The motif of laughter and weeping in the Kalmyk folklore

This work is dedicated to the study of the motif of laughter and weeping in the Kalmyk folklore. Its reconstruction through typological comparisons is relevant, since it is easily “recognizable” in various traditions. The material of the research comes from different genres of the Kalmyks’ folklore texts, namely cumulative fairy tales, game reconstruction into numerical riddles and epic texts. As a result of the study, the following conclusions are made. The structural and semantic analyses of the motif revealed its archaic roots, dating back to the ritual functions of pre-Buddhist beliefs about the cosmogonic origins. Thus, in the archaic beliefs of the Kalmyks and their ancestors, the Oirat, the rite of laughter used to symbolize the act of reproduction, birth, whereas the rite of weeping repeated the rite of burial. The continuity of these acts in folklore is conveyed through repetition, which is “the most archaic method of forming the structure of a folklore text”. The act of communication, expressed through repetitions in chain-like structures, is a way of transmitting the “knowledge of tradition” about beliefs and ideas from the common memory of the past. Scattered in folklore texts and genres, the rudiments of these views having gone through typological reconstruction with the ancient Greek buffoonery and rituals of the ancient Tibetan religion Bon, acquire meaning and stop gaps in our knowledge. In fairy tales and riddles, the metaphorical functions of laughter and weeping are preserved better than in epic samples of folklore, which fully corresponds to the laws of folk art development.