Introduction. The article is devoted to one of the most important areas of the foreign policy of the Kalmyk Khanate in the XVII – XVIII centuries. — interaction with Tibet. Goals.The purpose of the article is to introduce into the scientific circulation new archival documents and information about the specifics of formation, main directions, periods, significant historical figures and the results of Kalmyk-Tibetan interaction in the 17th-18th centuries. Results. The interaction of the Kalmyk aristocracy with Tibet takes shape shortly before the formation of the Kalmyk Khanate as part of the diplomatic and educational activities of the missionaries of the Gelug Buddhist school in the Oirat Union. The clerical elite of Tibet was interested in spreading Buddhist teachings, developing a national Buddhist tradition and a Buddhist church in the Kalmyk Khanate. The secular elite of the khanate, interested in legitimizing their own status, integrating into the socio-political space of Central Asia, actively supported the adoption of Buddhism by the Kalmyks and the spread of the Buddhist church under the patronage of Gelug. Creation of national legislation and national writing in the 40s. XVII century with the active participation of the Buddhist clergy, it played an integrating role in the Oirat Union and became a culture-forming factor for the sociocultural and socio-political life of the Kalmyk Khanate. Since the end of the XVII century. Tibetan investment, including the title, the throne name of the Kalmyk khans, the seal and the banner, determined the legitimacy and authority of the ruler of the khanate. Buddhist pilgrimage was the main form of Kalmyk-Tibetan communication in the XVII-XVIII centuries. Control over pilgrimage trips of representatives of the Kalmyk aristocracy by the Russian state since the beginning of the 18th century becomes a lever of influence on the domestic policy of the Kalmyk Khanate. In the second half of the XVIII century. Kalmyk-Tibetan interaction was regulated by China, which used it to organize the migration of Ubashi Khan in 1771.

The article is dedicated to the history of the regional military command and control body in Kalmykia from the beginning of its first creation in September 1918 until its liquidation in December 1943, as well as its role in the formation of Kalmyk national military units of the Red Army. Unfortunately, the history of military registration and enlistment offices both in the country as a whole and in Kalmykia in particular, belong to topics that are poorly studied in Russian and foreign historiography. The author, relying on a wide range of documentary materials found in the Russian State Military Archive, the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation and the National Archives of the Republic of Kalmykia, tried to fill this gap. The results obtained led to the conclusion that the Kalmyk military enlistment office, formed in September 1918 by the decision of the 2nd Extraordinary Congress of Soviets of Labor Kalmyk People, was created, first of all, to form the Kalmyk national units of the Red Army: first, the Model Revolutionary Kalmyk Cavalry Regiment, then the Kalmyk cavalry brigade, and finally the Kalmyk cavalry division. Attempts by the Astrakhan provincial authorities to downgrade the status of the Central Kalmyk military registration and enlistment office to the district level had a negative impact on the formation of Kalmyk national units. During the interwar period, the Kalmyk military enlistment office repeatedly took the initiative to create the Kalmyk cavalry regiment, but achieved only partial success: the formation of the Kalmyk squadron as part of the 30th cavalry regiment of the 5th Blinovskaya cavalry division, and then as part of the 87th reserve cavalry regiment. During the Great Patriotic War, the Kalmyk military registration and enlistment office conducted active military mobilization work, recruiting almost every fifth resident of Kalmykia in 2.5 years. However, when forming the national units and formations (the 189th Kalmyk cavalry regiment, the 110th and 111th Kalmyk cavalry divisions), the Kalmyk military enlistment office and its ulus military enlistment offices worked with even greater intensity and carefully selected personnel. A number of members of the military enlistment offices specially entered these national units to serve in their ranks. Thus, the author comes to the conclusion that the Kalmyk military enlistment office played an important role in the formation of Kalmyk national units and formations, both during the Civil War and Great Patriotic War and in the interwar period.

Introduction. The article discusses the modern local forms of the bride accepting rites among representatives of sub-ethnic groups of Derbets and Torguts of the Kalmyks ethnicity. The purpose of the article is investigation of some modern local forms of rites of acceptance of the bride among Kalmyks in order to identify the general and special features in ritual complexes among representatives of various groups of Kalmyks. Materials and methods. The main source for this article was the author’s field materials on Kalmyk wedding ceremonies, collected in 2008‒ 2010, in 2018‒2019 representatives of sub-ethnic groups of Derbets and Torguts. For a comparative analysis, we used materials on the traditional Kalmyk wedding ceremonies from the works of researchers of the traditional Kalmyk life, compiled in the 19th century. The article uses descriptive, comparative, synchronous-diachronous methods, as well as the reconstruction method. Results. In the modern wedding ritual among the Derbets, the emphasis in the rites of the acceptance of the bride is aimed at introducing her under the patronage of family and patrimonial patrons and deities, the fact that indicates preservation of the remnant forms of the ancestor cult, emphasis on the kinship along the male line. The threshold of the dwelling acts as a significant boundary sign, the overcoming of which authorizes entry into a new family. Among the representatives of the subethnic group of Torguts, the semantics of rituals for introducing the bride correlate with ancient ideas about a dying and resurrecting animal, which is formed through the ritual killing of an animal – a ram as a farn and a “substitute” of a person. The use of the right leg of the sacrificial animal, which three times hit on the ground during the ceremony on the hem of the bride sitting on the floor of the house, symbolizes the “attachment” to a new for her territory in a different status, it also signifies preservation of the s rudiments of ancient zoomorphic cults in the modern ethnic Kalmyk culture. The study revealed the correspondence of differences in wedding ritual practices among representatives of these sub-ethnic groups, practiced in the end of the XIX century.

Introduction. Language is one of the factors of ethnocultural security. It acts as one of the most important objective properties of an ethnic group, as well as a symbol of ethnic affiliation. Language forms and develops culture, performs the most important ethnosocial functions. However, in recent decades, the problem of language preservation in the context of globalization became one of the pressing global problems. All this actualizes the problem of titular languages and languages of small peoples. The problem of preserving ethnic identity is quite acute in both Kalmykia and Buryatia. This is due to the loss of language and interrupted during the years of Soviet power religious tradition. The purpose of this article is to identify common and distinctive features of modern ethno-lingual processes in Kalmykia and Buryatia. Methods. A comparative method, analysis of statistical information, and an expert survey were used. A study of the problem of language preservation in Kalmykia and Buryatia revealed mainly similar features of the development of ethno-lingual processes in these regions. Kalmyk and Buryat languages are threatened with extinction. The population of the native language is rapidly declining. At the same time, knowledge of the language by the younger generation is also declining. Language from the category of a real ethno-differentiating sign becomes only a symbolic sign of a people. However, a survey of experts showed that modern Kalmyk and Buryat societies convey increasing interest in traditional culture and language. They note the popularity of Kalmyk and Buryat languages learning courses. In general, experts positively assess government measures to develop the language in these Republics. Thus, despite global threats and factors negatively affecting ethnic identity, there are positive trends and conditions for the development of culture and language in the Republics under examination.

Goals. The article seeks to reconstruct everyday life in the Kalmyk ASSR in the years straight after the return from the deportation, and view newspaper materials as a source for investigating mundanity, print media serving a universal means of mass communication and data translation. Materials. The paper analyzes photographs published by the national newspaper Khalmg Ünn in 1957–1959. Despite the periodical was essentially ‘state-backed’, one could still trace key mundanity patterns and issues dealt with by commoners. The continuous sampling method was employed to select materials of 1957–1959 for the reconstruction, special emphasis being laid upon photo analysis rather than related texts. Results. Newspaper discourse contains no direct indications of the Kalmyk people’s deportation and publishes somewhat few pictures of WWII veterans. There are scarce mentions of the return of the Kalmyks to their ancestral lands from Siberian towns but those give no clarifications of how /why they had appeared there. The official censorship offices banned such topics till 1988. During the examined period, Khalmg Ünn insufficiently covers private life of common Soviet citizens but it is noteworthy that in 1957 one could still find some messages dealing with commoners and their actual problems, while in subsequent years – as censorship system gathered pace – fewer and fewer articles considered actual aspects of Soviet mundanity. Conclusions. Despite the scarcity of mundanity-related materials, the available data was still shaping a parallel world of information somewhat opposed to that of censorship filters. Newspaper materials have started being introduced into scientific discourse as sources for diverse studies (language, script, folklore, translation patterns, mundanity, socio-political history, etc.) and it is essential to continue this work.

The present paper is part of a series of articles dealing with the Sino-Mongol glossary Dada yu 韃靼語/Beilu yiyu 北虜譯語, a little-known lexicographical work dated between 1567 and 1603. The author concentrates on the Chinese transcription of Mongol affricates in connection with the problem of their phonemic qualities and position in the sound system of a transitional late Middle Mongol to early Modern Mongolian dialect as reflected in the glossary. The influence of different historical varieties of Chinese on the glossary’s system of transcriptions is emphasized, such as: (1) the northern koine pronunciation system of the 16th to 17th centuries, or the so-called “Northern Pronunciation” (beyin 北音), an ancestor form of Modern Standard Chinese; (2) standard Late Ming Guanhua 官話 sound system of the 15th to 17th centuries, or the so-called “Southern Pronunciation” (nanyin 南音), based on Nankingese and other Yangtze watershed Mandarin dialects; and (3) Old Mandarin, a spoken koine of the 12th to 14th centuries that reflects the pronunciation used at the Yuan 元 dynasty capital, Dadu 大都 (later to become Peking). On the basis of the Chinese transcriptions, two series of affricates, an aspirated one ([ʧh], [ʨh], [tsh]) and an unaspirated one ([ʧ], [ʨ], [ts]), can be identified in the sound system of the Mongol dialect of the glossary. An interesting feature of the latter is the presence of voiceless aspirated alveopalatal affricates ʨ [ʨh] and ʥ [ʨ] that may have developed from earlier Middle Mongol palato-alveolars č [ʧh] and ǰ [ʧ] before an original *i. As for c [tsh] and ʒ [ts], they are attested in just a few lexical items and may be considered to be marginal allophones of the phonemes č [ʧh] and ǰ [ʧ], respectively. The author comes to the conclusion that the structures of both aspirated and unaspirated series are fully identical: each of them consists of a basic allophone ([ʧh] vs. [ʧ]) and two non-basic positional allophones, one of which ([tsh] vs. [ts]) may furthermore be viewed as marginal or problematic due to its highly restricted distribution.

The vocabulary of the Tuvan language associated with the birth rite, as in other Turkic languages, is a relatively closed and separate lexical and semantic group that has developed over the centuries. But over time, many lexemes began to leave or disappear from the active vocabulary of the modern Tuvan language, and others limited the territory of distribution or began to be replaced by descriptive new formations. The relevance of the study is due to the lack of works in Tuvinian studies that contain a frontal examination of the vocabulary of the birth rite within the framework of Tuvinians ‘ ideas about the world. Analysis of this group of words and phrases can provide valuable not only linguistic, but also historical and ethnographic information. Available materials and individual works on this issue require systematization and adjustment with the involvement of significant language material for analysis. The source base of the research was made up of the author’s field materials collected during complex expeditions from 1999 to 2019, as well as lexical and phraseological materials extracted from the dictionaries of the Tuvan language, from the works of ethnographers and linguists. Results. Based on the research, the author comes to the conclusion that the vocabulary of the birth rite consists of several actions: bozhuduushkun ‘receiving birth’, urug hini Kezer ‘circumcision of the umbilical cord of the child’, aryglaashkyn ‘purification’, urug chuur ‘bathing the child’, urug syrtyy shygzhaar ‘burial of the child’s afterbirth’. A significant part of the vocabulary of birth rites in the Tuvan language is actually Tuvan words with a common Turkic basis or phraseological units. Concepts related to the birth ceremony are passed euphemisms to protect the mother and protect the child from evil spirits or “evil eye”. The meanings of some words associated with birth rites have been narrowed or expanded.

The article defines the categorical-semantic notation (tagging) of the word-forms of the basic lexemes of the Mongolian language; these word-forms are characterized by their occurrence. The article provides a list, containing the basic vocabulary of the modern Mongolian language (454 word-forms). The calculation of the frequency of word-forms was carried out on the material of the General Corpus of the Modern Mongolian Language (GCML).This work is based on the same principles of quantitative Mongolian Study as the previous works of the author. However, the most original feature of this dictionary is the presence of a special categorical-semantic notation (tagging) in it. Such a notation is focused on the tasks of the semantic typology of the world languages. It is designed for potential typological comparability of this dictionary with similarly compiled dictionaries of the other languages of the world. In this article, the basic 454 word-forms of the modern Mongolian language can be found, and they are rather common in the GCML-1a: the absolute frequency in the GCML is over 255, and the relative frequency is respectively 220 ipm (I.) The name of the word-form in a quasi-orthographic recording. The quasi-orthographic recording differs from the proper spelling by removing all the differences in the registers (capital/small letters). (II.) The generalized grammateme (i. e., not only the grammatemes themselves, but also bundles of homographic grammatemes are included here). (III.) The generalized lexeme (i. e., not only proper lexemes are included here, but also homographic lexeme bundles). (IV.) The semantic gloss-mark, attributed to the corresponding word-form or lexeme (strictly speaking, it is assigned to one of the members of the bundle of homographic segments, which coincides with the name of the word-form). This column has a function of an informal mnemonic reminder to indicate which lexical meaning possesses the given word-form. The reminder is intended for a typologist-user, especially not familiar with the Mongolian language (V.) The categorical- semantic gloss-mark, attributed to the given word-form (more precisely, to a bundle of homographic word-forms) in the GCML. This column in the given table is the key. (VI.) The absolute frequency of the word-form (more precisely, the bundle of homographic word-forms) in the GCML-1a. (VII.) The rank of the word-form (more precisely, the bundle of homographic word-forms) in the GCML-1a. (VIII.) The number of the texts from the GCML-1a, in which the given word-form (more precisely, a bundle of homographic word-forms) occurs. (IX.) The rank of the word-form (more precisely, a bundle of homographic word-forms) in the frequency dictionary, ordered by decreasing the number of the texts from the GCML-1a. The categorical-semantic notation (tagging) of the word-forms of the basic lexemes of the Mongolian language is presented in the form of a table, ordered in the direct alphabetical order of the categorical-semantic marks.

Particles have always served as a part of speech with somewhat ‘hidden semantics’. In Kalmyk linguistics, this part of speech remains most understudied, and despite there had emerged certain fragmentary works, no complete description and classification of particles – neither functional, nor semantic – have been made. Goals. The paper analyzes etymology, functioning and semantics of the particle җе. Materials. The work examines informant discourse and texts of Kalmyk National Corpus (http://kalmcorpora.ru), the latter including approximately 9 mn tokens of which 7 mn are actual word usage patterns. The continuous sampling method was employed to select examples with the analyzed particle җе ‘all right, okay; well’. Results. The insight into Kalmyk National Corpus shows the particle җе is not used that frequently, and is rarely found in texts – primarily in folklore, historical narratives, and works by Kalmyk writers and poets whose language tends to be identified as Torghut dialect. Analysis of informant discourse attests to that the particle has almost become obsolescent to contemporary Kalmyk speech. Still, it performs discursive functions: firstly, it may express consent to the incentive of the preceding statement; secondly, it may introduce an initial incentive to be expressed in further predication. The etymological analysis concludes the particle җе is reconstructed from the Proto-Mongolic *ǯïɣa which can be traced to the Proto-Altaic *di̯òge. The particle was borrowed from Mongolic languages into some Turkic ones (Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tuvan, etc.), and is likely to have entered Tungusic languages too: *ǯïɣa with the initial *ǯ transformed into *g.

Among the scientific publications that research the features of the language of Kalmyk business letters and their translations, there are currently no works that analyze in detail the principles and strategies for translating Kalmyk business texts. The purpose of this article is to identify the main strategies for translating official letters of Khan Ayuka from Kalmyk language into Russian. Materials and methods. This work was based on material from the letters of the Kalmyk Khan Ayuka of 1714 and Russian translations of these letters, also dated 1714. All materials are preserved in the National Archives of the Republic of Kalmykia. Transliteration, transcription into modern Kalmyk graphics and literal translation of the original texts into Russian were made by D. B. Gedeeva. Both synchronous and diachronic translations are used to identify translation strategies. The main research methods are descriptive, contextual analysis method, and comparative method. Results and conclusions. A comparison of the original and translated texts of Ayuka Khan letters shows that in Russian translations kept the general structure and content components of the original letter, genre and style features of the original text, although the texts of the translations are not verbatim. Authors of translations adhere to the strategy of transferring essential information while preserving the semantic message dominants, Russian translations are characterized by substitutions and repetitions of lexical units, a lexical addendum reflecting the extra-linguistic features of the communicative situation. Russian translations of letters from Khan Ayuka are made in compliance with the rules for processing business documents that were formed by the beginning of the 18th century.

This article analyzes the results of many years of scientific works of the famous scientist, Turkologist, a eminent scholars of the Tuvan language, a specialist of exceptionally deep knowledge and erudition, doctor of Philology, Professor Boris IsakovichTatarintsev, who would have turned 80 years old in 2019. The purpose of the study is to examine the scientific heritage of the scientist, which gave a new impetus to the study of Tuvinian studies and Turkology in General. Materials. The work is based on the results of many years of scientific works by Boris IsakovichTatarintsev, which are highly appreciated by scientists as a certain milestone in the development of not only Tuvan linguistics, but also the entire Russian Turkology. Results. Boris Isakovich, born in a family of employees, went from school teacher to doctor of science, Professor, head of the dictionary sector, chief researcher of the language and script section of the Tuva Institute of Humanities and applied social and economic research. B. I. Tatarintsev published more than 150 scientific works. All his scientific activity is focused on the history of the Tuvan language, borrowed vocabulary. For more than three decades, B. I. Tatarintsev was engaged in issues of Tuvan etymology, semasiology, terminology, toponymy, ethnonymy from the point of view of their origin. Boris Isakovich participated in the development and editing of the dictionary, was the author of the dictionary, Preface and numerous dictionaries. In addition, he was actively engaged in Tuvan throat singing “Hөөmej”. On this issue, he published not only articles,but also books. His merit in the training of scientists andhighly qualifiedscience teachers in the philological direction in Tuva is great. The study of the main problems of lexicology and etymology, developed by B. I. Tatarintsev, continued by modern domestic and foreign scientists.

The study of the mechanisms of the epic plot composition, the identification of the patterns of formation of the basic model of the epic is relevant for clarifying many issues: studying the process of preserving or destroying the epic text, determining the nature of contamination, compounds in the epic narrative, for predicting the prospects of epic creativity, the national epic in a multilingual, multicultural environment, in conditions competition of folklore with modern mass culture and information technology. The purpose of the article is to conduct a comparative analysis of two versions of the Mongol-Oirat legend “Urdyn Ulanhongor”, recorded at different times, to identify the basic model of the epic plot, which allows storytellers to structure their narrative, learn and reproduce the epic text from memory. The material for the study was the texts of the Mongol-Oirat epic “Urdyn Ulanhongor”, performed by the Oirat tuulchi C. Baglay in 1940 and published in 1968 in the collection “Zhangaryn tuuls”, as well as recorded 79 years later by the narrator N. Ankhbair in somone Naranbulag of the Ubsnur aimak of Mongolia. Research Methods. The study uses the techniques of various methods (structural-typological, statistical, descriptive), allowing to study the mechanism of structuring the epic narrative and the laws of the epic plot, to convey the specifics of the national epic. In the process of attracting expeditionary material, the information obtained during the “included observation”, questioning and interviewing of the informant was taken into account. Results. The study showed that the storytellers of different years, Ch. Baglay (1940) and N. Ankhbayr (2019) used elements concentrating around the biography of the hero Urdyn Ulanhongor, depicting similar plot situations associated with military conflicts of the protagonist with antagonists (Dolda Hurel Baatar, 16 mangas) . The emergence of new versions of one epic does not break the general structure of the epic plot if it is based on a basic model learned from the narrator of the predecessor within the framework of one (local, national) tradition.

The article observes the material about cat in the culture of Kalmyks and other Mongol-speaking peoples. Contrary to expectations associated with the nomadic culture, in new materials on Kalmyk folklore, the cat is represented in Kalmyk folklore in a significant number of various examples. The cat, saved from death by the new owner who bought it, together with the dog becomes his assistant. A similar story is found among the Buryats and Koreans, who have many motifs related to the cat and similar to those of Kalmyks, Mongols and Buryats. It is important that the cat acts as a guardian of Buddhist manuscripts and khuruls, it is possible that the distribution of cats in Central Asia and the countries of the Far East is associated with the spread of Buddhism both in events and in time. Goal. In connection with the large amount of new material about the cat in Kalmyk folklore, it became necessary to clarify ethnographic materials on the characteristics of the Kalmyks attitude to the cat, to identify parallels to the stories and tales about the cat among Kalmyks, to reveal the unity of the cultural component in the stories about the cat among Kalmyks, Buryats, Mongols , Chinese and Koreans, to assess the degree of similarity of the compared texts, to determine the independence of ethnographically significant elements in the compared texts, to distinguish the characteristics of realia from purely narrative folkloric detail. Results. The connection of some notions related to the cat in the form of their implementation in folklore and everyday attitudes to the cat in the life of Kalmyks in the 1920s–1930s according to ethnographic sources is noted. The prevalence of individual plots in which a cat and a dog are present is traced among the Mongolian peoples with their analogies in Inner Mongolia, China and Korea, and it turns out that in the folklore of Koreans, the cat cult is presented in the most eloquent way and is associated with the tiger cult (cats are thought to be descendants of the mating union of a man and a tigresses). The spread of cats is associated with the abolition of the tradition of killing old people. The proliferation of cats in the folklore stories of Kalmyks, Koreans and Tuvans is associated with the need to get cats in Buddhist monasteries so that cats protect Buddhist manuscripts from mice, this way distribution of cats among the peoples of Central Asia and the Far East is associated in time with the spread of Buddhist religious doctrine in this region. At the same time, the cultural components related to the attitude to the cat among Buddhists are not related to the respectful attitude to the cat in Islam, correlated with the personality of the Prophet Muhammad.