Á. Birtalan (ed.).: Bálint of Szentkatolna, Gábor: A Romanized Grammar of the East- and West-Mongolian Languages (Budapest Oriental Reprints, Ser. B 3.)

Introduction - The importance of editing the text collections as a follow-up project to the present volume - Acknowledgement

preliminary remarks, only two phenomena will be emphasised here: first, the Western-Khalkha features of the Khalkha samples

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1 and second, the influence of the written forms, on Bálint's transcription of both idioms, the Khalkha and especially the Kalmyk (Bálint: "Oirat")

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2 THE IMPORTANCE OF EDITING THE TEXT COLLECTIONS AS A FOLLOW-UP PROJECT TO THE PRESENT VOLUME The Grammar contains only about one fifth of the whole corpus Bálint collected in the field. As mentioned above, the Chrestomathy - i.e. both Khalkha and Kalmyk parts - contain conversation samples, folklore texts of various genres and short descriptions of assorted folk customs he collected among the Kalmyks in Astrakhan and among the Khalkhas in Urgha. These texts offer not only the first long records of Mongolian spoken languages, but also valuable folklore materials that are significant from several points of view: 1. There are folklore texts that do not have parallels in the Mongolian folklore editions. 2. Variants of some texts have been published later as well and have several versions, but Bálint's text represents their first occurrence. 3. The short narratives on nomadic folk life and customs can be surveyed among the essays, reports about the Mongolian nomads since the 13

t

h century and documented nowadays too. With the presentation of the texts attached to the Grammar and the following publication of the two further manuscripts (the Khalkha and Kalmyk text collections), the significant achievement of a noted scholar will be accessible to the academic and general public. Furthermore, the publication w ill help to recognise the real value of Gábor Bálint of Szentkatolna's research. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Herewith I wish to express my deep gratitude to György Kara, who suggested me several years ago to work on Bálint's unpublished texts, to Kinga Dévényi, Éva Apor, Marianne Rozsondai, Ágnes Kelecsényi, Gergely Orosz, Luvsandash Erdenesuvd (Luwsandasln Erdenesuwd), Nándor Kovács, Judit Bagi and Klára Láng who helped me in various ways. 9

1 Cf. Kara: O neizdannyh tekstah G. Balinta

; concerning the phonetic features of the Western-Khalkha dialect(s) cf Bese, Lajos: Two Western Khalkha Tales. In: Acta Orientalia Academtae Scientiarum Hungaricae XVII. (1964) pp 49-67. 9

2 Kara: O neizdannyh tekstah G. Balinta. p. 163. XXV