Story-telling tradition of the Xinjian-Oirat Jangarchi in the 20th century

In the last quarter of the twentieth century. on the territory of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of China, as a result of a full-scale expeditionary work of Chinese researchers, the names of many dzhangarchi storytellers were discovered. The purpose of this article is to study the storytelling tradition of the Xinjiang Oirat jangarchi in the 20th century. Achieving this goal is due to the solution of the following tasks: to identify the areas of distribution and existence of the Xinjiang Oirat storytelling tradition, to analyze the circumstances of the transmission and assimilation of the songs of the Dzhangar epic. The material of the study is the texts of the Xinjiang-Oirat version of “Dzhangar”, as well as the researches of Chinese and Mongolian Dzhangar scholars. Consideration of the existence of the storytelling tradition of the Oirats of Xinjiang showed that in the twentieth century the epic “Dzhangar” existed in six ethnic groups: Khoshut, Torgut, Olet, Chakhar, Zakhchin and Uryankhai. The spread of the storytelling tradition mostly took place in the northern regions of Xinjiang. The largest number of jangarchi were recorded in five provinces: Khobuksar, Rashaan, Nilkh, Khedzhin and Khoshud, as well as in Teghes, Mongol Khure, Harkhusun and Yangid. Assimilation and transmission of the epic songs of “Dzhangar” to a greater extent took place in the family, so the storytelling tradition of the Xinjiang Oirats has a generic character. Many Xinjiang Oirat jangarchi learned from their fathers, grandfathers, uncles, and brothers. Relatively few jangarchi adopted epic songs from their mothers. The living oral tradition of “Dzhangar”, which existed among the Xinjiang Oirat in the 19th century, began to change into a written one in the second half of the 20th century along with the existence of the oral one. In the 1980s, young talented dzhangarchi appeared. They sought to preserve and transmit the examples of unique epic monument to a new generation of dzhangarchi.