The Oirat epic cycle of Jangar

Columbia, MO: Center for Studies in Oral Tradition. Oral Tradition, 16/2 (2001): 402 - 435.Among the Kalmyk in Russia, 25 cantos of Jangar have been collected, with exactly the same number discovered and printed in the Mongolian Republic; about half of the latter 25 cantos are only provisionally identified as belonging to the Jangar cycle. The Oirat Mongols in the Xinjiang area of northwest China have maintained the Jangar singing tradition up to the present time. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Xinjiang Jangar Office combed the Mongol area to collect and record epic. According to the office’s reports, 106 jangarchi (singers) were recorded. As a major result, the twelve-volume publication entitled Jangar Material, with 124 cantos, was issued in successive installments. The author suggests classifying the various Jangar texts into five types: retold texts, dictated texts, manuscripts, transcriptions of audio recordings, and lithographed and modern printings.