single category, which includes results of analysis of the process of our cognition, while maintaining the units of language tokens and the possibility of different types of expressions in speech. Proceeding from similarities of forms, functions, results, mental associations, etc., the approach allows to determine typological peculiarities of development of polysemy in the examined languages. The paper analyzes a number of Kalmyk and Uighur linguistic materials and considers the mechanism of interrelation between the meaning and word sense, given that a word is a manifested unity of language and speech, and the polysemy of the word can be described as a set of interrelated variants of forms united by a base dominant. Those can be referred to as a paradygm or embodied standard contexts of the lexeme, and are academically defined as lexical-semantic variants.

The paper presents a preliminary analysis of stress patterns in Mongolic languages. According to the author's hypothesis, there are at least three major word stress patterns in Mongolic. The word-stress patterns discussed in the paper derive from the analysis of relationship between various vowel nuclei and pitch accent. Possible ways of application of this interpretation to the study of diachronic development of word sound and syllable structure in Mongolic are briefly considered. Further testing of the hypothesis shall require phonetic investigation of word stress patterns in Mongolic. In the article, the term 'stress pattern' stands for models (patterns) or structural types of word stress. Since the works in general phonetics by Russian scholars contain almost no mention of the term 'word-stress model', a decision was made to apply the term 'word-stress pattern' in a litte different sense. The paper suggests that an adequate understanding of the question shall cast light upon a number of contestable issues of Mongolic comparative and historical phonetics. A total of four viewpoints upon the Mongolic word stress can be identified in works dealing with Mongolian philology, namely: 1) The stress is on the first syllable and is essentially expiratory (the viewpoint had been cultivated by the first investigators of the Mongolian language, the authors of the first grammar books, and is still widespread enough, especially within some university programs); 2) The stress is on the last syllable and is not dynamic (being achieved through 'tone elevation'); 3) There is no stress; 4) The stress does exist though it may essentially vary. As mentioned above, the author's hypothesis suggests there are at least three major word-stress patterns in Mongolic languages. Two of them have evidently developed in the recent period and are basically unstable in terms of diachrony. Pattern three is typical for contact zones.

December 4th, 2015 is a remarkable day when the Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of UNESCO at its tenth session in Windhoek, Namibia, endorsed Ethical Principles for Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage. This is another internationally effective document that has been formed by UNESCO to safeguard Intangible Culture Heritage (ICH), and it equips the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in the ethical dimension, will present guidance for processes of safeguarding ICH in local, national and international levels. It is also a starting point from where international actors in the field of ICH will explore to develop and widen the ways of ICH safeguarding in a better ethical framework. The article is devoted to interpretative reading of the document and Commentary Review.

While observing the research history of epics, we would find researchers have paid close attention to the origin, development and changes of epics, and paid little attention to the decline of epics. In the article, the author argues the study of decline of Jangar has theoretical and practical importance to understand the vanishing history of dead epics, to understand the necessity of cherishing and spreading the existing oral tradition. Previous studies on the life-cycle history of Jangar mainly concentrated on the its origin and formation, and neglected the issue of its decline and extinction. Therefore, the decline and extinction issue of the Jangar oral tradition should become an important part of Jangar studies, which is as important as the origin and formation issue, and is theoretically significant in preservation of the Jangar oral tradition. The study deals with the decline and extinction of oral traditions of minorities in China, and plays an important role in the preservation and inheritance of living oral traditions as well. It would provide valuable reference materials to understand the life-cycle history of already extinct epics including Greek ones.

The paper provides a systematic introduction and a brief history of collection, compilation and publication of Oirat folk tales in Xinjiang. The process of scholarly collection and publication of the oral lore of Xinjiang Oirats initiated by such western researchers as G. J. Ramstedt and H. Haslund, was later contributed to by Kalmyk scientists Ts.-D. Nominkhanov and B. Todaeva around the mid-20th century, being basically finalized due to the vast support of such activities on behalf of the governmental bodies and academic societies of China from the late 1970s throughout the rest of the century. Since the 1980s, there has even been an academic plan conducted by the Society of Folk Artists affiliated to the Xinjiang Association of Writers and Artists - as a minor part of the Ninth 5-Year-Plan of China - to publish collections of folk tales, folk songs and proverbs respectively. So, the task has been meticulously dealt with ever since resulting in around one hundred collections and books of folk tales have been published in Xinjiang - in Clear script, traditional Mongolian script, or Latin transcription - with due regard of ethnic, historical and linguistic peculiarities of the recorded materials.

The article studies the Kalmyk heroic tale Khar ϒalzn Mӧrtӓ Khadr Khar Avγin Khan Sӧnӓk (Khadyr Khara Avgi Khan Senaki Who Rides a Black Horse with a Star) recorded by N. Ts. Bitkeev from the talented Kalmyk taleteller Sandzhi Butaev in 1974. Khadyr Khara Avgi Khan Senaki Who Rides a Black Horse with a Star is distinguished through its artistic perfection, depth of content, archaic motifs, style and poetic formulas, as well as the significant size of the fairy tale. It terms of plot and composition, the fairy tale consists of twelve structural elements. The main character is Khadyr Khara Avgi Khan Senaki who manifests himself as a miraculously born hero (Mong. baatar) with all heroic qualities required, namely: strength, courage, agility, the magic ability to turn into different creatures, and other 'ninety nine erdems' (Kalm. 'skills'). Constituent elements play a significant role in the depiction of the hero's image: his marvelous horse, weapons and other miraculous objects considered to be subordinate and secondary in relation to the physical strength of the hero. The theme of the hero's matchmaking proves an exclusively artistic device, since it has a sufficiently developed and sequential scheme, both in the heroic tale and in the heroic epic of Jangar: the hero arrives in the country of his supposed bride, turns into a lousy boy, encounters members of the khan's retinue, gets summoned to appear in the khan's court to be found innocent by the latter, comes to grips with a rivalling fiance, participates in three competitions, marries the khan’s daughter, receives a dowry, and returns to his native nomadic territory. The three competitions - rifle shooting, wrestling, and the delivery of three red apples (in classic texts - horseracing, archery, wrestling) - constitute a significant element in the structure of the heroic tale for there are many contenders, and only the strongest one to have coped with all the tasks must win. The news about a devastation of the hero’s nomadic territory by mangas (Kalm. 'demons') invaders gives another way to the narrative's development - Khadyr Khara Avgi Khan Senaki’s military expedition to the country of Usun Shara. The hero crushes the mangases, delivers his parents and enslaved people from captivity, bringing them back to their ancestral lands. In the finale of the heroic tale Sandzhi Butaev uses formulas of the feast which introduce the narrator into the circle of characters, depicting him as a participant of the narrated events. The place where the events took place is defined by the narrator as a border territory between the worlds of the dead and the living. Thus, the storyteller reappears among his listeners after having crossed the border. And the very fact is supposed to guarantee the veracity of the narrated tale. Variability, unreality of fairy-tale happiness for human beings inhabiting the material world are contrasted with the well-being of fairy-tale heroes. A peculiar ending also serves as a means to somewhat discharge the intense attention of listeners. The final formulas constitute the concluding stage of the hero's actions - from his crossing the border between the worlds of the living and the dead, subsequent heroic deeds, to his return to the native nomadic territories and, thus, to the real world. Khadyr Khara Avgi Khan Senaki Baatar acts as a 'guardian of the hearth and protector of the clan/tribe, heir and master of myriad herds and vast lands (mountains, rivers) of his father, he who multiplies this heritage (receiving a dowry), destroys enemies (mangases, rivalling fiances)', and returns his enslaved people to their nomadic areas.

The paper deals with a newly discovered Mongolian inscription on the rock wall in Arshan area of Inner Mongolia, which is ’tngri γaǰar-un bičig’ (‘A text of the heaven and earth’). Due to Uighur Mongolian writing features and contents, it can be concluded the inscription was made in the 13th-14th centuries. Its location may also indicate some ties with the period preceding the establishment of the Mongol Empire. The article describes the current state of the inscription, attempts to interpret the text and characterize the circumstances of its creation in general, thus making suggestions as to who, when and what for made the inscription. Still, as of today the available data is not sufficient enough and further research is required. And, finally, the paper mentions that the whole area is associated with Genghis Khan’s youngest brother - Temüge Otčigin and his progeny, which again implies the inscription can be dated back to the initial stage of the making of the Mongol Empire.

The article analyzes a Mongolian translation of Ārya Bhadracarya Praṇidhāna Rāja, one of the popular Buddhist compositions of the devotional genre. Investigating Sanskrit, Uighur, Tibetan and Chinese loan words, the paper examines some cases of phonetic interference, i. e., ways of assimilation of such words in the Mongolian language. Most of the examined Sanskrit and Central Asian loan words had been borrowed into Mongolian via the Uighur language, Mongolian translators thus making use of the already developed Buddhist terms. The assimilation of loan words in written Mongolian is accompanied by the phonetic phenomena as follows: epenthesis, syncope, progressive and regressive assimilation, metathesis, uvularization of consonants, and transformation of some sounds. In most cases it is all due to the specific features of Mongolian phonetics, e. g., no consecutive use of three consonants is possible which results in the emergence of additional vowels between the consonants or interchange of letters in a word. The paper notes that two or even more of the mentioned phonetic phenomena may coexist in just one word. The considered translated text dated approximately to the 16th-17th cc. contains some features of pre-classical Mongolian.

The article examines an Oirat translation of The Sea of Parables (Oir. Oülgurin dalai) by Thog-med bka’-bcu (O.M. Dordzhiev). The literary text is a most interesting source of plots from the Tibetan Sutra of the Wise and the Fool representing realia of ancient India. The written source was complied in the early 1960s under the conditions of total state-imposed atheization and distortions of cultural and related confessional histories. It is unique for being one of the last known Oirat Buddhist translations performed by the Volga Kalmyks in the last third of the 20th century. This and similar compositions once included in the canonical Kangyur aimed to preserve, disseminate widely, and transmit the Buddhist teachings and Buddhist worldview to the contemporary Buddhist community comprising the laity, novices, and those interested in Buddhism. The literary text is virtually an anthology of diverse, separate legends, tales, fables, and stories, with both just one plot or containing two and even more chapters that, thus, comprise a respective number of separate stories (plots). At the same time, some plotlines are concise enough, without any details. The Buddha himself acts as the narrator of the successively connected stories where the characters come to see the Buddha, watch him, and share their impressions resulting from what they witnessed. Thus, on the one hand, the stories are shown as real life events, and, on the other hand, they depict phenomena where the founder of the religion manifests himself as a supernatural being. The paper deals with stories where characters describe the Buddha and their encounters with him (Chapter 41 About Householder Jami Shinjir, Chapter 39 About a Householder Named Yugbajan, Chapter 35 About King Migjid, etc.). It is especially noteworthy that the Sutra contains stories depicting episodes from lives of characters that resemble the story of Buddha’s life before he attained Enlightenment, i.e. when he was known as Prince Siddhārtha Gautama. This is especially topical in the context that - according to Tibetologist B. Kuznetsov - the Buddhist tradition had largely questioned the first stage of Buddha’s life namely. Stories of the kind are those described in Chapter 33 About Prince Gedun, Chapter 30 About Jimbi Chingbi Who Sailed Away (a Brahmin’s son). Plots and motifs of separate chapters of the Sutra display the interest of the Kalmyks towards the traditional Buddhist plots which can be traced up till nowadays. The translation of the Sutra of the Wise and the Fool by Thog-med bka’-bcu together with other survived old Buddhist translated texts once preserved by Kalmyk monks (Tib. dge-long) in the form of manuscripts testify of the uninterrupted literary tradition of the Kalmyk Buddhism up to the 21st century, and a significant interest towards Buddhist works among present-day Kalmyks.

The article provides a comparative analysis of the main changes in the livings standards of akin Mongolic populations of Mongolia and the Republic of Kalmykia - an independent state and a federal subject of Russia respectively - between 2000 and 2015. The paper shows the dynamics of such quality of life indicators as international and domestic ratings of the countries, including those assigned by RIA Rating company on a number of indices dealing with the society standard of living (quality of life, social prosperity, demographic situation, level of economic development), per capita income, minimum subsistence level, poverty rate, food consumption. The mentioned period witnessed significant changes in the living standards of Mongolia and Kalmykia’s populations. The per capita income and minimum subsistence level rates increased, the number and share of citizens with substandard income decreased, which was accompanied by positive changes in per capita food consumption, etc. However, it is still urgent to take additional measures for the further raising of living standards and quality of life in Mongolia and Kalmykia - politically, economically, socially, educationally, medically, ecologically, culturally and psychologically.