Buryats

Buryat (Buryatian)
ᠪᠤᠷᠢᠶᠠᠳ; Буряад; Buryaad
	Flag of Buryatia
	A Buryat wrestling match during the Altargana Festival
Total population
	556,000
Regions with significant populations
Russia	460,053
Buryatia	295,273
Irkutsk Oblast	74,746
Zabaykalsky Krai	65,590
Mongolia	43,661
China	10,000–70,000
Languages
	Buryat (L1);; Russian, Mongolian
Religion
	Buddhism, Orthodox Christianity, Mongolian shamanism
Related ethnic groups
	Other Mongolic peoples

The Buryats (Buryat: Буряад, romanized: Buryaad, Buryat script: ᠪᠣᠷᠢᠶᠠᠳ; Mongolian: Буриад, romanized: Buriad; Russian: буряты, romanized: buryaty) are a Mongolic ethnic group native to southeastern Siberia who speak the Buryat language. They are one of the two largest indigenous groups in Siberia, the other being the Yakuts. The majority of the Buryats today live in their titular homeland, the Republic of Buryatia, a federal subject of Russia which sprawls along the southern coast and partially straddles Lake Baikal. Smaller groups of Buryats also inhabit Ust-Orda Buryat Okrug (Irkutsk Oblast) and the Agin-Buryat Okrug (Zabaykalsky Krai) which are to the west and east of Buryatia respectively as well as northeastern Mongolia and Inner Mongolia, China.^[5] They traditionally formed the major northern subgroup of the Mongols.^[9]

Buryats share many customs with other Mongols, including nomadic herding, and erecting gers for shelter. Today the majority of Buryats live in and around Ulan-Ude, the capital of the Buryat Republic, although many still follow a more traditional lifestyle in the countryside. They speak a central Mongolic language called Buryat.^[10] UNESCO's 2010 edition of the Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger classifies the Buryat language as "severely endangered".^[11]

^ ^a ^b "Buryat | Mongolia, Siberia, Shamanism | Britannica".
^ "Национальный состав населения". Federal State Statistics Service. Retrieved 30 December 2022.
^ "2020 POPULATION AND HOUSING CENSUS OF MONGOLIA /summary/". Archived from the original on 2021-07-15.
^ "China Radio International, 2006". Archived from the original on 2016-03-03. Retrieved 2013-01-19.
^ ^a ^b ^c Skutsch, Carl, ed. (2005). Encyclopedia of the World's Minorities. New York: Routledge. p. 251. ISBN 1-57958-468-3.
^ Chackars, Melissa (November 2020). Copp, Paul; Wedemeyer, Christian K. (eds.). "Buddhism and the Siberian Buryat Chronicles: Stories of Origin, Rivalry, and Negotiation in the Russian Empire". History of Religions. 60 (2). University of Chicago Press for the University of Chicago Divinity School: 81–102. doi:10.1086/710574. JSTOR 00182710. LCCN 64001081. OCLC 299661763. S2CID 229366370.
^ Cite error: The named reference :03 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^ Cite error: The named reference Quijada was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^ The New Encyclopædia Britannica, 15th Edition. (1977). Vol. II, p. 396. ISBN 0-85229-315-1.
^ "Invalid id". Ethnologue.com. Archived from the original on 2006-05-12. Retrieved 2012-08-13.
^ "UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in danger". www.unesco.org. Retrieved 2019-04-19.