2022 was a good year for English translations of Central Asian epic. Daniel Prior’s The Memorial Feast for Kökötöy Khan: A Kirghiz Epic Poem in the Manas Tradition (London, 2022) provides students their best point of entry into Kirghiz oral epic. Saglar Bougdaeva’s volume takes up less space but offers a similarly helpful starting point for the Epic of Jangar, an oral tradition that “although recorded in Mongol-inhabited regions throughout Inner Asia … is most prevalent among Oirat Mongols of Xinjiang (PRC) and Kalmykia (Russia), especially Torghuts, for whom it plays a significant social role” (Michael Long, “Finding the ‘Epic of Jangar’: The Literary Construction of an Early Oirat Epic in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region,” Asian Ethnicity (2021) 22: 90–104, at p. 92).
This volume provides translations of eleven poems by the Kalmyk bard (jangarchi) Eelian Ovla (1857–1920). The poems concern the exploits of the hero Jangar and his associates. In 1910, Nomto Ochirov published his textualized version of Ovla’s poems (Bougdaeva 2022: 4). A bilingual Kalmyk/Russian text appearing in 1990 presumably updated Ochirov’s publication (Bougdaeva is not clear on this point), and Bougdaeva bases his translation on that 1990 volume (27). Bougdaeva doesn’t go into what Ochirov and the editors of the 1990 publication did to Ovla’s poetry in the process of textualization (see Chao Gejin, Oral Epic Traditions in China and Beyond, London, 2022, at pp. 97–98), but at least we have the work of one poet, not a composite text. And a “famed” (3) poet at that: myriad factors account for the monument to Eelian Ovla in Elista, the capital of Kalmykia, but his being a skilled practitioner is one of them.
Bougdaeva checks the boxes I need checked if I am going to assign a translation of a modern oral epic to undergraduates. First, translating into free verse, Bougdaeva produces a lively, readable text that mimics the compactness and rapidity of the Kalmyk line.
If you appreciate the cute roundness
Of the baby camel poop,
Then you may grasp the value
Of the earring design in its shape. (40)
*
Khongor pulled her aorta, wrapping it around
His finger three times:
“Tell me at once!” he demanded. (118)
*
Khoshun replied:
“Impossible! I am a little filthy boy.
How can I eat the entire leg of a horse?
You fed your big black
Shepherd dog, not me.” (243)
Second, Bougdaeva uses the same words in presenting repeated action sequences: arming, hobbling or saddling a horse, feasting and drinking, holding a whip, enduring a long journey, entering a palace––the translator makes clear that the poet says the same thing in the same way. These repetitions illuminate the oral poet’s compositional mechanisms.
Other components of this volume make it suitable for an undergraduate syllabus. Each of the poems stands on its own. Like the material presented in Arthur T. Hatto’s magisterial edition of Manas poems (Wiesbaden, 1990) or in John D. Smith’s classic translation of the Epic of Pabuji (Cambridge, 1991), one or two of these Jangar poems will slot neatly into a syllabus. I might recommend “How Scarlet Lion Khongor Defeated Khan Iron Head Mangna” (127–138) for its depiction of a dispute between Jangar and his mates about how to handle the threat posed by Mangna Khan. “How Mingian, the Finest Man in the Universe, Stole Ten Thousand Pintos from Turk Khan” (151–174) pairs well with “How Mingian, the Finest Man in the Universe, Captured Mighty Kurmen Khan” (177–195): the poet deploys many of the same motifs and scenes and repeats chunks of texts verbatim.
Students will be able to compare this epic with other Central Asian epics––consider the wrestling matches, the talking horses, the timely interventions by female characters in the political field––but cross-cultural comparisons will prove fruitful as well. The couplet “Without bending high field grass, / Without waving low field grass” (63) could come from Cik Ait’s Guritan of Radin Suane (South Sumatra). Khongor’s cutting Togya and Zanda in half (78–79) recalls the South Slavic hero Tale of Orašac’s preferred method of execution. Passages depicting a character’s internal deliberations (e.g., 61, 80) bring to mind similar scenes in the Homeric epics. Khongor’s turn as a jangarchi in the palace of Fierce White Zula (93–94) should be juxtaposed with the many other instances in oral epics in which a hero takes on the role of bard (e.g., the Russian bylina “Dobrynja and Vasilij Kasimirov”).
Potential paper topics abound. A good one would be the heroic body’s distinct lack of fragility: “Five thousand spears / Pierced Lion Khongor’s back” (121) … to no discernible effect. “The lance pierced through Mangna’s body. / Jangar raised Mangna Khan above his horse” (137) … but Mangna Khan walks away. “Mingian stabbed Kurmen with the sword, / Turning it in his stomach seventy-one times” (191) … Kurmen survives. Only by dismembering and burning Leopard Mergen’s corpse can Mingian forestall his opponent’s “magical recovery” (193; cf. 205, 247). Similarly intriguing are the moments in which a hero transforms his horse “Into a scrubby [or: shabby] colt / And himself into a filthy boy” (84, 164, 188) or morphs into an animal: “he [Mingian] turned Sharga [his horse] into a femur bat / and himself into a spider with four pairs of legs” (166); “Mingian turned himself / Into a venomous snake” (190). The volume urges one to consider how epics achieve their vividness through the depiction of volitional, transitive actions: “He placed a saddle pillow on the ground, / Helped the woman sit on the silver-stitched cushion, / Opened her mouth with the sandalwood whip handle, / And saw two blue needles pierced across her throat. Clutching the sharp ends with his thumb and index fingers, / Mingian removed the needles” (162). Students will also find a lot of material to work with regarding the epic’s depictions of time and space, as the section titled “Hero, Space, Time” in Bougdaeva’s introductory essay suggests.
Researchers will note that this volume testifies to the continued desire to prove and preserve a community’s distinct identity via epic. The thinking is that you constitute a distinct community if you have your own epic, so get that epic out into the world. The back cover depicts this book as “an important step in the Kalmyk people’s struggle for cultural survival following Soviet repression.” Compare how Natalie Kononenko positions her Ukrainian Epic and Historical Song: Folklore in Context (Toronto, 2019) as an effort to stand up to Russian aggression (see my review in JFRR, published February 11, 2021).
The publisher, University of California Press, should have put more energy into copyediting. Quotation marks do not appear at the conclusion of several speeches by characters (99, 128, 130, 147, 198, 200, 242, 248). One too many awkward bits mar the translation: “Was braided to appeal your attention” (39), “Pleasing and tempting to merrymaking” (e.g., 43), “Who is he equal in strength?” (68), “How does Princess Zanda look like?” (70), “Khongor slowly dragged on a horseback” (81), “Bleeding, Khongor lost his consciousness” (134), “The blade crushed Savar’s both shoulder blades” (135), “Trembling the lowland swamps” (167), “Making a sound of one hundred thousand galloping army” (167), “We lost the passing of time / in the multi-tiered palace buzzed with excitement” (173), “Brushing Sanal’s silver curves back” (198)––none of these is (quite) right in English. “Don’t haste [me]” (73) would be suitable for Shakespeare or Milton. “Were owed by his divine beauty” (100): awed, not owed. UC Press owes it to the author to print a corrected edition as soon as possible. Missteps of this sort confound and estrange students.
I was puzzled by the number of non-English entries in the further-reading section of the introduction given that this book aims to attract an Anglophone audience. Several of the titles listed in that section are English translations of the original language title, and, when you type that English title into Google, you get nothing. Readers should have been directed to Chao Gejin’s 2001 article in the journal Oral Tradition. (And now one can consult Chao’s 2022 book, cited earlier.) Again, the Press is at fault here: someone should have provided Bougdaeva with better guidance.
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[Review length: 1365 words • Review posted on November 19, 2023]