E-mail: baazr@mail.ru Tel.: +7 (84722) 4-10-05
11, Pushkin str., Elista, 358000, Russian Federation
PhD in Philosophy, Chief Researcher, Laboratory of Complex Buddhist Studies, Kalmyk State University named after B. B. Gorodovikov
The research was carried out with the support of a grant from the Russian Science Foundation No. 24-48-03026, https://rscf.ru/project/24-48-03026/.
There are stable universal concepts in the culture of the Mongolian peoples on which their ethnic picture of the world was formed. Archaic texts of their epic works serve as promising material for studying such cultural phenomena. Especially promising in this light are the ancient epic tales (tull’-uligery) of the western Mongols or Oirats, offering examples of epic creativity at various stages. The Oirat epics are divided into two different types, archaic and classical. The archaic type includes epics with a mythological paradigm. The second type is that of the classical Kalmyk “Dzhangar,” in which the mythological component is not dominant. This article focuses on “The Three-Year-Old Mekele is the Best of Husbands,” an epic tale recorded in western Mongolia by G. N. Potanin from the Oirat storyteller Sarysanin in 1879. The value of this recording is diminished because Potanin did not present the original text but only a retelling in Russian prose. “The Best of Husbands” is a unique example of an archaic epic, both in its vast scope and in its complex content. A breakdown of the Russian prose text into lines amounts to about five thousand lines. The work represents an early form of epic with later additions and a complex plot. In general, the plot of the epic is based on the traditional twelve elements of the biography of a hero, but in structure and content it goes far beyond this framework. Introducing the reconstructed text of this epic tale into scholarship not only expands our view of Oirat epics, but also increases the possibility of comparing epic works of different cultural stages.
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