Diasporas have always interested me. Perhaps it comes from my maternal grandmother's parents, a Hungarian Gypsy and a Romanian Jew who met on the boat to Ellis Island. A while ago, I saw a documentary on the Kalmyks, an Asiatic people living on the Western shore Caspian Sea. I came across this interesting article today:
Here's a brief history of the Kalmyks, from the above article:
- "A group of Mongols who migrated from western China 400 years ago, the Kalmyks brought Tibetan Buddhism, formed an alliance with the czar and settled in a patch of open steppe near the Volga River. During World War II, dictator Josef Stalin grew suspicious of their loyalty and exiled all 100,000 of them to Siberia. After 1957, they were allowed back — but by then their temples had been razed and their traditions tattered."
Here's a map, from KALMYK.BIZ (in English and Korean):
Here's the Our Father in the Kalmyk language, first in in the native Kalmyk script, then in Cyrillic, from Pater Noster, which has the prayer in 1284 languages and dialects:
