This article examines the organizational experience and operational specifics of the Tsanit-Chor Higher Theological School, located in the Maloderbetovsky Ulus (district) of the Kalmyk Steppe in the early 20th century. The primary sources for this study include petitions from clergy, reports from ulus trustees, administrative correspondence from authorities at all levels, audit reports, and statutory and program materials found in the collections of the National Archives of the Republic of Kalmykia. The article describes the school’s administrative structure, the curriculum of the theology and Tibetan medicine departments, student population trends, and personnel decisions conditioned by administrative oversight. The article focuses on the initial stages of the establishment of Tsanit-Chor, including the role of Agvan Dorzhiev, the choice of location, the formation of the school’s resources, and funding sources. The study devotes particular attention to the acute and sensitive issue of the existing contradictions surrounding the inclusion of the Russian language in the curriculum of higher theological schools. Specifically, it presents and analyzes the arguments of the authorities who insisted on its inclusion in the curriculum, as well as the fundamental position of the Buddhist clergy, who defended the traditional model of clerical training. This position of the Buddhist clergy, it appears, reflected the desire of the national elite and the spiritual community of the Kalmyk steppe to preserve their religious identity. The imperial authorities’ proposal to include the study of Russian in the curriculum of the Buddhist school reflected nothing less than a desire to achieve rapid cultural and religious integration and unification, as well as to strengthen the unity of the peoples of the multinational Russian Empire, through the study and knowledge of the language and culture of the state-forming people. In conclusion, the author concludes that, despite the complexity of the issue, the authorities and the Buddhist clergy nevertheless managed to reach a mutually acceptable consensus. Ultimately, the existing organizational, administrative, and other difficulties did not prevent Tsanit-Chor from beginning its work: it managed to recruit a sufficient number of Kalmyk students from nearby uluses (districts), establish a generally organized educational process, and thereby lay the foundation for the systematic training of Buddhist clergy in the Kalmyk steppe. Our analysis and presentation of the complex process of organizing and operating Tsanit-Chor in the early 20th century allowed us to clearly understand the specific nature of state-confessional relations of that era.

Based on archival materials introduced into scholarly circulation for the first time, this article examines the process of the closure of the higher Buddhist philosophical school “Tsanit-Chore” (Tsannid-Choyra) in the Kalmyk Autonomous Oblast in the 1920s. The research is grounded in a body of documents from the holdings of the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF) and the National Archive of the Republic of Kalmykia (NARK), including protocols of spiritual congresses, charter documents, administrative correspondence, and resolutions of Soviet bodies. Analysis of these materials allows for the reconstruction of the complex picture of interaction between the Buddhist clergy, lay believers, and Soviet authorities during a turning point in Russian history. It is shown that the closure of the school was not a single act or the result of a direct prohibitive directive, but rather a multifactorial process in which the economic difficulties of the post-revolutionary period, internal contradictions within the Buddhist community (a split between conservatives and renovationists), consistent administrative pressure, and systematic ideological struggle were all intertwined. Particular attention is paid to the contradiction between the formal declaration of freedom of religion in Soviet legislation and the actual measures aimed at the elimination of Buddhist educational institutions. The author concludes that the fate of Tsanit-Chore became a telling example of how religious educational traditions were destroyed under the combined influence of external and internal factors in the early Soviet state. on a set of documents

The shezhire phenomenon is perceived as the historical and genealogical memory of the Turkic peoples. The most widely used information in the historical and genealogical body of knowledge is the category of personal names. The various types of personal names used by different peoples reflect the historical characteristics of their origins, the linguistic uniqueness of the ethnic group, its worldview, economic and everyday life, social system, social structure, military art, ideas about nature, customs, everyday life and traditions, material culture, including clothing, jewelry, housing, means of communication, transportation, decorative objects, etc. Due to cultural and religious influences, some peoples use as personal names not only names from their own native language but also from the languages of other surrounding peoples. In this regard, it is especially important to note that the shezhire materials of the Kazakhs, preserved in the form of oral history, historical legends, and genealogical memory, undoubtedly contain valuable information about their historical, linguistic, and cultural roots and connections. The relevance of this research article lies in its analysis of a corpus of historical, ethnographic, and ethnolinguistic data, based on Turkic shezhire (literally, “shezhire”), within the context of historical, cultural, and linguistic research. Specifically, genealogical sources provide an opportunity to, to a certain extent, reveal the historical nature and lexical layer of the Kazakh language and provide important information about the customs, traditions, material culture, and spiritual life of the Kazakh people.

The scientific significance of this study lies in our systematization, based on shezhire materials, of the conceptual and categorical apparatus of ethnocultural terminology related to clothing, jewelry, and accessories.

This article introduces, for the first time in Mongolian studies, works devoted to the origins of tobacco and its harmful effects. It begins with an overview of the history of recording, publishing, and researching Kalmyk legends about tobacco.

Stories about the origins of tobacco are widespread in global oral traditions, where its creation is often attributed to demonic forces. In Mongolian culture, attitudes toward tobacco are ambivalent: on the one hand, it is an integral part of etiquette and rituals, symbolizing respect and hospitality; on the other, household smoking is viewed with restraint due to awareness of the health risks, which is reflected in regulations.

Mongolian folklore offers various versions of the origin of tobacco: some associate its creation with Genghis Khan, others with incest between a brother and sister. Written sources, in turn, indicate that tobacco originated from a drop of blood from an evil spirit (shulmuski). The aim of this study is a comparative examination of legends about the origins of tobacco and its harmful effects in the oral and written traditions of the Mongols. The study employs comparative and descriptive methods. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of a manuscript from private collections in the Lagan region, which is brief compared to its Tibetan original.

The results of the study demonstrate that genetically related narratives contribute to a deeper understanding of the motives and meanings of legends about tobacco and its harmful effects.

This article examines the experience of the Republic of Kalmykia (Russian Federation) in preserving, developing, and promoting the Jangar epic as a cultural innovation product. The Jangar epic is a unique monument of oral folklore of the Mongolian peoples, which has been preserved among the Kalmyks, Mongols, and Oirats of China. In the context of globalization and cultural unification, the issue of preserving national languages and cultures is becoming particularly relevant. Kalmykia’s experience demonstrates an effective model for transforming an epic heritage into an active element of modern culture through state policy, modern methods of training storytellers, integration into education, use of digital technologies, development of cultural tourism, and international cooperation. The article analyzes the main directions of Kalmykia’s cultural policy, the system of training modern jangarchi, the reflection of the epic in visual arts and stage works, and the place of Kalmykia in international Jangar studies. Based on this analysis, conclusions and recommendations are formulated for Mongolia and other regions where the epic heritage is preserved.

Didactic literature of the past occupies a special place in the history of the development of the written culture of the peoples of Central Asia, in particular, such a peculiar genre as subhashitas. Compiled on the model of ancient Indian didactic writings (nitishastra), moral sayings of an edifying nature are instructions of the “two rules” concerning the norms of ethical behavior in secular and spiritual life in the context of Buddhist Dharma, useful for both laymen and monks. This article is a continuation of many years of work devoted to the study of the “Subhashita” in the original and in translation into Russian. It provides an overview of the research on the “Subhashita” as an important object in the academic field of Oriental Studies. This monument of Tibetan literature has been the subject of scholarly research both in our country and abroad (Mongolia, China, Hungary, and elsewhere). The scientific novelty of this article lies in its systematic analysis of the Oirat version and its comprehensive characterization. The title “Sayitur nomloxui erdeniyin sang” (or Sayin üge-tü erdeni-yin sang) refers to the “Treasure of Elegant Sayings”, which is the prominent Oirat literary translation on todo bichig (“Clear Script”) of the famous Tibetan didactic text (Legs par bshad pa rin po che’i gter), widely known as the Subhashita, functioning both as a literary masterpiece and a practical ethical guide, composed by the Tibetan scholar Sakya Pandita (1182–1251).

The article examines the Buddhist philosophy of consciousness through a comparative analysis with key trends in Western thought: Husserl’s phenomenology, analytical philosophy, and modern cognitive neuroscience. The work focuses on a comprehensive comparative analysis of the reception, transformation, and structural similarities between Buddhist philosophy and the Western intellectual tradition. The article primarily explores the concepts of “stream of consciousness, “the absence of a permanent self (anatman), and intentionality in the Buddhist school of Yogacara. The author demonstrates how the Buddhist epistemological approach anticipates modern discussions about the nature of qualia. It is shown that Buddhist philosophy of consciousness is not an archaic historical artifact, but a living system of thought that can engage in a fruitful and equal dialogue with Western science and philosophy. The study shows that the integration of the Buddhist tradition into modern philosophical discourse can contribute to the development of new methodological tools for overcoming subject-object dualism in the Western tradition while preserving the ontological, epistemological, and soteriological depth of the Buddhist teachings. The article is intended for researchers in the history of philosophy, religious studies, and intercultural dialogue.

The article is devoted to an analysis of the future as a distinct mode of the temporal structure of consciousness, comparing the Buddhist doctrine of momentariness (kṣaṇikavāda) and Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology of internal time. The initial problem concerns the question of how the experience of the future is possible if consciousness is conceived not as a continuous substantial duration, but as a stream of momentarily arising and perishing states. It is shown that the phenomenological concept of protention allows us to describe the future as a horizon of expectation and anticipation rooted in the actual “now.” In Husserl’s phenomenology, protention is inseparably linked with retention, forming the unity of the temporal flow. Buddhist philosophy radicalizes this problem: the illusion of temporal duration is connected to the activity of the mind (manas), which mistakenly ascribes stability to the stream of dharmas. Consequently, the future is regarded not as an independent ontological domain, but as a dependently arising structure of experience conditioned by memory, expectation, intention, and karmic causality. In Buddhism, the future turns out to be a function of current mental states and their karmic consequences. It is concluded that the Buddhist worldview does not eliminate the problem of the future but rather shifts it from the plane of objective physical time to the plane of the analysis of consciousness, causality, and becoming, offering an alternative to substantialist models of temporality.