To the titles of two Geser's songs translated by B. Bergman

Benjamin Bergman was a researcher from Livonia (present-day Latvia), in 1802-1803 he traveled to the Kalmyk steppes, where he collected historical, literary and folklore material about the Kalmyks and Kalmyk culture. The four-volume work “Nomadic Wanderings among Kalmyks in 1802-1803” became the result of his trip, it was published in 1804-1805 in Riga and remains an important source of information about the literature and culture of the Kalmyks in 19th century. The translations of two songs of “Geser” epic from Kalmyk to German were published in these four volumes among other translations. We put forward a hypothesis about why B. Bergman characterized Geser’s songs translated by him as “Mongolian religious composition in 2 books”. The aim of the article is to consider why B. Bergman’s characteristic of Geser’s songs was translated by him like “Mongolian Religious Composition in 2 Books”. Our research material is the above-mentioned translation of two songs of the epic “Geser”. The chapters of Geser, circulating in the form of a separate manuscript, often bore an independent title in order to emphasize the independence of the work, which in fact represents only a part of the whole cycle about Geser. The chapters on the revival of the heroes and the battle with Andulma Khan, which were widespread in the form of separate manuscripts, often had additional genre definitions of “tsadig”, “sudar” and others. We hypothesize that the original translated by B. Bergman had word “sudar / sudur” meaning “a sutra, a book, a Buddhist composition”, in its name which served as the basis for defining these songs of Geser as a religious composition.