Folklore of Kalmyks and Other Asian Peoples: 12-Year Animal Calendar Cycle

Abstract

Introduction. The work deals with folklore stories about the 12-year animal calendar cycle once adopted by Kalmyks and other peoples of Asia, such as Mongols, Buryats, Altaians, Tuvans, etc. Goals. The paper focuses on the shaping of the 12-year-old animal cycle and roles played by traditional folklore animal characters in its formation. The paper defines impacts certain supreme characters made on the establishment of such calendar, the one for Mongols being the Buddha himself. Another distinctive feature of narratives about animals’ participation in the completion of the calendar is that special attention be paid to the camel, whose inclusion therein was hampered by the mouse’s trick. The plot about relations between camel (sometimes deer) and mouse was borrowed even by nations that do not use a 12-year-old animal calendar, and no Asian folklore tradition contains any story about relations between other calendar-included animals. Conclusions. The study concludes the narrative about emergence of a 12-year-old animal cycle is an etiological myth developed from plots depicting controversy between the animals after the calendar was adopted by Mongols in the early 13th century. Folklore materials in the form of other calendar-related plots partially included in the animal epic indicate arrivals of the calendar and writing are somewhat temporally correlated, and delineate potential historical ties between the animal calendar and divination practices.

Keywords

• kalmyks
• buryats
• mongols
• calendar
• animal cycle
• history of writing