Information about the oirads – or as later sources often call them, “the Four oirads” – is available from the 13th century onward. Their ancestral home (simi-larly to the Buryads) was probably the southern strip of the forest belt, west – southwest of Lake Baikal. Large groups of their forebears probably lived around the river-head of the yenisei – the “land of the eight rivers”19 as Persian Rašīd
15 Summary of theories: Zlatkin 1983: 19–24.
16 The name Dörwöd presumably derives from dörwn (mong. dörben) “four” also included in the designation of the alliance of the clans or tribes (see dörben oyirad). myangad, mingad meaning
“thousands” (myanga) is another numeral, probably alluding to a military division. The name Bayid is traced to turkic-mongolian bayan “rich.” Zakhchin can be verified as meaning “frontier guard”,
“one moved to the border”; upon imperial order some ethnic group fragments were selected and resettled in their present locations along the borders to render frontier defence services in the manchu period. The Khotons are an agrarian people of turkic origin coming from turkestan. They were moved to the territory of mongolia in the time of the Jungar Empire their name alluding to their being “town-dwellers” (xot). The clan name Uriankhai already features in the Secret History of the Mongols. The interesting folk etymological explanation of the name, well exemplifying name-giving by a neighbouring clan or ethnic group, is “the torn[-clothed ones]” (mong. uru- “get torn”).
17 http://www.toollogo2010.mn/doc/main%20results_20110615_to%20EZBH_for%20print.pdf (last downloaded: January 2012)
18 Zlatkin 1983; okada 1987: 181–211; Cerel passim; also Halkovic 1985.
19 Ketagurov 1952: 181–182.
22
ad-Dīn called the area in his Collection of Chronicles – belonging to the forest peoples (mong. hoi-yin irgen). In the 13th century the oirads left their original home on the edge of the forest belt and “moved” to the grassy steppe, which also entailed a change of lifestyles. By the 14th century they were gathered in an alliance verging on statehood and they played an important role in the history of Inner Asia for a long time after their appearance. The heyday of the oirads was the time of the Jungar Empire or the Khanate20 of Jungaria (mid-17th c. – mid-18th c.). The power of the empire reached its apogee during the reign of Galdan (1670–1697), Cewangrabdan (1697–1727) and Galdanceren (1727–1745).
However, the “campaign of the three emperors” between 1718 and 1739 and the campaign of 1754–1759 sealed the fate of the Jungar Empire, all resistance was crushed in 1759 and Eastern turkestan came under manchu sway (called xinjiang
“New frontier”).
Buddhism played a significant role among the oirads. A decisive figure of oirad, and mongolian, culture and Buddhism was the creator of the oirad script (mong.
todo üsüg; oir. todorxoi üzüq) Zaya Pandita, oqtorγuyin dalai (1599–1662).
The oirads managed to preserve their relative independence within the man-chu empire, and today when they are more and more integrated in the language-environment they live in, they still keep up several of the specific features of their culture and cherish the awareness that they descend from one or another oirad clan.
BIBLIoGrAPHy
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Birtalan Ágnes – Rákos Attila 2002: Kalmükök – Egy európai mongol nép. [Kalmyks – A European mongol People.] /tExterebess, 1./ terebess Kiadó, Budapest.
Birtalan, Ágnes – Sárközi, Alice (eds) 1997: Hungarian Explorers of mongolia in the twentieth Century. In A New Dialogue between Central Europe and Japan. Institute for Social Conflict Research, HAS – The International Research Center for Japanese Studies, Budapest–Kyoto, pp. 119–122.
Cerel, B. 1997: Dörwön oirad ba oiradīn xolbōnd bagtax ündesten yastangūdīn ugsā tǖxīn jarim asūdal. [Some Questions of the origin and History of the Four oirads and the Clans Belonging to the oirad League.] Uws – (without publisher), Ulānbātar.
Chabros, Krystyna 1993: The xinjiang oirad in the 1990s: A Preliminary Report. Etno-grafia Polska, xxxVII (2), pp. 159–164.
20 miyawaki 1990.
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Dor, Pawla 1990: Xar golin xal'mgud boln tednä keln. [The Kalmyks of Khar-gol and Their Language.] Without publisher, Elst.
Halkovic, Stephen. A. Jr. 1985: The Mongols of the West. /Indiana University Uralic and Altaic Series, 148./ Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies Indiana University, Bloomington: Indiana.
Hoppe, thomas 1995: Die ethnischen Gruppen Xinjiangs: Kulturunterschiede und intereth-nische Beziehungen. Institut für Asienkunde, Hamburg.
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Kara, G. 1959: Notes sur les dialectes oirat de la mongolie occidentale. Acta Orientalia Hung., VIII., pp. 111–168.
Ketagurov, L. A. 1952: Rašid-ad-din, Sbornik Letopisej. tom I. 1. Nauka, moskva – Lenin-grad.
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Sinor, Denis. Indiana University, Bloomington: Indiana, pp. 142–153.
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Herding, marriages, Funeral and the Gerten. Journal of the Anglo-Mongolian Society, xII. pp. (1–2), 47–63.
Süngrüb–Sečenbilig 1989: Alašan-u ǰang aγali. [Customs and traditions in Alša.] Öbör mongγol-un Arad-un Keblel-ün Qoriy-a, Kökeqota.
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Internet source
http://www.toollogo2010.mn/doc/main%20results_20110615_to%20EZBH_for%20print.pdf (Last downloaded: 07. 01. 2012)
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IntroduCtIon to oIrad dIaleCtology
The present article – as an introduction to oirad dialectology – is not intended to discuss the details of oirad dialects or establish new theories and solutions for open questions concerning oirad linguistic researches. It is merely aimed to briefly summarize the position of oirad among mongolian languages, draw an outline of some common features characteristic to oirad dialects and describe the short history of former researches. Although several features and examples of various oirad dialects are provided here, most of the presented material is based on the Altai oirad dialects.