The story of Zaisangs Jova-Dorji and Emgen-Ubushi in Kalmyk folklore: prototypes and ethnographic specifics in the motif of rivalry

The article considers the plot of two zaisangs in Kalmyk folklore. The text “The Story of Zaisangs Jova-Dorji and Emgen-Ubushi” was recorded in 1974 by scientists of the Kalmyk Research Institute of Language, Literature and History (now the Kalmyk Scientific Center of the RAS) at N. S. Baleev in the Sukhotinsky state farm of the Priozerny district of the Kalmyk ASSR. It reveals a historical basis of the story and shows that the prototypes of main characters were Zaisangs Dorji-Jab Kutuzov (18501889; he was popularly called Jova-Dorji or Java-Dorji) and Emgen-Ubushi Dondukov (1840-1902), landlords of two aimags in Maloderbetovsky Ulus of Kalmyk Steppe, representatives of the Baga Dorbet ethnic group (Kalm. baga dorvud) and contemporaries that actually had mutual contacts. According to the Mongol scholar K. F. Golstunsky, who met them during his research in the Kalmyk steppe, these two Zaisangs stood out among the representatives of their social stratum, and there were no equals to them. The study concludes the fact one of the characters is referred to as a man of another ethnic group is associated with characteristics of ‘them’ supposed to be spatially distant from ‘us’. The taleteller must have been aware of real prototypes of the characters but preferred to ‘raise’ the degree of their subethnic difference. In folklore text, this motif is associated with representative patterns once inherent to local groups and codes of nickname folklore, the latter to reflect peculiarities of subethnic identities among the Kalmyks.