Birtalan Ágnes: Kalmyk Folklore and Folk Culture in the Mid-19th Century: Philological Studies on the Basis of Gábor Bálint of Szentkatolna’s Kalmyk Texts.

FOLKLORE GENRES

organised with the defeated party undergoing humiliating or humorous punishments

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2" -riddles also constitute part of the children's folklore, For educational purposes numerous riddles are included in schoolbooks and anthologies for children as too were proverbs..

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1 However, although Mongolian proverbs usually transmit ethical-moral messages of behaviour whereas riddles mainly developed logical thinking, both helped to memorise particular phenomena in the social and natural environment and to transmit a social norms within the ethnic group. Riddles or fragments of riddles occur in almost all other folklore genres, heroic epics, tales, songs, and ritual texts as well.

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2 One riddle of Bálint's collection is taken from the ritual repertoire of wedding ceremonies, from a blessing (Kalm. yon)/, Khal. yöröl).

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2' Nr. 11. The distant place Makes close. What is it? (the horse [valuable as the] jewel) During a discussion of the material with Csaba Mészáros, he kindly drew my attention to the peculiarity of a prominent structure, namely the repeated question at the end of each item: Yün bin? (Kalm. Yümb?) "What is it?" According to Mészáros, this does not appear in other riddle-corpuses. After checking the Kalmyk material at my disposal , it became evident that researchers collecting riddles indeed did not add this formula. Mészáros makes the conjecture that the presence of the ending formal might have been interpreted as Bálint's addendum as a marker of the genre. Alternatively, the informant attached it to each text to make the peculiarities of the genre more understandable for Bálint. More generally it cannot be excluded that Bálint followed the 19

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h century custom of ending riddles with a question-formula. Enquiring Kalmyk folklore researchers (Tamara B. Basangova (Bordzanova) and Baira B. Gorjajeva) they testified me the possibility of presence of such an ending formula in Kalmyk corpus, even if the variants do not show it.

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4 This problem - concerning the present-day tradition - might be solved during a field work concentrating on this peculiar phenomenon. A special group of riddles is the genre of" "triads" lit. "the three ones of the world" (Kalm. orclnggin yurwn, Mong. yirtincii-yin yurban

, Khal. yertöncin guraw).

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5 Bálint recorded only one triad, the item Nr. 4. the "Three whites". In my opinion it is doubtful whether the triads are riddles or form a separate genre group, especially as that the solution is preliminarily included into the main text body. But considering the emic approach, the majority of the informants from Mongolian ethnic groups would place the triads into the corpus of riddles, as Bálint's informants did. The Kotvic-collection contains a few triads: "Three whites", "Three reds" and "Three darks". Bordzanova discussed this genre among the Kalmyks in details in her comprehensive work.

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2" A part of the twenty-three riddles are known from the Kalmyk text collections. Below some examples are demonstrated as variants, parallel texts to Bálint's corpus. 22,

1 Kara: Mongol Uriankhai Riddles, p. 15. 22

1 Bickdiidin amn iigin bilgin antolog. Ed. Okonov, B. B. Eist, Xal'mg degtr yaryaC, 1990. [An anthology of oral poetry for children]; Basangova, T. G.: Detskij fol'klor kalmykov. Elista, KIG1 RAN 2009, cf. also Selejeva: K islorii sobranija i publikacii kalmyckih narodnyh zagadok. 22

2 Bitkejev: Svod kalmyckogo fol'klora. p. II. Ina previous study I surveyed the riddles in shamanic invocations and other related texts. Birtalan, Agnes: DarkhadShamanic Texts (Genres. Performer. Communication). (Manuscript). 22

3 This riddle appears with some other riddle-fragments in the ritual texts of proposing to the maid. cf. Sampildendew, X.: Mongolcüdin xurimlax yos. Ulänbätar, 5 inj I ex Uxäni AkademTn Xel JoxiolTn Xürelen 1997. pp 23-25. 22

4 Cf. above Bitkejev's suggestion for classification of riddles: "2. zagadki voprosy". Bitkejev: Svod kalmyckogo fol'klora p 12. 22

5 Sodnom, C.: Mongol ardTn yertöncin guraw, döröwln tuxai. In: Mongolin sudlalin jarim asüdlal IV. (1964.) pp. 10-21, 175-200. [On the Mongolian folklore genre of triads and quads], Bordzanova, T. G.: Orclnggin yunvnts. Elista 1987. 22

6 Bordianova: Orclnggin yurwnts. 44