Messages about Gifts in 18th Century Kalmyk Official Texts: A Case Study of Khan Ayuka’s Letters and Their Russian Translations

Introduction. Gift exchange is a culturally marked behavioral stereotype that often serves an essential element of traditional customs and rites among various peoples. Gift acts as an additional communication means to establish and maintain good relations: it is the regulating function which is viewed somewhat central therein by anthropology, culturology, social psychology, and ethnolinguistics. Monuments of 18th century Kalmyk official writing — and specifically letters by Khan Ayuka — contain messages about gifts to be delivered to the addressee by his envoys, and thus can provide information on gifting etiquette and introduce materials on culturally marked language units. Goals. The article attempts an analysis of messages about gifts in Khan Ayuka’s 1688 –1719 official letters and their Russian translations stored at the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts. Materials and methods. The mentioned documents are examined for translation strategies of culture specific terms with the aid of both synchronous and diachronous Russian texts. The study employs the descriptive, comparative methods, and that of contextual analysis. Results. The conventionally laconic messages about gifts take final positions — and almost never a central one. Explication of the addressee as a recipient of the gift is usually avoided only to be included when it comes to explain the reason of gifting. Language materials contain culture specific units denoting such gifts. Khan Ayuka’s letters reflect the tradition of gifting horses, upper garments, cloths, some other elements. The culturally marked lexemes (including non-equivalent ones) to shape the semantic field of gift are however distinguished by the word combination arčiultai idēn with still unclear denotative meanings. So, the synchronous Russian translations with gift givers, recipients and gifts proper identified exactly enough the phrase is articulated as a ‘kerchief of berries’ which on the one side clarifies the extralinguistic basis of the item but on the other side fills far not all semantic gaps of the ethnolinguistic concept.

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