On the issue of authorship of songs belonging to Baga Tsokhor cycle of the Jangar epic

The paper examines the issue of authorship of Oirat “Clear Script” manuscripts containing three songs of “Jangar” epic defined as Baga Tsokhor's epic cycle. They belong to early 19th century records of “Jangar” and are kept now in the Scientific Archive of the Russian Geographical Society and the Oriental Faculty Library of the St. Petersburg State University. This study is based on analysis of contexts containing coloronyms which are defined as permanent epithets and markers of individual rhapsode style. Study of early records of Kalmyk folklore samples in their original form using methods of textual criticism and source studies, comparison of transliteration with modern language translation seems to be one of the important tasks for modern “Jangar” studies. The manuscript Calm C 17 kept in the library of Oriental Faculty of St. Petersburg State University containing two songs - “Song about Khara Kines” and “Song about Shara Mangas” - was written down in 1856 in Tyumen noyons' domains during the academic trip of Prof. K.F. Golstunsky. The third song of this cycle - “Song about Zambal Khan” - is included in two manuscripts kept in the Scientific Archive of the Russian Geographical Society. These two are entitled as “Songs and tales of Kalmyks of the Astrakhan province of Baga Tsokhor ulus” (1853) and “Kalmyk texts sent from the ruler of Baga Tsokhor ulus, zaisang of the aimak Tseren-Rashi Onkorov” (1854). All these manuscripts have different size, amount of folios and are stored in different repositories, therefore the authors point out the issue whether these texts have one or more authors-storytellers. In terms of authorship research coloronyms as one of markers of the text's authorship were selected for this study. At first, the frequency of coloronyms usage in these three songs was calculated and showed that the highest percentage (2,68%) was found out in the “Song about Zambal Khan”, then follow the “Song about Khara Kines” (1,95%) and the “Song about Shara Mangas” (1,89%). Analysis of the degree of overlap of color epithets demonstrates the closeness of “Song about Zambal Khan” and “Song about Khara Kines”, which are recorded in different manuscripts and have different storage locations. Having considered examples of individual epic formulas containing coloronyms as indicators of the storyteller’s style, the authors come to the preliminary conclusion that all three texts have different “authors”-storytellers, while “Song about Zambal Khan” and “Song about Khara Kines” are closer to each other.