‘His Dedicated Work Be a Precious Gift to Oriental Linguistics’: Revisiting the Grammar of Kalmyk Mongolian by Aleksey A. Bobrovnikov

Abstract

Introduction. The article discusses the contribution of Aleksey A. Bobrovnikov, a scholar, teacher, and pioneer of Mongolian studies in Russia. He authored the Grammar of Kalmyk Mongolian which holds a special place in the variety of nineteenth-century textbooks, and still remains a classic in Mongolian linguistics. Goals. The study attempts an insight into how A. Bobrovnikov created his manual for theological institutions of the Russian Empire. Materials. The work focuses on documents contained in Collection 10 (‘Kazan Theological Academy’) of the National Archive of Tatarstan. Results. Our archival investigations have discovered a number of documents dealing with A. Bobrovnikov’s travel to Kalmyk Steppe (Astrakhan Governorate) when he was welcomed and stayed in estates owned by the Tundutovs and the Tyumens. His accounts of everyday life, traditions and customs, language patterns recorded from Dorbets and Khoshuts are of utmost interest to ethnographers and philologists. The manual’s publication was preceded by meticulous research efforts of the academic Mongolist. Kazan Theological Academy was educating Christian missionaries and facilitated a lot the study of not only customs and traditions but also languages of Mongolic, Turkic, and Finno-Ugric peoples, which would shape the foundations of academic Mongolian and Oriental studies in Russia. So, the missionaries’ contributions — including that of A. Bobrovnikov — are enormous and even invaluable, since (unlike professional Orientalists) the former would deal with living colloquial languages.

Keywords

• grammar
• kalmyk
• mongolian
• archival document
• a. bobrovnikov
• kazan theological academy