Plots of constructing the Buddhist stupa Jarung Khashar in the Kalmyk folklore: historical personages, mythological and fairy-tale motives

The article considers the plot about the construction of a Buddhist temple / stupa / tope in the Kalmyk folklore texts. It is shown that the image of a Buddhist temple or stupa called “Dzhamin kyeshya” in Kalmyk folklore is correlated with the famous Buddhist Jarung Khashar (Boudhanath) stupa. The article reveals the charac teristics that make it possible to correlate the emergence of this subject in the Kalmyk folklore with the beginning of the period of the spread of Buddhism amongst the Mongolian peoples and acquaintance with the Tibetan legend of the great stupa. The author shows the syncretic nature of the texts about the stupa Dzhamin kyeshya, in which the hero is a historical person - Ete Mergen Temene, the Oirat prince, who played a significant role in spreading Buddhism among the Oirats and the Kalmyks. The author concludes that the plot of the Kalmyk folklore was based on that of the Tibetan Buddhist legend about the Jarun Kashor stupa. However, the Kalmyk legend about the first suburgan / temple was supplemented with motives of fairy tales. Mythological motives penetrated the legend of the stupa along with fairy-tale ones. While the fabulous motives were structuring and linking the text, where the actions of the hero Ete Mergen Temene adopted the character of a heroic narration or a fairy tale, the mythological motives, firstly, are determined by the original legend, and secondly, they correspond to the “antiquity” of the story: a historical personage Ete Mergen lives at the time of the demiurge. The historical period of spreading religion in the Kalmyk folklore texts about Dzhamin kyeshya is endowed with the features that make it possible to compare the events of this time with the archaic era.