The motif of the miraculous birth of the hero in the early cycles the Jangar epic

The mythological fundamentals of the Kalmyk Epic of Jangar can be traced in its early cycles - the 1853/1862 Baγa Tsokhor and the 1862 Baγa Dorbet ones - based on epic-and-tale motifs and mythological archetypes. The insight into the epic narratives of the two cycles reveals that the motifs of the hero's birth differ inherently. The Baγa Dorbet cycle depicts the birth of a hero typical of heroic epic and going back to such archaic patterns as a childless old couple begging for a baby to have. Aga Shavdal's non-childbearing age already forces Jangar to leave her and set forth on travels. He meets a magic maiden who gives birth to his son Shovshur. So, this is actually a transformed variant of the above-mentioned motif (an old childless couple) with some retained elements of magic birth. Meanwhile, the Baγa Tsokhor texts include a complex of ancient beliefs intertwining with numerous further implicit admixtures some of which have lost their initial semantics. The cycle's plot has retained the archaic birth myths, namely: the emergence of the Sun in the form of its key symbol - three deer, the ideas of Mother-Earth mirrored in the epic text as a rudimentary motif of petrogenesis and subsequent beliefs of plant forefathers. In The Baγa Tsokhor the typologically stable formula of the primal ancestor's birth (which implies ignorance of the latter's origin) is transformed into a special paradigm, thus guaranteeing an access to the other world. The concept of reincarnation spotted in the early cycles of the Jangar proves a later formation borrowed from Buddhist mythologies.