Czech Jesuit Jan Milan (1662-1737) and Kalmyks in the context of other Christian missions and missionary linguistics among Kalmyks in the Russian Empire
Abstract
In the beginning of the 17th century the nomadic Kalmyks have joined the Russian Empire. Since that period were detected attempts to convert the Buddhist and shamanistic Mongolian-speaking Kalmyks to Christianity. It was involved in the process of creating the Kalmyk grammar. In 1699, on the way from Moscow to Taganrog, the Czech Jesuit Jan Milan (1662-1737) appeared in the Kalmyk steppes and wrote the manuscript "Missio Asoviensis et Taganrokensis" about his experiences.
In the 18th-19th In the 19th century there was a process of collecting material in the Kalmyk language, which enabled Russian and European missionaries and scientists to create various dictionaries and grammars. Although non-orthodox missionaries were forbidden to spread their faith in Russia, missionaries from the Moravian Church, who founded the settlement of Sarepta in the Volga region, tried to convert the Kalmyks. Johann Conrad Neitz (1743-1815) also described the Kalmyk language. In Sarepta also worked other linguists such as Isaak Schmidt (1779-1847), author of the grammar of the Mongolian language, who also translated the Bible into Kalmyk and Mongolian, and Heinrich August Zwick (1796-1885), author of a Kalmyk grammar and dictionary . The result of the Orthodox mission was a grammar of the Mongolian-Kalmyk language, written by the missionary and linguist Alexey Aleksandrovich Bobronikov (1822-1865). He translated the catechism and biblical history and developed theological terminology in Kalmyk. The aim of our contribution is to present the unknown Czech Jesuit Jan Milan and his work and to compare it with the work of Protestant and Orthodox missionaries among the Kalmyks in the 18th and 19th centuries.