Introduction to Kalmyk art: in the prism of cross-cultural interaction

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Introduction to Kalmyk art: in the prism of cross-cultural interaction

Svetlana G. Batyreva

Abstract

Kalmyk history has contradictory character caused by many social commotions. The ethnic, ethno-cultural and trade-economic relations complete the Kalmyks' transition from the patriarchal tribal relations to feudal gradual settling on the ground. The historic conditionality of the union with agricultural peoples served as an economic basis of the Oirat annexation to Russia. It also led to cultural interaction with the Turkic Tatars, Bashkirs and the other peoples from the Volga region and from the North Caucasus. The contacts that Kalmyks had with neighboring peoples differ in time and in difficulty of the ethno-cultural interrelation, and were later revealed in various material and artistic spheres. During the transformation of the Mongol cultural substrate of the Oirats, Kalmyk art forms and develops in changing living conditions in Russia in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Kalmyc folk art was conditioned by the cultural influence of the Eurasian people, who lived within the changing territory of the folk's inhabitance. The unique originality of the folk, historical fortune determined the ethnic peculiarities of its culture. The conglomerate of Kalmyk fine arts was conditioned by many cultural layers of the complicated ethnic history. For example, in the ornament of wooden vessels there was much in common with Altai people, in clothes and headwear - with Teleuts, in metal pendants of belts - with Tuvinians, in the ornaments of both women's and men's leather belts and in the wood carving there was much in common with Tunguses. The community of ancient Turkic-Mongolian roots conditioned one social and economical basis of nomadic life for a number of nationalities such as Buryats, Kalmyks, Bashkirs, Kazakhs, Kirgizes, Karacalpacs, Altais, Tuvinians, Yakuts. Consequently there is so much in common in their dwellings, harness, arms and jewelry.

Contacts with Russians were many-sided. This has led to the alliance of the Kalmyk nomadic farming with the settled farming economy with the Russian and Ukrainian immigrants. They became more intensive during the period of wide settlement of Kalmyk population in the 2nd half of the XIX century. Architecture, wood carving, embroidery, dress, representing spheres of folk arts and crafts, were under great influence of the settled peoples. Then radical changes in the way of life (e.g. the substitution of the nomadic cattle-breeding by settled farming) caused natural process of adaptation, transformation and assimilation of Kalmyk culture in new conditions of inhabitance.

Keywords: Kalmyks, culture, tradition, folk art, cross-cultural interaction

Введение в искусство Калмыкии: в призме кросскультурного взаимодействия

Светлана Гарриевна Батырева

Аннотация

kalmyk cultural economic

Искусство Калмыкии обусловлено многими факторами. Вхождение калмыков в состав России сопровождается взаимодействием с земледельческими народами, тюрками Нижнего Поволжья и Северного Прикаспия. В этнокультурных и торгово-экономических связях происходит переход номадов от пастбищного скотоводства к постепенному оседанию на земле. Контакты, различаемые по времени и сложности, формируют материально-художественную сферу бытия. В трансформации монгольского культурного субстрата происходит развитие народного искусства в реалиях российской государственности XIX - начала XX в.

Ключевые слова: калмыки, культура, традиции, народное искусство, кросс-культурное взаимодействие

Introduction

In the review of works devoted to the traditional culture of Kalmyks, should be noted monograph written by U. Erdniev [1], and lastly, the recently published fundamental collective edition on the history and ethnography of the Kalmyks, by the Russian Academy of Sciences - “The Kalmyks” in the series of “Nations and cultures” [2].

For the reconstruction of the image of the Kalmyk cultural and artistic development, sources containing information about their congenial ethnicities are of vital importance. The description of Mongol traditional culture was obtained by European medieval travelers like W. Rubruck and G-P. Carpini [3].

We will point out some of the latest works: G. Potanin's notes taken in the nineteenth century with Derbets in West Mongolia [4], in the nineteenth and in the beginning of the twentieth centuries; A. Miller's works - in Kalmykia [5]; studies and research made by N. Zhukovsky - in Mongolia [6]; summarized treatises of the Buryat and Siberian researchers on traditional culture of Central Asian nations.

Among sources about the Kalmyk being I. Zhitezky's [7], I. Bentkovsky's [8], P. Nebolsin's [9], N. Nefedyev's [10], U. Dushan's [11. P. 5-88] observations are very significant. Furthermore, there is some material collected from the Astrakhan and Stavropol diocesan records of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, also being a useful source.

Craftwork and religious being of the Kalmyks were often combined in the prerevolutionary studies, representing a low level of knowledge in art, distinctive for that time. The absence of a differentiated approach to folk applied arts because of its lack of significance in the structure of a traditionally farming society, subsequently led to perfunctory descriptions in historical and socio-economical surveys of the Kalmyk ethnicity in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The historic and ethno-genetic premises of the formation of Kalmyk art

The development of culture in the common process of Russian history and its fundamental reformations are caused by the change of the economic-cultural type of nomadic society. The transition to a settled life in the process of adapting to the new ethno-cultural landscape occurred as the period of feudalization of the patrimonial society of Oirats consolidating into the new ethnic society of Kalmyks. Revealing the factors of art formation, it is important to distinguish “the culture of the ethnos” as a cultural phenomenon within that ethnos [12. P. 31-50].

Observing the Kalmyk history, it is essential to single out its contradictory character, caused by many social commotions. In the change of inhabitance conditions it is easy to notice that society is a self-organizing adaptive system, with its own functional and development laws. A single socio-foundational type of nomadic culture, which led the establishment of contacts between the Kalmyks and peoples of West Siberia, Irtish and the Caspian steppes, suggests its local development, manifesting itself during transitional turns of the nation's history, such as the people's adaption to the changing environment.

Kalmyks' transition from the patriarchal tribal relations to feudal gradual settlement completed in the new environment of ethnic, ethno-cultural and trade- economic relations. The settled way of life becomes an urgent necessity with the assignment of the territory to the people of Dzhungaria in the second half of the 18th century providing their non-migration.

The historic conditionality of the union with agricultural peoples served as an economic basis of the Oirat annexation to Russia. This led to the alliance of the Kalmyk nomadic farming with the settled farming economy with the Russian and Ukrainian immigrants, it also caused to cultural interaction with the Turkic Tatars, Bashkirs and the other peoples from the Volga region and the North Caucasus. The process was simplified due to the agricultural experience the Oirats had that.

Late historic interrelations complete the external developmental image of Kalmyk culture in the Russian statehood. Multiple contacts of the Oirat-Kalmyks led to the formation of multilingual ethnic layouts that merged into the Mongolian substrate in the process of ethnic consolidation. The contacts Kalmyk had with neighboring peoples differ in time and in difficulty of the ethno-cultural interrelation, and were later revealed in various material and artistic spheres. During the transformation of the Mongol cultural substrate of Oirats Kalmyk art forms and develops in changing living conditions of Russia's in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries.

Ethnic peculiarities of Kalmyk culture and fine art

Culture of Kalmyks as an original ethnic community developed in the steppes of the Caspian lowland. It became a new territory of inhabitance for the Oirats who at the beginning of the XVII century had left Dzhungariya, the north-western region of Mongolia. Ethnocultural contacts in different periods of Kalmyk's history conditioned a complicated ethnic group consisting of Mongolian-speaking Oirats and a certain number of other multilingual ethnic groups. Due to the force historical circumstances, Kalmyk culture should be considered as the result of the further development of Oirat cultural substratum. It was conditioned by the cultural influence of the Eurasian people who lived within the changing territory of the nation's inhabitance. The unique originality of the nation and historical fortune determined the ethnic peculiarities of their culture.

The ethnic history of Kalmyks includes three periods: the Mongolian (II-I century BC - XII century AD), the Oirat period (XIII-XVI centuries) and the Kalmyk period (XVII-XX centuries) [13. P. 3-16]. In this complicated conglomerate of cultures each period was characterized by certain ethnocultural relations of Oirat-Kalmyks with other tribes and nationalities of the South Syberia, the Sayano-Altai and the Far East, the Middle and Central Asia, the North Caucasus and other regions. The wide circle of the contacts was caused by the frontier inhabitance of the Oirats living in the western part of the Mongolian world which they furthered deep into Eurasia. The conglomerate of Kalmyk fine art was conditioned by many cultural layers of the complicated ethnic history. Thus, as scientists noted, the Mongolian and Oirat periods could be seen in Kalmyk folk art. For example, in the ornament of wooden vessels there was much in common with Altai people, in clothes and head-wear - with Teleuts, in metal pendants of belts - with Tuva people, in the ornaments of both women's and men's leather belts and in the wood carving there were much in common with Tunguses [14. P. 3-17].

Kalmuk culture is original. Its distinctive feature from culture of other Mongolian nationalities was caused by the isolation of Oirats from the rest of Mongolian ethnos [15]. So the Central-Asian style of such nationalities as Tuvinians, Mongols and Buryats who had many common features in the result of long interaction, was unusual for Kalmuk metal carving.

The Oirat-Kalmuk culture gained its specifity in the long process of development which took place far from the rest of Mongolian world. Almost total absence of the elements of Scythian-Siberian animal style, so typical for early nomads and genetically preceding the Central-Asian style of metal-carving [16], can be explained by the environmental influence. Stylistically completed, sensitive forms of wood-carving in the field of religious art and exactly in the zoomorphic ornament of sacrificial altars (“tahiliin shirya”) are considered by us as an unusual recollection about a disappeared tradition.

Ethnocultural interaction Kalmyks and Turkic-speaking tribes in Fine Art

Secondary, but deep by its nature, Ethnocultural interaction between Oirats and Turkic-speaking tribes (XVII-XIX cent.) determined the originality of Kalmyk fine art. The community of ancient Turkic-Mongolian roots conditioned one social and economical basis of nomadic life for a number of nationalities such as Buryats, Kalmyks, Bashkirs, Kazakhs, Kirgizes, Karacalpacs, Altais, Tuvinians, Yakuts. Consequently there is so much in common in their dwellings, harness, arms and jewelry.

The Turkic-speaking population of the North-Caucasian steppes took a special place in the ethnocultural relations of Oirats-Kalmuks with the neighbours. Thus, in the Kalmyk language there are such ethnonyms as “uulun mangad” (“tatars who live in the mountains” Karachais, Balkars); “khara mangad” (“black tatars” - “Kara-nogaitsy), “sherkesh” (Circassians, Cabardinians) [17. P. 183-186]. Thereas, the conclusion about the complicated character of relations between Kalmyks and these nations seems to be quite well-grounded. Nogai people and the North-Caucasian Turkmens brought some elements of Caucasian aboriginal culture into Kalmyk culture, because the Kalmyks kept contacts with them most of all [18. P. 48-56]. Common nomadic life and so called “strip holding” of land, so typical for Kalmyks and Turkic nations of the North Caucasus promoted it mostly.

At the same time items household, dwelling, kitchen, utensils - those parts of culture which were closely connected with the conditions of nomadic life - practically avoided the Caucasian influence. The same We can state the same about the religion, the folklore and the spiritual life in whole. Caucasian culture influenced the Kalmyk national dress doubtlessly, mostly man's and girl's dress; the way of making arms, silver belts and jewelry [19; 20. P. 51-56]. It can also be observed in such fields of Kalmyk culture as national choreography and vocabulary. Such ethnic groups as the Terek and Kuma Kalmyks were under the strongest Caucasian influence, due to very close relations between them.

The most important factors of the ethnocultural interaction were the frontier inhabitance of nations and frequent military campaigns of Kalmyks in the Caucasus, especially during the valiant military period of their Russian history [21. P. 12-69].

Russian influence in Kalmyk culture

Contacts with Russians were many-sided. They became more intensive during the period of wide settlement of Kalmyk population in the 2^nd half of the XIX century. Historically conditioned process of the Kalmyk's settling should be observed as an expression of the ethnocultural interaction between cattle-breeders and farmers (Russian and Ukrainian settlers and nations of the Volga region) [22. P. 120-133]. Kalmyks borrowed traditions of their stationary architecture [15. P. 64].

In the process of settling such fields of kalmyk culture as architecture, wood carving, embroidery, dress, representing spheres of folk arts and crafts, were under great influence of the settled nations. This contact, in contrast to more organic by its character “Caucasian” influence, led to the leveling of the traditional nomadic handcrafts in the process of the final settling. Cultural interaction was especially intensive in the places where Kalmyks lived together with the settled population of the South-Russian steppes. Great influence of different culture was traced in such ethnic groups as the Don, Orenburg and Stavropol Kalmyks, the members of the Russian Cassacks. At first the Oirat-Kalmyk traditions of stationary architecture which gave us beautiful religious buildings prevailed in ethnocultural synthesis [15. P. 64-67]. Then gradually they yielded to architectural traditions of farmers. New conditions of inhabitance furthered the destruction of nomadic culture, which originated from Dzhungariua [23. P. 34-53]. Then radical changes in the way of life (e.g. the substitution of the nomadic cattle-breeding by settled farming) caused natural process of adaptation, transformation and assimilation of the Kalmyk culture in new inhabitance conditions.

Ornament as decor and a historic-o-cultural source

Ornament is considered as the decorative essence of folk art in artistic processing of traditional materials (felt, leather, wood, metal and cloth).The national ornament makes up the whole block of valuable information and cultural communication passed on through traditional form meeting all local and aesthetic expectations. Thus, it makes sense to analyze not only art history, but use methodic possibilities of other sciences, such as history, ethnology, philosophy, cultural science, and semiotics, as well. The universal system of signs and symbols of ornamentation provides the transmission of cultural experience from generation to generation, implementing a dialogue of times within the whole tradition [24. P. 85-106].

The search and increment of common and specific cultural meanings of existence is reflected in the structuration of the artistic worldview of Kalmyk ethnos and in forms of its expression. Ornament, as a part of decor in the system of folk art, is considered by the author in the context of its artistic metamorphoses, and this allows seeing the instrument of adaptation and self-regulation of traditional culture in the conditions of the changed inhabitance.

These peculiarities can be observed in such spheres of the Kalmyk folk art as the fabric processing and in particularly the original embroidery-technic -“zeg” applique [25. P. 23-29]. So we should agree with N. Kocheskov who undertook the comparative analysis of Mongolian art and marked out the Kalmyk embroidery in the sphere of arts and crafts as an original achievement of Kalmyk art culture [26. P. 163; 14. P. 105].

The complicated process of ethnocultural interaction caused the originality of Kalmyk art. The art acquired those forms and elements of culture which corresponded to the technological possibilities of the house-made and handicraft nomad's production, to their mobile way of life and to the traditions of the house decor, costume and objects of life sphere - to the system of traditional cultural values. In other words, the possibility of borrowings was corrected by settled domestic traditions and handicraft production of the ethnos which was open to the ethnocultural interaction.

Kalmyk folk art accumulated historical art experience of nomads. The functional main point of works was expressed in the advisability of form and object's decor which made up the material sphere of nation's life [24; 27; 28. P. 36-41]. The people's aspiration for perfection and decoration of life was known since the earliest times. Wood carving and wood painting, metal treatment, leather stamping and applique, ornamentation of felt goods, embroidery in colored silver and gold threads and laces of clothes and headdresses, they all had an applied character.

To our mind, the phrase “artistic production” exactly expresses the specific character of the folk art in the aggregate of traditional arts and crafts. Since early times nomadic housekeeping had been divided into womans needle-work {making and ornamentation of thick felt, sewing and embroidery of clothes and footwear, leather treatment and decor of leather works) and men's crafts which, as a rule, were connected with making objects of hard materials (metal, horn, bone, wood and leather) and their artistic treatment.

Thus masters making furniture, utensils and wooden parts of dwellings and religious buildings were occupied with wood carving. Copper-smiths and silversmiths used technique of casting, coining and niello in making the details of harness and jewelry. Heather-dressers made vessels for «kumys» (water and milk vodka), saddle-bags, and kit-bags covering these objects with stamped and appliqued ornament.

One generation passed traditional methods of national production to other generation starting with felt prefabricated houses and finishing with its various decoration. The mobile architecture of nomads is a specific phenomenon in the world's history of architecture. It left its work on the formation of the “nomadic style” in the art of Turkic-Mongolian nations. Peculiarities this style could be seen in Kalmyk folk art which had formed by the end of the XVIII- the beginning of the XIX centuries as an original synthesis of various kinds of crafts [24. P. 14-15].

Artistic processing of traditional materials in a Kalmyk household

It is formed in The complex of crafts connected with material production and with the local system of artistic values was established during daily living activities of people. In decorative and applied arts, which cover a broad sphere of the Kalmyks' life, the aesthetic essence of traditions is reproduced by the nomads, who brought them from Western Mongolia and reinterpreted them in the process of adaptation to the changing ethno-cultural landscape and adjusted them to the new environment.

The author considers the creation of the environment as an artistic activity and as the result of spiritual activity in the historically formed system of traditional culture. The nomadic beginning of the Eurasian nomads' artistic crafts has its local peculiarities, caused by the Central Asian origin of the “isolated” ethnos which develops interrelating with foreign cultural environments. In this course the ethnic field of Kalmyk art is formed, which is expressed in decor of a functionally designated subject. Studying artistic tradition of folk art we automatically refer to the universal “cosmo-anthropologic being” of the ethno-society. “Being” in the production of material habitat is formed through myth-o-ritual tradition, representing a dominant of the nomadic artistic culture, which explains the unbreakable bond between the nomads and the natural environment.

The standard form of the object in the semantically symbolic value of the communicational system of the ethnos assumes referral to the genesis of folk art. It is fulfilled through the study of art and its following categories: sign, symbol, ritual and myth. The author uses “the language of culture”, as a means of material “entity that can be perceived,” - summarizes G. Gadamer [29. P. 119].

Researching crafts as a means and the result of spiritual-practical mastering of the reality, the author comes to understanding the unity of the nomads' household environment. Its artistic reproduction is determined by the progressive development of the authentic tradition, mediated by the evolution of consciousness the ethnos, thus excluding direct cultural loans, which occur in a new ethnocultural and national landscape [30. P. 4-7].

The artistic image of things is seen through a genesis prism “from totem to a human” incorporating the semiotics of traditional arts and crafts [19. P. 13-14]. The creation of living environment as a set of objects that are functionally designated is studied in the artistic process occurring in the definite historic reality. So a holistic, artistic phenomenon of “form” appears and it meets all moral and ethical standards and aesthetic ideas of the ethnicity.

The form-shaping in evolution of the ethnic consciousness marks the composition of main complexes of the household objects created by using traditional methods of processing all traditional stock farming materials of the nomads, such as leather, wood, metal, cloth, felt. According to the author, the quality identifying the succession of artistic tradition and the specifity of its development, is the whole constructive basis of household objects in sets of tools, household items, dwellings and clothes. The historical reconstruction shows us the presence of identity in functional and aesthetic aspects in phenomena of the different material culture.

Conclusion

Kalmyk fine arts of the XVIII-XIX centuries is determined with original expressiveness. Kalmyk art culture possesses a number of peculiarities which allow us to consider Kalmyk art as a phenomenon not only in the art of related Mongols and Buryats, but in the nomadic art as whole [14. P. 3-17]. First of all, its originality was conditioned by the ornament which synthesized all the historical peripitia of the nation's fortune in itself. The ornamental culture of Kalmyks is characterized by the laconism of composition, polychrome of coloring, accentuated by the graphical impressiveness of the tracery. The development of Kalmyk fine art has its own rhythm in the division of space-time, associated with the concept of the “Path” as the essence of life. It is reflected in the symbolism of the folk ornament. The figurative system of folk ornament, which concentrated the historical rhythm of the nomadic being in the archetypal form of meander “Zeg”, is marked by the spatio-temporal parameters of the myth-poetic attitude [24. P. 18-19].

Kalmyk fine art of the 19th and early 20th centuries is a self-organizing cultural subsystem, it has been preserving tradition as a specific informative code in ethnical culture in the cyclic process of spiral development, which allows determine it as the traditional and cultural heritage of Kalmykia.

References