It is with heartfelt appreciation that I wish to pay tribute to my colleague and friend Roberte Hamayon. For almost fifty years our scholarly paths have run in parallel, sometimes intermingling and sometimes diverging, but in all eventualities, I have always found enrichment and enlightenment from Roberte’s work. Through the years for me she was like a French companion in anthropology, and I feel a great personal sadness at her passing.
We first met, if my memory is correct, in sunlit Mongolia in 1970. Roberte was already experienced in Mongolian studies, while for me, having worked nearby among the Buriat-Mongols in Siberia, the occasion was my first visit to the country of Mongolia. We regarded one another cautiously, like a meeting of creatures of different species—and then over the years we became firm friends. Of course, our anthropological backgrounds were quite different. Roberte came from a humanitarian tradition with degrees in linguistics, ethnology, and religious studies. ...


