Jangar is the central epic of the Kalmyk people and is shared, with regional variation, across the wider Oirat Mongolic peoples of Central Asia. Its setting is Bumba, a land described as free from old age, sickness and death, ruled by the hero Jangar, and its cantos generally follow a repeating pattern in which some threat, whether a hostile khan, a monstrous adversary or an internal betrayal, endangers Bumba's peace, and Jangar or one of his named companions rides out to meet it.
Because the cantos are largely self-contained rather than building toward a single final resolution, Jangar has a modular structure: different performers traditionally know and perform different selections from the larger cycle, and no canonical total number of cantos is agreed upon across all versions, with recorded compilations varying in how many episodes they include and in what order.
Among Jangar's recurring cast are named heroic companions who accompany the khan on his campaigns, each associated with particular strengths or roles within Bumba's defense, a structure comparable to the retinue of named champions found in other steppe epic traditions and one that gives individual cantos their own protagonists even while Jangar himself remains the cycle's central figure.