Kalmucks, a Mongolian race of people, scattered throughout central Asia, and extending westwards into southern Russia. The name is not employed by the people themselves, but by the Turkic races of Asia and the Russians to designate the Dörbön (Derbend) Oirad or Four Allied tribes of the Zungars, Torgod (Keraits or Eleuths), Khoshod, and Dörböd, who live in Zungaria; around Koko-nor in north-east Tibet; in the district called Ordus, within the great loop of the Yellow River of China; on the western slopes of the Altai (in Kuldja, &c.); and in the steppes between the Don and the Volga and Caspian. These tribes constitute that great division of the Mongol race known as Western Mongols. They are nomads, possessing large herds of horses, cattle, and sheep. Their physical characteristics are those peculiar to the Mongolian race (see MONGOLS). In religion they are nearly all adherents of Lamaism. Their language differs from true or Eastern Mongolian only in being more phonetic; but they have an alphabet of their own. Their literature consists principally of religious books and folk and fairy tales. In recent centuries the most noteworthy events in their history arose out of the emigration of a large band of the Torgod from Zungaria into Russia in 1650. This band was followed by others composed of Dörböd in 1673 and of Khoshod in 1675. Under Ayuka Khan (1670-1724) the Kalmucks figured as an important factor in Russian politics, sometimes as enemies, sometimes as allies. But in 1771 a large body of them, chiefly Torgod and Khoshod, being dissatisfied with the treatment they received at the hands of Russia, returned to the empire of China; after a march in which they endured terrible sufferings, they settled at Ili among the Altai Mountains. See the brilliant account of the miseries of this march by De Quincey (vol. vii. of Collected Works). But there still remain some 110,000 Kalmucks in European Russia; in Asiatic Russia there are probably 55,000 more. The number within the Chinese empire is not known.
Specimens of Kalmuck fairy tales can be read in Jülg's edition of the Siddhi-Kur (1866) and in vol. i. of Bergmann's Nomadische Streifereien unter den Kalmüken (1804).