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Sensing “Place”: Performance, Oral Tradition, and Improvization in the Hidden Temples of Mountain Altai

The snow-capped Altai Mountain range runs from southern Siberia in the Russian Federation, southwards through West Mongolia, eastern Kazakhstan, and the Xinjiang autonomous region of Northwest China, before finally coming to rest in Southwest Mongolia. This essay is based on fieldwork undertaken in 2010 in that part of the Altai Mountains that in 1990 became the Republic of Altai, a unit of the Russian Federation.1 The Altaians, known previously as Kalmyks and Oirots, engage in a complex of spiritual beliefs and practices known locally as Ak Jang (“White Way”)2 and in academic literature as Burkhanism. Whether this movement was messianic, nationalist, or spiritual and whether it was a continuation of indigenous beliefs and practices or a syncretic mixture of local beliefs (Altai Jang), Buddhism, Manichaeism, Zoroastrianism, and Orthodox Christianity have been argued Oral Tradition, 27/2 (2012): 291-318