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1 Pages of history
From medieval Oirats to contemporary Kalmyks
Peter the First gave Ayuka Khan a sword in an expensive sheath. As a sign, Ayuka Khanâs guards loosed into the air their arrows, which, when fallen, formed a circle on the ground. âThis sword and these arrows will always guard the interests of Russiaâ was the reply of the Kalmyk Khan to the first Russian Emperor.
Origins of the Kalmyks
The closest ancestors of the Kalmyks were the Oirats or Western Mongols who had been living in Jungaria and the Western regions of Mongolia. More or less reliable facts about the Oirats are derived from historical sources beginning in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. By this time the historical process of transition from a social order of a so-called âprimitive societyâ type to feudalism, from a clan or tribal ethnic formation to a âhigherâ type of ethnic community and nationhood, had been completed on the steppes of Central Asia. The evidence of the available sources allows us to see in such Mongolian confederations as the Naimans, Kereits and several others not simply tribes or tribal unions but more of a state or khanate of an early feudal type.1 In the twelfth century the Oirats also approximated to such a type of confederation. As far back as the first half of the eleventh century several Mongolian-speaking tribes and tribal unions, among them the Oirats, had moved to the region around Lake Baikal and the upper Yenisei river.2 At the beginning of the thirteenth century, on the eve of the formation of the Mongol early feudal state, the nomadic territory of the Oirat tribes extended in the north and north-west as far as the boundaries of the Yenisei Kyrgyz, in the east to the Selenga river and in the south to the spurs of the Altai mountains approaching the upper reaches of the Irtysh. The rout of the Naiman khanate by Chinggis Khan allowed the Oirats to occupy their nomadic territory in the west of Mongolia.
In the empire of Chinggis Khan and his successors the Oirats constituted one of the feudal domains, more or less autonomous, governed by its own sovereign princes, whose authority was hereditary. The aggressive policy of the Mongolian rulers, which had turned their people into warriors and their country into a huge military camp, had fatal consequences for the development of forces of production.3 Situated on the periphery of the Mongol empire, far from its centre, the Oirat feudal lords enjoyed a relative independence from the authority of the central khan, at the same time in every way possible strengthening their own power within their own estates. In contrast to the central provinces of Mongolia at that time, which had gravitated economically towards the markets of China and were dependent on them, the Oirat domains, though no less interested than the eastern Mongols in commercial exchange with China, were nevertheless less bound up with the Chinese markets as they had the opportunity partially to hide their needs on account of trade with their Western Turkic-speaking neighbours. Hence there emerged a certain territorial, administrative and, in part, economic isolation of the Oirat feudal estates. This facilitated the preservation and reinforcement of specific idiosyncrasies in the language, way of life and cultural traditions of the Oirats and at the same time distinguished them from other Mongolians. In these conditions it was impossible for tendencies towards the formation of a special Oirat Mongolian language and sense of ethnicity not to arise and be given a stimulus to develop.
As for socio-economic relations within Oirat society, they were in no way distinguished from the rest of Mongolian society. Among the Oirats at the time of the Mongolian empire, as was also the case throughout the whole of Mongolia, feudal relationships were consolidated and became predominant.
Those who became the single and fully entitled managers of the land â that is, of the pasturable teritory, the basic means of production of nomadic herdsmen â were people âof white boneâ (tsagan jasta), called noyons. The ones who were directly involved in production â people âof black boneâ (har jasta) â were turned into a feudal-dependent class bearing the burden of feudal requisitions and obligations, and were attached to the land of their feudal masters, from which any unauthorized departure was severely punished by the laws of the khan. The Oirat sovereign princes â who formerly, at the beginning of the empire, had been vassals of the Great Khan who granted to them the conditional use of the nomadizing territory (nutug) and of the people (ulus) â in the course of time strengthened their economic and political positions and turned into hereditary owners of their own domains, which were called onchi.
The disintegration of the Chingisid empire and the expulsion of the Mongolian feudal conquerors from China in 1368 revealed deep internal contradictions in Mongolian society, the principal components of which were an absence of internal unity (which also could not easily appear under conditions dominated by a subsistence economy), the weakness of a social division of labour and an almost total absence of internal trade.
The epoch of feudal fragmentation of Mongolia began with the activities of the Oirat feudal lords. Relying on the economic might of their domains, their significant military forces and the relative cohesion of Oirat society, the Oirat princes were the first to oppose themselves to the central authority and conducted an independent internal and external policy, not taking into account the policies of the common Mongolian rulers â the descendants of Chinggis Khan. The first half of the fifteenth century is characterized, on the one hand, by an intensification of the disorder in Eastern Mongolia and, on the other hand, by the growth in strength of the Oirat feudal lords and their political consolidation. On this basis, among the Oirat nobility an aspiration towards the establishment of their supremacy throughout all of Mongolia, and the transfer of state power into their hands, arose and began to grow stronger. This tendency had its greatest development during the years of government by the Oirat noyon Esen: for a short time all Mongolia had been united under his power and he had been instituted as overall Mongolian Khan, had also gained an outstanding victory over the Ming dynasty of China and had even seized the Chinese Emperor In-tszun as his prisoner.
These successes of the Oirat feudal lords promoted a further consolidation of the Oirats as a particular ethnic community. It was just at this time that there appeared on the headgear of the Oirats an ethnically distinguishing sign â a red tassel (ulan zala). It consisted of a small tassel of red cloth on the headgear and was later transferred from the Oirats to the Kalmyks as an essential element of ceremonial costume. The wearing of the ulan zala was introduced by the decree of the Oirat ruler Togon-taishi in 1437. As the Oirat costume was typically similar to that of the Eastern Mongols, the red tassel on the headgear had to become an obvious expression of the distinction between the Oirats and the remaining Mongols. Right up to the present time the Kalmyks call themselves ulan zalata khalâmgud â the red tasselled Kalmyks.
In the course of the history of the Oirat people their language has gradually developed into a distinct and independent one. In the thirteenth century the Oirat dialect already stood apart from the other Mongolian dialects. From this time onwards substantial changes took place of a phonetic and morphological character, and there was a noticeable increase in the number of foreign loan-words. This has been well noted by Yu. Lytkin, who wrote: âA Turkic linguistic influence developed in the language of the Oirats or Western Mongols a softness, flexibility and resilience which was lacking in the language of the Eastern Mongols, and also a vivacity, unusual conciseness and a surprising dexterity; the ebullience in the living speech of the Oirats fully expressed their life â turbulent and active.â4
Oirat as an independent language was fully formed in the fifteenth to sixteenth centuries. The next step was the creation of the Oirat written language, which had acquired a reputation as the clear script or todo bichig by the great Oirat educator and political activist Zaya-Pandita. By place of origin Namkai Dzhamtso Zaya-Pandita was Oirat, though by blood he was Khosheut. When he was seventeen years old, he was adopted by Baibagas-Khan, one of the influential Oirat princes, who in 1617 also sent this talented young man to study in Tibet. In the monasteries of Tibet Zaya-Pandita spent twenty-two years in the âtsannitâ theological-philosophical faculty, and after successfully passing examinations in the form of disputes on theological themes he received the highest scholarly degree â that of rabdzhamba. Zaya-Pandita passed into history not only as a great teacher, the creator of the Oirat script, but also as a talented politician, who on more than one occasion averted potential bloodshed and civil strife among Oirat princes by reconciling the antagonistic sides. In 1638 he left Tibet and in 1639 came to his homeland of Jungaria. The greatness of this figure was already apparent to his contemporaries, who related to Zaya-Pandita with all due respect. Pandita was a title of the highest category. As N. N. Poppe noted in the middle of the twentieth century, this title was approximately that which in European countries is accorded to a professor emeritus at a prominent university or in Russia to a full member of the Academy of Sciences â that is, a relatively higher level than that of a doctorate at a British or American university.5 His disciple Ratnabkhadra sketched a biography of his teacher under the title of Moonlight: The Life of Rabjamba Zaya-Pandita (1691). As if to meet new requirements and the process of formation of an Oirat ethnic self-consciousness, in 1648 Zaya-Pandita devised an Oirat alphabet, based on the general Mongolian alphabet, and established new rules of orthography, guided for the most part by an etymological principle of spelling. Another great service of Zaya-Pandita lies in the way that the literary language of the Oirats was determined and established by him.6 The timely nature of the reform implemented by Zaya-Pandita is convincingly attested by the fact that in an exceptionally short time it became the single basis of the Oirat written language and Oirat literature. According to the opinion of B. Ya. Vladimirtsov, historical literature stands in first place among the original works of Oirat literature, even more underlining the fact that a historical tradition which had been most strongly developed among the Mongols was also represented among the Oirats.
Such, in their general characteristics, were the basic stages in the formation of the Oirat people â the ancestors of the Kalmyk nation. Oirats and Kalmyks are two different ethnic groups, connected with each other by perfectly obvious genetic ties: the Oirats are the ancestors and the Kalmyks their descendants. The history of the Kalmyk people, however, does not appear as simply a continuation of the history of the Oirats. Kalmyk history as such arose and developed not on the steppes of Central Asia but in the lower reaches of the Volga. The events at the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries constitute a watershed separating Oirat history from the history of the Kalmyk people.7
What kind of ethnic composition did the Oirats have in this period? The general self-designation of the Oirats at this time was âDerben-Oiratâ as distinct from clan designations such as âJungarâ, âDerbetâ, âKhosheutâ, âKhoytâ or âTorgutâ. The term âDerben-Oiratâ is often found in historical literature. For about two centuries a discussion about the origin of this term has been going on among Mongolists. According to one of the most established opinions, a union of four Oirat tribes arose after the fall of the Mongol Yuan dynasty in China, and its creation was directed against 40 Eastern Mongolian tribes. In the opinion of many Russian Orientalists, the Chinese, confused by similar sounding names, and, perhaps, by their close relationship, transferred on to the Elets the actions of the Oirats.8 In favour of this reasoning is the fact that the ethnonym âEletâ appeared in Mongolian sources only in the seventeenth century. In this way it is possible, following V. Sanchirov, to agree with the suggestion of V. Uspenskiy that âElut is a distorted Oiratâ.9
The Oirats ceased to be mentioned as a separate people group in the fifteenth century, and precisely at this time there also appeared ethnic groupings of the Oirat community â or, in the opinion of other historians, political alliances â such as the Derbets and Jungars. They were in any case descendants of the ancient Oirats.
This period in the ethnic history of the Oirats continues to the present day to remain âdarkâ. Until now in academic circles a discussion has continued about precisely which tribal alliances composed the âunion of four Oiratsâ, because medieval chronicles name more than four ethnic associations: these are the Derbets, Khoyts, Khosheuts, Jungars, Torguts and Batuts.10
The ethnonym âDerbetâ was connected with the terminology of the military estates, because âthe Derbets were a cavalry, a formation in a squareâ.11 The composition of the Derbets was complicated. In the twentieth century the people who related themselves to the Derbets were those who belonged to such clans as the Abganers, Chonoses, Sharyads, Sharnuts, Tyayachuds, Tsoroses, Tukchins and Khanuts, among whom separate groups of Merkits, Kereits, Batuts and Khoyts were also encountered.12
The Jungars were northern Elets, whose descent was traced from the noyon Esmet-Darkhan.13 In the opinion of a number of researchers, this ethnonym is derived from the name âzjun garâ, which designated âthe left sideâ, the left flank of an army, as the Oirats occupied the left wing of the Mongol army in combined military actions of Oirats and other Mongols.14
According to information from several sources, a third ethnic component that entered the composition of the âfour Oiratsâ was that of the Khosheuts. In the Iletkhel shastir it is written: âFor a long time the Khosheuts have been one of the âFour Oiratsâ.â Their origin is traced from Khabutu Khasar, the younger brother of the emperor who was the founding ancestor of the Yuan dynasty.15 The very word âKhosheutâ, as well as many other Oirat and Mongolian terms that had become current as ethnonyms among the Oirats and Mongolians, goes back to the epoch of Chinggis Khan. The Oirats took part in the campaigns of conquest by Chinggis Khan and his descendants in China, Korea, Central Asia, the Near East, the Caucasus and Russia. Just at that time within their membership there were subdivisions of the troops with hereditary transmission of duties and privileges, which in time were converted into ethnic groups.16 In this term, as in many others, is found a reflection of a military class of the distant past, since many designations of military personnel became ethnonyms. Hence the word âhoshuunâ in Mongolian means âspikeâ, âbeakâ or âsnoutâ, and also a military class â the advance-guard formation as a kind of wedge in front of the forces.
The Torguts are a fourth ethnic component of the Derben-Oirats. In the opinion of P. S. Pallas, the Torguts were formed into a âspecial hordeâ and separated from the other Oirats later than the other Oirat ethnopolitical unions of Khosheuts, Jungars and Derbets.17 This ethnonym (Torgut) traces its origin from the name of Chinggis Khanâs day guard, his personal guard of warriors, who as a plurality were thereby called âTorgutsâ. According to field research by Kalmyk ethnologists, the contemporary Torguts reckon themselves to be related to the following clans: Merkits, Kereits, Batuts, Bagut...
