"Frontier Time and Space" Cai Weijie | A review of the history of Kalmyk's research in European and American academic circles

Cai Weijie

He holds a bachelor's and master's degree in ethnology from National Chengchi University in Taiwan, and a master's and doctoral degree from the Department of Inland Eurasian Studies, Indiana University, USA. He is currently an assistant professor in the Department of History, School of Humanities, Shenzhen University. His research interests include eurasian world history from the Mongol era to the fall and the history of relations between Inner Asia and China, with a focus on the history of empires, ethnic groups, migration, and the legal system.

This article has been authorized by the author and published on the WeChat public platform for the first time.

Abstract: Kalmyk studies are not regarded as an independent field in European and American orientalist circles, but as part of Mongolian studies, and only in Russia are considered an independent discipline. However, there are inextricable and complex relationships between it and the Oirat studies. This article divides Kalmyk's research into foundation periods, development periods, and transition periods based on the end of World War II in 1945 and the end of the Cold War in 1989. This was followed by prominent scholars, including Pallas, Smid, Pozdneev, Badley, Lan Siti, Berhihe, Bobper, Baumansinoff, and Kruger. Describe their contributions on different research topics, such as kalmykia, the creation of the Tote script by we Yabandidida, the heyday of Ayutich Khan, the return of the Wolbasi turks to the east, and the exile of the Soviet period, as well as the current situation of the contemporary Kalmyk Republic. It is supplemented by the introduction of the study of Jianger's heroic epics, folklore and classic travelogues. The goal is to outline the development of kalmyk's research history in European and American academic circles, and to make a brief statement on the future direction of development. This article argues that if Kalmykia research is to be revitalized in Europe and the United States, continuous investment from government and private institutions and the cultivation of young researchers are imperative.

Keywords: Kalmyk; Veyrat; Mongolian studies; Tote; Jangel

Introduction

Kalmyk studies or Kalmyk studies (German Kalmückenforschung) are not considered an independent branch of the discipline in European and American orientalist circles, but as part of Mongolian studies, and are considered an independent discipline only in the former Soviet Union and today's Russia. However, there are inextricable and complex relationships between it and the Oirat studies. Studies of different Veyrat tribes, such as Dörbet, Torgut, Khoshot, Zakhachin and Minggat, are grouped into Chinese, Mongolian, and Inner Asian studies, depending on their place of residence. Therefore, it can be said that it is a field where the research results are quite scattered.

This article will divide the time of time, with the end of World War II in 1945 and the beginning of the opening up of the Soviet Union and the Communist Camp in Eastern Europe after the end of the Cold War in 1992, and introduce their contributions to different research topics, such as the origin of Kalmyk, the creation of Totewen by We Yabandida, the heyday of Ayuqi Khan, the return of the Turks to the eastward return of Wolbasi, and the exile of the Soviet period, as well as the current situation of the contemporary Kalmyk Republic. In addition, it is supplemented by the introduction of the research of Jianger's heroic epics, folklore and classic travelogues, outlining the development of kalmyk research history in European and American academic circles, and briefly stating his views on the future development direction.

The writing of this article is based on past reviews of Kalmyk studies (including Veyrat) in Mongolian academic circles. The Austrian Mongolian scholar Bernhard Jülg (1825-1886) reviewed the study of Mongolianology as early as 1882, dividing them into three branches in dialects: Eastern Mongolia (or Mongolian headquarters), Kalmyk and Buryatia, and introduced grammar, dictionaries, and textual translations of Kalmyk. He considered the Kalmyk language to be a key to the study of the Mongolian language, as the Tothic phonetics were more accurate and less easily misidentified. The Russian-American-Mongolian scholar Nicholas Poppe (1897-1991) made a detailed review of Kalmyk's research in 1955, and subdivided it into the fields of history, historical literature, anthropology and ethnography, language, and literary history. In addition to the results of research involving Europe, it also covers the contributions made by the academic community of the Mongolian People's Republic. Later, the Mongolian-American scholar John R. Krueger (1927-2018) made a detailed review of the works of Weyrat and Kalmyk in 1975, including linguistics, grammar books, history books, legal codes (such as the Mongol-Weyrat Code of 1640), biographies, and epic poems (including Gesar and Jianger). The Kalmyk-American scholar Arash Bormanshinov (1922-2011) also commented on the progress of Kalmyk and Weyrat studies at that time in 1989, with particular emphasis on the new achievements of the Kalmyk Republic academic community, and in 1994 wrote an article calling for the international Mongolian academic community to cooperate in the compilation of the bibliography of Kalmyk and Veyrat studies. Regrettably, after 25 years, no similar results have been seen. In this sense, this article complements the above previous research results. Limited by space and academic ability, this article certainly cannot fully cover the results of Kalmyk's research in European and American academic circles. To make a more comprehensive study, more scholars need to invest.

I. Foundation Period (From the second half of the 17th century to the end of World War II)

The Dutch statesman and geographer Nicholaes Witsen (1641-1717) was perhaps the first European to write about the Kalmyks. He traveled to Russia between 1664 and 1665, and in 1692 published Northern and Eastern Tatars in Amsterdam, with an updated edition in 1705. The famous Altai linguist Gerhard Doerfer (1920-2003) began with Weizen's research when discussing the development of the history of Kalmykian linguistics in the late 17th and early 19th centuries.

France was one of the first countries in Europe to conduct kalmyk studies. As early as 1729, the French Jesuit Antoine Gaubil (1689-1759) had translated into French an excerpt from the Qing Dynasty envoy Tu Lichen who had been on a mission to the Ayuqi Khan Khanate on the lower Volga River from 1712 to 1715 and published it in French. As early as the return of the Turks to Xinjiang and the submission of the Qing Dynasty, the French Jesuit priest Jean-Joseph Marie Amiot (1718-1793) translated the Qianlong Emperor's "All the Returns of the Imperial Turbats" into French. By the beginning of the twentieth century, kalmyk history began to receive importance, such as Gaston Cahen's (1877-1944) "History of Russian-Chinese Relations under Peter the Great" published in 1911 and Maurice Courant's (1865-1935) "Central Asia in the 17th to 18th Centuries: Kalmyk Empire or Manchuria? all deal with the history of the Kalmyks. Among them, Gu Heng's works for the first time recount the conflict between the Dzungar Khanate and the Qing Dynasty, but the focus is still limited to the political and military fields. Paul Pelliot (1878-1945) wrote the Commentary on the History of Kalmykia, a classic in french scholarship in the study of Kalmykia. The book was written primarily to complement the fact that the Book of The British scholar John Frederick Baddeley (1854-1940) was confined to Russian historical sources. Bo Xihe translated the lineage and historical records of Erut and Turgut in the Qianlong Emperor's "All Chronicles of the Imperial Dzungar" and the "Biography of the Princes of the Huibu of the Outer Domain" about Erut and Turgut. Bohe and around 1920 began writing the book, but died before it could be published. Instead, his disciple Louis Hambis (1906-1978) organized his manuscript and published it.

Russia's attention to Kalmyk culture and history is quite early. Peter Simon Pallas (1741-1811), a German, was elected a member of the Russian Academy of Natural History in 1767 and went on expeditions from 1768 to 1774 to the Volga, the Ural, western Siberia and the Altay and Baikal regions. Later, in 1776, the Historical Materials of Erut in Inland Asia was published, leaving a considerable number of first-hand observations of Kalmyk customs and culture. Later, benjamin Bergmann (1772-1856), a German-Latvian priest (then part of Russian territory), traveled to the Kalmyks of lower Volga between 1802 and 1803 and later published four volumes of Nomadic Travels in Kalmyk, 1802 and 1803. The book has left a detailed record of the religion and culture of the Kalmyks at that time, and it is also considered to be the earliest record of Jianger.

As for the tradition of Russian Kalmykia research, it dates back to the first half of the nineteenth century, with the Russian Academy of Sciences as the main research institution. Isaac Jacob Schmidt (1779-1847), the founder of Mongolian studies and a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in the Netherlands, traveled to the Kalmyks as a missionary to the Moravian Brethren and worked on translating the Bible into Kalmyk, including the Acts of the Apostles and the Gospel of John. In recent years, the academic community has also begun to rearrange his research results. Thereafter, such as bhikkhulin (N. bhikkhulin) Bichurin, 1777-1853) wrote An Overview of the History of the Veyrat or Kalmyks from the 15th Century to the Present, published in St. Petersburg in 1834. Konstantin Golstunsky (1831-1899) published a collection of Kalmyk texts of the Tale of Ubashkhontaighi, Jangel, and the Story of the Corpse Language, and a study of the Mongol-Veyrat Code of 1640 was published in St. Petersburg in 1880. The Masterpiece of Astrakhan Kalmyk, written by Aleksei M. Pozdneev (1851-1920), was printed in St. Petersburg in 1885 in lithograph form, followed by the Kalmyk Myths and Stories in 1892, as well as a collection of Tothic literature, The Model Text of Kalmyk Literature, which was republished in 1907 and published in three editions in 1915. V. Kotwich L. Kotvich or Władysław L. Kotwicz, 1872-1944) published in 1919 Russian Archival Materials on Relations with the Veyrats of the 17th and 18th Centuries. In this article he clarifies the origin of the term "Kalmücke". It was thought that the word was derived from the Turkic verb "qal-", referring to the Turks who remained in the Volga Valley in 1771 without moving east with Wolbasi. However, Kotvić points out that the term Kalmyk first appeared in the Siberian Chronicle completed between 1574 and 1583, so that the word actually existed long before the Kalmyks left Russia in 1771. These are representative scholars and works of early Russian Kalmykia studies.

There is also a long tradition of German research on the Kalmyks, with many German scholars working at the Russian Academy of Sciences, such as Pallas. In the early days, heinrich August Zwick (1796-1855), a German missionary of the Moravian Church, went to the Astrakhan region in 1818, and an English translation of his travelogue was published in 1831. Later, the Handbook of The Western Mongolian Language was published. Later, Erich Haenisch (1880-1966) published a Latin transcription of the Tortavian manuscript of the Golden Light Sutra in 1929.

In Britain, Henry H. Howorth (1842-1923) wrote a four-volume History of Mongolia from the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century, written between 1876 and 1922, which is considered to be the culmination of the work of European Mongolian historiography in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The first volume of the book deals with the history of the Kalmyks, including the Ministries of Pessot and Choros. Badley later wrote Russia, Mongolia, and China, based on his experience travels in the eastern frontiers of Russia and the archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Moscow (of course, with reference to the works of Pallas and Hovos, as well as those mentioned above). The book is informative and deals with the early relations between Tsarist Russia and the Kalmyks, and publishes many historical maps.

Many Swedes who served in Russia in the 18th century also left Kalmyk-related records. For example, during his tenure as major, Johann Christian Schnitscher accompanied the Qing Tulichen mission to Ayuqi Khan from 1714 to 1716, and in 1744 published in Swedish the book Kalmyk under Ayuchi Khan, which recorded the travels of the mission and the history and culture of the Kalmyks. Two Swedish officers who were captured by Russia during the Great Northern War between Russia and Sweden (1700-1721) also contributed, one of whom was Philip Johan von Strahlenberg (1676-1747), who traveled and cartographed Russian territory, visited the Kalmyks, and left behind a historical geographical account of the north and east of Europe and Asia, published in Stockholm in 1730. The earliest kalmykian dictionary is left in the book. The other was Johan Gustaf Renat (1682-1744), who was later captured by the latter in the battle between Tsarist Russia and the Dzungar Khanate, where he lived for 17 years before returning to Sweden in 1734. He later drew two famous maps of the Dzungar Khanate, which provided important materials for posterity to understand the geography of the Dzungar Khanate period.

Finland's Kalmyk studies are represented by the Mongolian scholar Gustav John Ramstedt (1873-1950). As the founder of mongolian comparative history studies and Altaic studies, Lanstex visited the Kalmyk-inhabited areas in March 1903, and later wrote the results of his expeditions into The Seven Journeys to the East, which was published in Finnish in 1944 and 1946. He also collected kalmyk ballads, by the Finnish-Mongolian linguists Pentti Aalto (1917-1998) and Sh. Barinov. Balinov) collation and publication. In addition, his Dictionary of Kalmykian, published in 1935, contains about 12,000 Kalmyk vocabulary, with German translations, Latin phonetic transcriptions, and mutual paraphrasings of Mongolian written, Turkic, and Tunguska, and is considered the first scholarly Kalmykian dictionary.

In short, the Perception of the Kalmyks in Europe and the United States stems from the records of field visits by various travelers and military officers in the second half of the 17th century. By the 18th century, there were more systematic translations, collections and publications of materials, including dictionaries, grammar books, religious classics, history books, epic legends, songs and codes. From the 19th century to the early 20th century, there were more in-depth comparative and comprehensive studies, such as the grammatical comparison with other Mongolian dialects. These pioneering studies laid a solid foundation for the later Kalmykne studies in European and American academic circles. However, there was also a lack of specialized institutions for Kalmyk's research at that time, and the relevant research was mostly supported by the personal interests of scholars.

II. Development Period (End of World War II to End of Cold War)

Since World War II, the international situation has changed sharply. The Cold War created a confrontation between the two camps of capitalism and communism, led by the United States and the Soviet Union. Many Russian and European Mongolian scholars emigrated to the United States, which became an opportunity for the study of Mongolian studies in the United States. Moreover, during the Cold War, the Mongolian People's Republic was located between China and the Soviet Union, and after the Sino-Soviet confrontation, Mongolia's strategic role became more important. Moreover, the Mongol Empire, as a world empire spanning Europe and Asia, has also received more attention from the academic circles in Western Europe and the United States. In contrast, however, the Dzungar Khanate, founded by the Verats of Western Mongolia, received less attention because its history was less known. Moreover, between 1943 and 1957, the Kalmyk Autonomous Republic was abolished by the Soviet authorities, and a large number of Kalmyks were exiled to Siberia and Central Asia. In this case, it was more difficult for European and American researchers to go to the Soviet Union for field research, which limited the development of Kalmyk research, but at the same time, some Kalmyks began to migrate to the United States between 1951 and 1952, mostly settling in Philadelphia and neighboring New Jersey. All of this led to a shift in the direction of Kalmyk's research: the study of textual language and history became the main direction, and the number of travelogues and ethnographic works written on fieldwork was greatly reduced, mostly concentrated on Kalmyk-Americans. The following is an introduction to the main researchers, works and research institutions.

In the period from the aftermath of World War II to 1970, there were far fewer important soviet studies than in the past. It is worth mentioning the Kalmykian scholar Badmayev (A. V. Badmaev)'s Biography of Us, Bandyada, and the famous Soviet Mongol scholar I. Zlatkin Ia. Zlatkin, 1898-1990) History of the Dzungar Khanate. The first edition of the book was published in 1964 and the second edition in Moscow in 1983. The book, which uses many relevant Russian archives that have not been used by academic circles in the past, can be regarded as the most comprehensive general history of the Dzungar Khanate in modern times, and its importance is self-evident. However, the second edition removed maps of the Dzungar Khanate and its neighbors from the 15th to 18th centuries, but added references to French, German, English, and Mongolian that were not found in the first edition. These works contributed to the study of the early history of the Kalmyks.

Since the 1980s, the center of Kalmykia studies has been mainly in the Kalmyk Autonomous Republic under the Soviet Union, and there are specialized kalmyk-study academic institutions in the local area, mainly the Kalmyk State University Kalmyk Institute of Historical Linguistics, Literature and Orientalism in Elista, the capital, and the Kalmyk Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences. However, most of the results published in the Republic of Kalmykia are not easily used by international scholars, on the one hand, due to language barriers (most works are written in Russian) and on the other hand, due to the lack of commercial circulation channels, which are not easy to obtain from the outside world.

Since the 1980s, the Republic of Kalmykia has made great achievements in the study of Kalmykia literature and linguistics. In literary studies, a two-volume history of Kalmykia literature was published, the first volume of which deals with Kalmyk literature before the October Revolution of 1917, and the second volume of Kalmyk literature of the Soviet period. There is also a reprint of the history of Kalmyk literature before the October Revolution. Linguistically , a copy of Kalmykia grammar was published , a synthesis of modern Kalmyk grammar ( including phonetics , word formation , phonology , and orthography ) , and a modern Kalmykian phonetics. There is also a reference to Kalmykneken linguistics, which, although it contains many editorial omissions and errors, is still worth mentioning as it is the first work in the field. In the study of Kalmyk folktales and epics, Sergei Nekliudov, who sometimes works at the Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, wrote Heroic Epics of the Mongol Nation: Oral and Literary Traditions.

Kalmykia research in the United States rose to prominence during this period and became an important research camp. The reason for this was, on the one hand, that Kalmyk's research became part of Soviet research during the Cold War, so the U.S. federal government occasionally granted funds to fund related research. For example, Rudolf Loewenthal's (1904-1996) study of the Kalmyks and the Kalmyk Autonomous Republic was seen as a case study of how the Soviet Union treated minorities, funded by the U.S. Department of State. On the other hand, it is due to the efforts of the Kalmyks who immigrated to the United States to preserve their language, history and culture. The Society for the Promotion of Kalmyk Culture was founded in Philadelphia in April 1954. The Society is a nonprofit and non-political group of Kalmyk youth in the United States whose goal is to promote Kalmyk's language, culture, and history. The Society issued the "Kalmyk Monograph Series", which included Kruger's Complete Mongolian Dictionary of the Kalmykian Language, and Balmansinov and Kruger's Collection of Monographs on Kalmyk-Weyrat.

There were also some anthropological and ethnographic studies of Kalmykia in the American academic community during this period. However, it was limited to travel to the Soviet Union for field transfers, and most of them were based on textual studies, coupled with interviews and investigations of Kalmyks who emigrated to the United States. For example, David F. Aberle (1918-2004) visited Kalmyk immigrants in New Windsor and Baltimore, Maryland, to study the kinship system of Kalmyk Mongols. Fred Adelman, who studied under Bowpe, studied the cultural renaissance of the Kalmyks in the United States. Paula G. Rubel (1933-2018) studied cultural change and adaptation faced by Kalmyk immigrants in New Jersey and Philadelphia. There are also a number of master's theses that study the religious celebrations and musical culture of the Kalmyk-Americans.

Linguistically, John C. Street ,1930-2017, a professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, wrote Kalmyk Grammar Structure. In addition, Baumansinoff, who teaches in the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages at the University of Maryland, published the Kalmyk Handbook. Both books are important reference materials for learning Kalmyk in the English community.

Stephen Albert Halkovic, Jr., 1943-) deserves attention to his research on the results of his historical research, he completed his doctoral thesis under Kruger's supervision, and later remained at Indiana University to teach in the Ural and Altai Department. Later, his doctoral dissertation was rewritten and published as The Western Mongolians. The book explores many issues in Veyrat historiography and is accompanied by the original Tote text and English translation of the History of the Kalmyk Khans. As for the early history of the Kalmyk Khanate, there are two important works, one is the doctoral dissertation of Charles Andrew Riess (1946-) of Indiana University, "History of the Kalmyk Khanate to 1724", and the actual book also briefly deals with the history of the Kalmyk Khanate down to 1771. The other is "Where Two Worlds Meet: Russia and Kalmyk Nomads, 1600-1771," by Michael Khodarkovsky (1958- ), a professor of history at Loyola University in Chicago. So in a way, the two men's research periods almost coincide with the theme. Although Reis attributed the defeat of the Kalmyk Khanate to the ability of its leaders, he also emphasized the contrast between Kalmyks' tactics toward Russia with other surrounding nomads, namely that the Kalmyks chose to cooperate with the Russians rather than to the camp of other nomadic peoples, which led to its subsequent defeat. Unfortunately, Reese's doctoral dissertation was never officially published, thus limiting its influence. It is also worth mentioning that Khodarkovsky studied at Kalmyk State University and obtained a bachelor's degree. The book uses Turkish and Russian archival materials to try to understand the relationship between Russia and Kalmyk from the standpoint of the Kalmyk side, arguing that Tsarist Russia has completely misunderstood the meaning of the oath with the Kalmyks, and that the oath with the Tsar does not mean submission to the Tsar to the Tsar.

The development of Kalmykia research in the United States is inseparable from the famous Russian Mongolian scholar Bao Pei. He came to the United States in 1949 to teach at the University of Washington in Seattle. During this period, he built on past Research in Mongolian Scholarship, wrote a review of Western Kalmyk studies, and published German translations of Mongolian comparative grammar (included in Kalmyk) and nine Jangel songs. In addition to his excellent research, more importantly, he has bred a new generation of native Mongolian scholars in the United States, of which Kruger is the most outstanding in kalmyk's research field.

Krueger is arguably the most important scholar in Kalmyk's research in the United States. He spent his early years studying with the Danish and Mongolian scholar Kaare Grønbech (1901-1951), then studied with Bobpe at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he taught at indiana University's Ural and Altai Studies Department. Because of his proficiency in German and his experience studying in Copenhagen, he was able to introduce the results of German Mongolian studies to the United States and translate many of the European studies of Mongolian studies into English. His research areas are mainly in Western Mongolian studies, including Kalmyk and Veyrat. In addition to the aforementioned Complete Mongolian Transcription of the Kalmyk Dictionary and the Monographs of Kalmyk-Weyrat, in his early research he compiled and translated them into English based on the 1431 Kalmyk words recorded in the travels of the Swedish Stolember, which greatly facilitated the use of researchers. He also compiled and translated 13 of the stories into English based on the Tote text of the Corpse Tales collected by Huleg in 1866. In 1978, an English translation of Lan Si Tie's "Seven Journeys to the East" was published. In addition, in order to compile the first dictionary of classical Weyrat Mongolian literature since the middle of the 17th century, he also published the material he collected in three parts, which can be used as an English dictionary in Kalmyk.

In addition to collating and translating documents, Kruger also wrote monographs on Kalmyk languages and history and culture, such as Sanskrit and Tibetan loanwords in Kalmykian languages, the Edict of Jinjile related to the Mongol-Veyrat Code of 1640, and an English translation of a material on the origins of Turk as recorded by the Danish Mongolian scholar Henning Haslund-Christensen (1896-1948). Analysis and criticism of the cyclicality between past Kalmykian dictionaries and criticism of plagiarism, as well as the English translation of the Tsar's edicts to the Kalmyks, etc.

Baumansinoff, who teaches in the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages at the University of Maryland, is another representative scholar of Kalmyk's studies in the United States. In addition to the review article mentioned earlier, he mainly focused on the history of the Kalmyks. For example, he studied the Chubanov Grand Lama (1840-1894) worshipped by the Kalmyks (not in today's Kalmyk Republic) who lived with the Don Cossacks and how they maintained Tibetan Buddhism (or Lamaism) and traditional culture. He also pays attention to the Kalmyks who had the opportunity to travel to Europe in the 19th century because of their enlistment in the army or their employment with European merchants. He also followed the history of these Don Kalmyk princes and nobles, as well as the relationship of the Kalmyks to Tibet and Mongolia in the early twentieth century. There was also the activity of the Kalmyk Ja Lama (1860-1923) in The Khalkha Mongols of the early twentieth century. He also annotated two English translations by The Kalmyk writer Sandji B. Balykov (1894-1943), "More Powerful Than Powerful" and "The Honor of the Maiden." Arguably quite active Kalmyk researcher.

Compared with the United States, European studies during this period mainly focused on kalmyk languages, epics and folklore studies. In Finland, for example, Aalto, a professor of linguistics at the University of Helsinki, published articles on the study of the Veyrat script. Ágnes Birtalan (1961- ), a professor in the Department of Mongolian and Inner Asian Studies at the University of Laurent in Hungary, published Latin transcriptions and translations of two 18th-century Kalmyk folk songs collected by Pallas. The German Turkic scholar Johannes Benzing (1913-2001) published Kalmyk Reference Grammar. The German Mongolist Walther Heissig (1913-2005) spared no effort in promoting the study of Mongolian epics, including the Study of Jangel.

Transition period (since the end of the Cold War)

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s and the end of the Cold War, although European and American scholars have been allowed to enter the Republic of Kalmykia, Kalmyk studies have not been revitalized. In contrast, the study of Mongolia in European and American academic circles can still maintain a certain degree of heat, mainly because Mongolia is an independent country, still occupies a strategic position between China and Russia, is close to Inner Mongolia, and has more bilateral interactions, so it has received more attention. The first is that the leading Mongolologists of many institutions retired or died during this period, and they withered away from old age. On the other hand, after the end of the Cold War, the U.S. government's investment in regional studies and Russian studies began to decrease, and Kalmykville studies, like Mongolian studies, faced a lack of place in the academic sub-disciplines, and lacked specialized research institutions and personnel. Most of them are still the same as in the previous period, relying on the interest and input of individual scholars in this regard. In addition, its political and strategic role after the Cold War is not important, so the research resources invested are not much, and the number of research results is declining compared with the previous two periods. However, the field has expanded, especially the integration of social sciences (such as anthropology, linguistics, sociology and political science, etc.), and the application of theories such as diaspora and collective memory. In addition, it also uses internet audio-visual technology to promote Kalmyk research, as well as to preserve and promote Kalmyk's history and culture.

On the Russian side, the centre of Kalmykville studies remains in the Republic of Kalmykia, where there are specialized academic institutions for Kalmyk-kork studies, mainly the Kalmyk Institute of Historical Philology and Orientalism of the Kalmyk State University in the capital Elista, and the Kalmyk Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Thanks to the development of the Internet, many of the latter's research results can now be downloaded on the Internet. In addition, some of Kalmyk's Russian publications have been able to reach a wider readership through English translations. For example, Elza-Bair Guchinova, a researcher at the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, is the Kalmykians, the most detailed General Treatise on the Present Situation and History of the Kalmyk Republic. She also focuses on the history and memory of the Kalmyks who were exiled during the Soviet period. In addition, Konstantin N. Maksimov, a researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences, former vice president of the Kalmyk Republic, discusses how the Kalmyks went from being a khanate with administrative autonomy to being absorbed into the Tsarist administrative system during the socialist period (including the process of being stripped and restored to autonomy), and finally gaining a new status as a republic in the Russian Federation. This book can be regarded as an important work that explores this historical process in recent years.

In European academic circles, Boani continued to pay attention to the language of Veyrat and Kalmyk, and compiled the Collected Linguistics of Weyrat and Kalmykia. In addition, she and Uwe Bläsing, a professor at the Linguistics Centre at leiden University in the Netherlands, wrote an introduction to Veyrat and Kalmykian languages in the book "Mongolian Languages" by Juha Janhunen (1952- ), a professor of linguistics at the University of Helsinki in Finland. Jan-Olof Svantesson (1944), a professor of linguistics at Lund University in Sweden, compiled and published in English translation the Kalmyk-Swedish Dictionary by Cornelius Rahmn (1785-1853), a Swedish officer who served with the Kalmyks in the 19th century.

Dittmar Schorkowitz, senior researcher in ethnology at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, focuses on kalmyk history, writing "The Process of Social and Political Organization and Inclusion of Kalmyk (Weyrat) in the 17th and Mid-19th Centuries" and "Russian Government and Nation: Integration of Buryatia and Kalmyks (1822-1925)".

Charles R. Bawden (1924-2016), a professor of Mongolian studies at the University of London, compiled an anthology of traditional Mongolian literature, which contained some of the legends of famous Kalmyks, such as The Story of Ubashontaiji and the Battle of Erut. Bowden also compiled a number of newly identified Schmid translations of Kalmyk Christian pamphlets. The Mongolian and Inner Asian Research Group in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Cambridge organized the Kalmyk Cultural Heritage Documentation, which attempts to document the endangered Kalmyk culture on the Internet and audio-visual. The programme is led by Professor Uradyn E. Bulag of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Cambridge.

In American academia, Kruger continues his contributions in this field. For example, he translated Schnitzker's Kalmyk under Ayutth Khan, and the travelogues and ethnography of the late 19th-century Danish physician Hans S. Kaarsberg (1854-1929) to the Kalmyk region. In addition, it also compiled the Tothic documents created by Smid. György Kara ,1935- former professor of Mongolian studies at Roland University in Budapest, Hungary, has also contributed to Kalmykia research in the United States after teaching in the Department of Inland Eurasian Studies at Indiana University in the 1990s. He compiled and published the school language textbooks compiled by the Kalmyks themselves from 1925 to 1930, and he also collaborated with Kruger in translating in English his famous work on Mongolian languages and books, "The Books of mongolian Nomads", and updated one-third of the original book. The book also deals with the Tote script.

In addition, in terms of Kalmyk's history, Borgoz, who taught at Kean College in New Jersey, wrote The Division of the Steppe: The Struggle for Supremacy among the Russians, Manchus, and Dzungars in Central Asia (1619-1758). Pu Depei (1949- ), a professor of history at Yale University, is the author of China's Westward Expansion: The Qing Dynasty Conquers Central Asia. Although both books are about the Dzungar Khanate, which was between Qing and Russia, both deal with the history of the Kalmyk Khanate from the 17th to the 18th centuries.

One of the major collections of Kalmyk literature in American universities is represented by the Georgij Sanji Zagadinow collection of Kalmyk materials in the University of Penn Library. Georgij Sanji Zagadinow (1925-1999), a Kalmyk emigrant to the United States, tried to compile a Kalmyk-English dictionary. After his death, he donated his collection of books and audio-visual materials to the University of Pennsylvania, a library dominated by Soviet-era Kalmyk publications, partly zagadinov manuscripts.

In addition, in order to enable The Kalmyk-Americans to preserve their culture, the Kalmyk Republic commissioned Angus K. Gillespie, a professor of folklore at Rutgers University, to conduct the Kalmyk Diaspora Archives Project, and held a series of exhibitions in 2017.

Overall, at present, in the European and American academic circles, the main contributors to Kalmyk's research are mainly the older generation of researchers. But in universities and research institutes, there is a lack of new blood to join Kalmyk's research. This also casts a shadow over the prospects of Kalmyk's research in Europe and the United States. Continued investment from the government and private sectors and the development of young researchers are imperatives.

Conclusion

To sum up, the development of Kalmyk's research in European and American academic circles can be divided into three stages, from the second half of the 17th century to the end of World War II can be regarded as the foundation period, and the collection and translation of various original materials began in this period. The Cold War period can be regarded as a period of development, although limited by the fact that the Kalmyk region is not open to the Western world, it is difficult for researchers to enter the local area, but due to the investment of the U.S. government in regional research, coupled with the Soviet Mongolian scholars and Kalmyk immigrants to the United States, kalmyk research in the United States has developed. However, since the end of the Cold War, although the Republic of Kalmykia has been opened to the outside world, due to the reduction of investment in related fields by European and American governments, and the fact that Kalmykia research has not obtained institutional guarantees in the academic sub-disciplines of Europe and the United States, it has not been able to attract new blood investment, making Kalmyk research in European and American academic circles enter a period of transition. In order to revitalize Kalmykia research in Europe and the United States, continuous investment from government and private institutions and the training of young researchers are imperative.

[Note] The article was originally titled "Review of the History of Karmak Studies in European and American Academic Circles", including Lai Yingquan et al.: "Exodus and Return: The Wandering Epic of the Kalmak Nation". For easy reading on mobile phones, notes and references are omitted.

Editor-in-charge: Li Jing